Catalogue of Critical Creativity

Using Words

Line and Caret: This activity, which challenges students to practice opposites, rhymes, and relationships between words, would be extremely useful in the drama classroom. This practice would be very good for improv practice (finding rhymes and relationships between words) as well as monologues (exploring opposite emotions and beats).

Using Images

Emoji Story: The original lesson plan for this activity fits beautifully with drama work: students exploring how a character might go from one emotion to another. They then explore (through drawings) the emotional beats between one emotion and another. This is super important to talk about realistic acting and discovery.

Using Sound

Parody Lyrics: Little did I know I was jumping ahead when I created my parody of God Help the Outcasts! Parody lyrics are an excellent way to assess the students without them knowing that they are being assessed. Creating parody lyrics of songs about history of theatre or character intentions is something I absolutely want to do in my drama classroom.

Using the Body

Chronological Choreography: This combination of tableaux and physical theatre is another way to assess knowledge of chronological events. For younger students, showing examples of this kind of choreography and then having the kids do it is a fantastic way to practice their skills of putting things in order and organizing ideas.

Using Things

Book Stack Summary: Using books to create summaries and poetry is very similar to a practice used in my favorite podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, Florilegium. This practice takes excerpts of texts and strings them together to create ideas and sentences, which create different meaning than the original texts did on their own. The stacked books have the same effect. I would like to combine both in my classroom.

Using Social Media

Gif Story: I regularly use gifs to bridge facetime/face to face interactions (being able to see my facial expression) with texts (the more comfortable mode of communication). This would be a fun way to explore plot points as well as emotional beats in a scene: it's sometimes easier to replicate emotions than to 'come up' with them on your own.