TESOL

Radio Drama: Create your own Radio Interview!

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The year 6 classes are studying Radio Drama. I have posted previously about how they created radio commercials to explore the creative potential of the voice. We also had a chance to perform poems to apply characterization techniques to voice. Then we attempted to develop better enunciation and articulation by performing tongue-twister poems in this tongue-twisting lesson.

The next lesson in this unit of work is ‘radio interviews’. The learning objectives for this lesson are:
1) to develop better voice projection
2) to create a radio interview

The warmup chosen was a voice-projection exercise where the students form pairs and then line up facing each other. The pairs then start a conversation, until they are instructed to move three feet away from each other, and continue the conversation. After about 30 seconds, they move another three feet away from each other, and so on. After the warmup, we debriefed as a class to explore the benefits of this warmup, and the skills it allows us to practice, and how it linked to voice projection.

After the debriefing, I explained the new theoretical material for the lesson. I explained what voice projection is and how performers can use certain strategies to improve their voice projection. The students were told that they will have an opportunity to practice those strategies through a simple performance exercise: radio interviews.

The task required the students to form groups of 3-4 members, pick a celebrity/cartoon-character to interview and write up five questions and answers. Each group had to have 1 or 2 radio hosts asking the questions, and the remaining group members play the chosen character/characters or celebrity/celebrities who answer the questions (in character). Each performance also had to include a jingle for the radio station, created by the students’ voices.

The students were told that for this performance the audience members will sit at the very back end of the room (as far away from the performance space as possible), and so the performers really had to project their voice if they want to be heard.

The task was very engaging for the students. One group interviewed Spongebob Squarepants, and another interviewed Bart Simpson. Most of the boys decided to interview famous sports-stars I haven’t even heard of (sports isn’t really my strong point)! The audience members gave the performers positive comments and useful suggestions after every performance, because I like to allow my students to step into the “critic’s shoes”. To wrap up the lesson, the students had to write an ‘exit slip‘ explaining what they learned today and what they found enjoyable.

Overall, the lesson was a success, the students created some fantastic performances, and most groups projected their voice well enough! This lesson can also be adapted and used in any subject: interviewing a scientist in Science, a mathematician in Maths, a book author in English/ESL/LOTE etc…

Here is a radio interview created by a group of girls who decided to interview Bart Simpson. There is also a snapshot of the whiteboard, and some of the exit slips!

Tongue-Twisting Lesson!

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Today’s year 6 Drama lesson was wholly devoted to articulation and enunciation. As part of the unit of work on ‘Radio Drama’, one of the learning objectives is to “develop better articulation and enunciation”. This lesson comes after a poetry theatre lesson where students experimented with voice as a tool to create different characters. Before that, the students had also created their own radio commercials, which was an attempt to explore the creative potential of the voice.

Today’s lesson had a bit of a twist to it, literally! The whole lesson was built around tongue twisters, which are often used to develop better articulation and enunciation. The lesson started with a tongue-twister relay as the warm-up: students form teams of five, and then they are all given the same tongue-twister, where each member has to say it three times without mumbling or stuttering. If any team member stutters or mumbles, then the whole relay is reset back from the first player. After a few rounds of this warm-up, we debriefed as a class and discussed the uses of tongue-twisters and how they help us speak clearly and improve our enunciation. I also explained what enunciation and articulation mean, and why they are important in radio drama, which was also written on the whiteboard (snapshot below).

The performance part of the lesson was based on these Tongue Twister poems which I found online. The students formed groups of 3-4 members and were each given a different tongue-twister poem. They were told that the task is to dramatize this poem as much as they can, yet still deliver it clearly to the audience. They were encouraged to add music or sound effects, as long as it was all created by their voices (not using iPads or iPods).

The students were given about 15 minutes to prepare and rehearse, then they all performed their tongue-twister poem to the audience, while being recorded by the iPad (to facilitate their reflection and evaluation after the performance). After every performance, each group was given positive comments and useful suggestions from their peers. The last part of the lesson was time set aside for writing their four-sentence reflection using their reflection help-sheet, and after listening to their own performances to help them identify their strengths and weaknesses.

The lesson was quite entertaining, and it was very cool what they all came up with. I believe this lesson can also be used in an English/ESL/LOTE classroom to develop better enunciation and clarity of speech.

Year 6s doing Poetry Theatre!

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As part of our unit of work on ‘Radio Drama’, there is a lesson devoted wholly to poetry theatre. This lesson follows the ‘Radio Commercials’ assessment task, which the students successfully completed last week. The learning objective of the lesson is to ‘apply characterization skills to voice’ and discover the many things voice can tell us about a character: age, gender, status, cultural background and feelings/emotions.

The lesson starts with a warm-up I got from The Drama Notebook called ‘color your nursery rhyme’. As a class, we select a nursery rhyme and practice saying it in different ways: angrily, like a crying baby, like an opera singer, happily etc…

The class then debriefs about the warm-up and reflects on the skills practiced, then we link it to and discuss the theoretical part of the lesson (written on the whiteboard, here’s a snapshot of it).

After the debriefing and the discussion, the students are divided into groups and all given the same poem to recite. However, they are each given a picture of a different character and they have to recite the poem using that character’s voice (or their perception of it). I gave them pictures of an angry-looking middle-aged man, a very sophisticated high-class rich middle-aged woman, a frustrated and sad-looking young female child, a grumpy old grandma, and a bored-looking teenager sitting in class.

The poem I chose is ‘Homework I Love You’ by Kenn Nesbitt. The groups were each given 15 minutes to discuss what sort of voice their character would have, and to rehearse delivering the poem using that voice. Then we set-up a curtain and the students had to perform behind it, with the picture of the character pinned to the curtain. After every performance, the audience were asked to act like critics and give either positive comments or useful suggestions for improvement.

To conclude the lesson, the students spent about fifteen minutes writing in their drama journal (which is more like a ‘portfolio’) using the reflection help-sheet. Here is a snapshot of one student’s four-sentence reflection.

I believe the lesson went rather well. Looking back at it, maybe I could have used different poems for every group, however I chose the same poem to show the class how the same piece of text can be read and dramatized differently using voice. I could have also given the groups choices about what character/s they want to read as, and each group member could have a different voice.

I believe this lesson could also be used in an English and ESL classroom to get students to think about speaking and how vocal variety affects the audience’s attention to your speech.

Here is a nice video created by students who decided to rap their poem, this was all prepared using GarageBand and iMovie!