Arts in Society: Lesson Plan

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Week Twelve: Prop Me Up

Student Outcome Statement: Arts in Society - Level Three – Identifies and discusses specific features of the arts in own community and in other cultures or times and relates this understanding to own arts works and activities

Specific Areas:

Valuing the arts: Students identify the purposes and functions of drama in contemporary society, such as entertainment, storytelling and advertising. They identify aspects of drama in contemporary life, such as the use of ritual in weddings, awards ceremonies, football matches, religious events and other rites of passage.

Contexts: Students identify features of drama from a limited range of choices, such as one other time or culture. They discuss clues that might identify the origins of drama from other times and places, such as language, themes, costumes, movement or use of specific gestures, and make comparisons between identified features of these different drama works. They relate their understanding of drama in other cultures or times to their own drama works.

Further Outcome:

- Arts, Skills and Processes– Level Three

Technologies: Students adapt available materials to create costumes, props, sets and sound effects to enhance performance.

- Arts Response – Level Three

Responding: Students respond to drama works and experiences using given critical frameworks and specific learned terminology to identify, describe and compare the ways in which key features and elements of drama have been used to express ideas, feelings and purpose. They share their observations and listen to and talk about the observations of others.

Teaching/Learning Purposes/Objectives: To enable students to:

* Reflect upon, and create their own properties for a production

* Understand the symbolic and physical need for properties

* Identify the main purpose, and justify the final product

Background planning and requirements[1]

Major Purpose: To explain the symbolic importance of properties

Key Question: How does a prop create meaning for the audience?

The Hook: You are watching a stage performance of ‘Cinderella’

- What’s happening? It is the scene where the Prince presents the slipper to Cinderella, however the actor has forgotten the shoe

- Who’s it happening to? Yourself, as an audience member

- Where is it happening? In your local theatre

- When is it happening? Near the end of a one-hour production

- What’s at stake? If the Prince mimes placing a shoe on Cinerella’s foot, will the scene still work?

Resources:

* Examples of properties for exercises

* Materials for property construction

Lesson descriptions

- Warm-up – Start with warm-up activities that require the use of properties. Character and hat games, or creating a scene using different objects. Use the warm-up time to illustrate examples of the importance of properties.

- Class Discussion – Introduce the ‘Hook’. Discuss how the scene may/or may not work. How is the slipper significant to creating the character? Discuss workers such as Doctors, Police Officers, Pilots etc. What props do these characters require?

- Small Group Activity – In groups of about three, design a property for a character in a film or television show. Write down ideas on paper, and then present it to the group. It must be an object that is new, but related to the character. In the class presentation, students will need to justify some of their choices. Why did you choose that object? Why that colour? Why do you believe this property would communicate to an audience?

- Individual Activity – Now ask students to work individually on a similar task, but this time creates a property that is relevant to their current production. As a whole class, it could be important for students to discuss what is needed, and then divide design ideas between them. Students must adapt given materials to create their designs for the stage, and as a result it must be practical in design and creation.

- Individual Assessment – At the end of this task, students will be assessed on number of questions to gauge the students thought progression, and choices in overall design. The questions will consist of one closed question and two open questions. The idea is to assess a student’s involvement and understanding of the process itself.

Lesson Evaluation:

Verbal Questions: (Pick one question from each area)

Knowledge/Comprehension:

	Can you explain why you chose to create your particular property?
	Can you describe its importance?
	What are the main features of your property?

Application/Analysis:

	What elements of your property would you change if the actor using it needed to firmly throw it to the ground in each performance?
	What is the underlying symbolic code used in the ‘reading’ of your created property? How does it relate to your researched time period?
	What are some of the problems you found in creating your property, and how did you overcome them?

Synthesis/Evaluation:

	If you had access to better materials, what would you use instead, and how would that improve you overall product?
	How many different ways could have you created the property? Can you conceive a better approach with the available materials?
	If you were to create a three-step checklist for researching and creating a property, what steps would you list?

[1] Some parts modelled upon ‘The Giant who threw Tantrums’ in John O’Toole and Julie Dunn (2002) Pretending to Learn: Helping Children learn through Drama, Longman French’s Forrest.

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