Day 2: Voice in Stories

After discussing with my mentor teacher, I was able to create an outline of how to teach a different acting technique along with curriculum each day in 3rd grade.

So, we started with voice. Voice is an essential element of theater because it helps convey emotion, personality, motivations and dialogue. The ability to speak clearly and express emotion or opinion is important for any child to learn because speaking your mind allows for learning and understanding among parties.

Warm-Up: We began the day with a Warm-Up about Tongue Twisters. I selected five different Tongue Twisters and had students practice "enunciating" those phrases and saying them confidently. We also learned a new vocabulary word that day: 'enunciate'. That meant to speak clearly and pronounce words correctly. In their small groups, I saw them smiling at their silly tongue twisters and sometimes tripping on very similar words. After practicing for a few minutes, they came back together and had some of the members of their group show us a well-practiced tongue twisters. The students loved performing these silly phrases and watching their group members represent!

Examples:
 - Which witch wished which wicked wish? (repeat three times)

 - A skunk sat on a stump. The skunk thunk the stump stunk, the stump thunk the skunk stunk. Which stunk, the skunk or the stump?

 - This black bug bled blue-black blood while the other black bug bled blue.

 - Any noise annoys an oyster, but an noisy noise annoys an oyster most.

 - You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.

Activity: After a fun warm-up, we reflected on the importance of voice. They said that voice helps us understand other people, that it helps us recognize who is speaking. Based on the inflection, it can help us understand their feelings and so forth. I then pulled out the book, "Horton Hatches the Egg" by Dr. Seuss. I thought this would be a great book to practice hearing and using voice to convey emotions because of the differing characters that appear. As I read the book, I sometimes demonstrated different voices for the main characters, Mayzie and Horton, and the narrator, and then asked for help from two groups: the boys and the girls of the class. Students loved hearing the story of Horton who is asked to sit on Mayzie's egg during most of the year and helping me tell the story.

Practicing our voices can be a little intimidating, so I felt by letting the students practice in big groups of boys or girls they were able to try new things without feeling singled out. We tried high-pitched voices, low voices, annoyed voices, sassy voices, slow voices and fast voices.

After reiterating the power of voice, I gave them one page of the story to practice in partners. They each were given the task to pick one of the characters, Mayzie or Horton, and then to do their voice in a particular way. For example, Mayzie spoke fast and Horton spoke slow; Mayzie spoke in a high pitch and Horton spoke in a low pitch; Mayzie spoke in an annoyed tone and Horton spoke in a sleepy tone, etc. They spread out around the room practicing their lines three separate times to try and see how they could best perform this voice in their own way.

At the end we have two brave groups perform while wearing the hat to represent Horton and a scarf to represent Mayzie. They did great reading their lines and trying out different voices! I also encouraged students to clap twice for the "performers" and to have the performers bow, as if it was a more formal performance. I think providing small scale opportunities to perform helps students have greater confidence in their abilities.