A Shakespeare Summer Club: Project Based Learning

I mentioned in my last post that the children will be doing some Shakespeare based PBL.  PBL works very well in our household, not maybe as our main way to home school, but definitely as an important extra.  I thought I would give a bit more detail as to what I will be expecting over the next term.

Mixed Media Project

The children will be creating a  mixed media play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  This could be a disaster as it is something I have cooked up in this hair brained head of mine.  Basically the play has five Acts and we will be acting out the whole play using a different media for each act.  For example, one act will be traditional; another might be put to music or rapped; another might be a readers theater.  The children will be able to choose five different methods from a variety I have come up with (see below) or use ideas of their own.  These will be combined using narration or some other linking method until the five acts are seamlessly put together to create one play of mixed media.  They will organise the whole thing themselves from the writing of scripts, to the sets and costumes, to the final performance.  They will have zero budget and will have to raise the funds themselves.  Oh, and they only have four weeks.

Mixed Media Choices

These are the choices from which the children must choose five, one for each act of Midsummer Night’s Dream.

• Traditional play form
• Mime
• Rap
• In modern day Rhyme
• Make an audio of the act with sound effects and music to create mood
• Futuristic performance with new linked names so we still know who each person is but set in future Puckoid….etc
• Rewrite act for readers theater for audience participation
• Rewrite as readers theater for themselves to do
• Do one set to music ie west side story or glee style using modern songs which are fairly/ loosely appropriate for the story line
• Video of a modern day take on the scene
• Rewriting one of the acts as a diary entry
• Improvisation activity – choose one of the ones you will use over next five weeks
• Text/ face book status it
• unrehearsed ad lib – act without script but with prompts – must know act back to front to pull this off
• Puppet theater

Lorna, B13 and K12 will be coming by every afternoon in order to put a couple of hours into their project.  This means there will be five children and five acts, enough for one child to take full charge and responsibility for one act each.  We definitely have more leaders than followers between us and I am hoping being in charge of one act each will give each child the opportunity to finely tune both their leading and their following skills!