Creating a Found-Object Puppet
Title of Lesson: Creating a Found-Object Puppet
Author: Ann Nelson
Grade Level: K-2
Subject: Language Arts, Reading
Form of Art Infusion: Theater
Content Key Words: (Language Arts, Writing, Vocabulary, Puppets,)
First and Second Grade Mississippi Theatre Frameworks:
1c. Improvise dialogue to tell stories, and formalize improvisations by writing or recording the dialogue.
2. Act by assuming roles and interacting in improvisations. (CP)
a. Develop body awareness and spatial perception through movement and pantomime.
b. Develop expressive use of voice.
c. Develop sensory awareness of all fives senses.
d. Use skills in pantomime, tableau, and improvisation to create characters and to demonstrate their feelings, relationships, and environments.
First Grade Common Core Standards:
1L 1J Produce and expand complete and compound declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences in response to prompts.
1L 5d Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs differing in manner (e.g., look, peek, glance, stare, glare, scowl) and adjectives differing in intensity (e.g., large, gigantic by defining or choosing them or by acting out the meanings.
1W 1d Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform or explain about the topic.
1 SL6 Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation.
1L 1f. Use frequently occurring adjectives.
Resources/Materials
--Handout attached
--found objects to use for puppets
--pencils
Procedure/Activities:
- SET: (State the objective, make it relevant to learner, involve the learner, review previously learned information/connect it to old information.)
Allow students to become interested in this lesson buy asking the students if they have ever seen a puppet. Try to make the lesson relevant by discussing some famous puppets on television or in DVD shows.
- T20 TEACH TO THE OBJECTIVE(DEARQ Give good directions, Explanations, Activities, Responds to the learner, Questioning)
1. Select on of the found items to show students how they can be used as puppets. Use the puppet to tell them a story or a joke. Then use the puppet as you go through the questions on the handout.
2.Allow students to select an object such as items from the kitchen or school supplies or just random household objects to use in this activity to use as a puppet.
3.Allow students to create a brief performance for the class that uses the found puppet.
4.Use the attached questions to allow students about 10 minutes to generate their performance ideas. Tell students they can write their performance down if needed.
5.Allow each student to show their performance to the class.
- CLOSURE Ask the students what you need to create puppets. Ask them what they have learned or why did we do the things we did. Continue time for the students to solidify their learning by asking some of the following questions: What was your favorite part of the lesson, why is it important to read and write? Did the puppet make it easier to talk in front of people
- Evaluation: The small performance and feedback received will be used as a formative assessment.
Extensions:
- Use a found object to explore a curriculum topic. (handout attached)
- Students can get with partners to try out their scripts before presenting them to the class.
- After students write the scripts, they could exchange the scripts and objects with another student. The students will perform the skit with the new puppet. This experience gives students a more authentic writing experience since they are writing for a real audience.
Creating a Found-Object Puppet Activity
Step 1:
Choose an object that interests you.
Anything can be a puppet! It should not be anything like a person or an animal. What is it?
Step 2:
Collect all the information you can about this object.
What does it do? How does it do it?
How does it move?
What does it look like and sound like?
Step 3:
Imagine your object as a person! (Otherwise know as personification.)
If my object were a person, what type of personality might it have? List three words or phrases.
1.
2.
3.
If my object were a person, what could my object do or be, and why?
1. This ______could be a ______because:
(object)(occupation or role in life)
2. This ______could be a ______because:
(object)(occupation or role in life)
3. This ______could be a ______because:
(object)(occupation or role in life)
Step 4:
Bring your object puppet to life!
Choose from Step 3 one occupation for your object puppet.
Review your ideas in Steps 2-3to help create a personality for your puppet.
Explore! Ask yourself these questions, while you play with your puppet. Build on your ideas! Take notes here to help you:
What is my puppet’s name?
What kind of voice does it have?
How does my puppet move?
What does my puppet do?
What does my puppet know? Care about? See, feel, hear, smell?
Does my puppet stand for anything? If so, what?
Improvise! Create a short performance, about one minute long. During that minute, your puppet will:
Introduce itself by name.
Show and talk about what it does, and why.
End the scene.
If there is time, improvise a scene with another puppet character!
Creating a Found-Object Puppet to Explore a Curriculum Topic
What topic am I exploring?
What do I know about this topic?
What puzzles me about this topic?
What found object have I chosen (the vehicle of your metaphor)?
What does my object do?
How could what my object does relate to the topic?
What does my object look like?
How could what my object looks like relate to the topic?
What might my object know about this topic?
What might my object care about this topic?
If my object were (the topic) ______, it would:
Sound like or say:
Behave like or do:
Have an attitude like:
Create a brief performance (1-2 minutes) that uses your puppet to explore the topic. Have your puppet introduce itself by the name of the topic, and then anything goes, but here are some ideas:
“I am (name of topic) ______.
I (your puppet expresses what it does best, what it knows most about, and what it most cares about. If it can, it gives the audience some advice that relates to the topic.)
AnnClaire Bennett & Ann Nelson