Performance Seminar
Course Description
Name: Performance Seminar
Length: One semester (18 weeks)
Grade: 8th grade
Description: Performance Seminar is a class that focuses on a culminating activity that demonstrates skills
used for communication, collaboration, innovation and creativity. Students will draw on a variety of
sources to generate, evaluate, and select creative ideas to turn into personally meaningful products.
Established Goals for Middle School Courses
1. Learning and innovation skills increasingly are being recognized as those that separate students who are
prepared for a more and more complex life and work environments in the 21st century, and those who
are not prepared. A focus on core content knowledge, creativity, critical thinking, communication and
collaboration is essential to prepare students for the future.
2. Students in the 21st century live in a technology and media-suffused environment, marked by various
characteristics, including: 1) access to an abundance of information, 2) rapid changes in technology
tools, and 3) the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions on an unprecedented scale. To
be effective in the 21st century, citizens and workers must be able to exhibit a range of functional and
critical thinking skills related to information, media and technology.
3. Today’s life and work environments require far more than thinking skills and content knowledge. The
ability to navigate the complex life and work environments in the globally competitive information age
requires students to pay rigorous attention to developing adequate life and career skills.
Desired Results
Transfer (5 years from now)
Students will be able to independently use their learning to:
1. Be creative, think and reflect critically, communicate and solve problems in both conventional and
innovative ways (the creative process)
2. Work collaboratively and creatively for a common goal
3. Work respectfully and effectively with socially and culturally diverse teams to increase innovation
and quality in their work
4. Use technology to create, evaluate, and experience dramatic products and performances
5. Maintain an appreciation for the process and product of the arts
6. Experience increased confidence when facing real-life situations
Board Approved 05_09_12
The Essential Understandings for Performance Seminar
Students will understand the following concepts:
1. Skills and knowledge are necessary to create and perform in one or more of the arts.
2. Reflecting upon and assessing one’s work and the works of others is an essential component of the
creative process.
3. Artists and their works shape culture and increase understanding of society’s past and present.
4. Multiple perspectives can characterize the same event differently.
5. Artists adapt to varying roles and responsibilities within a creative team.
6. Performing in front of an audience builds confidence.
7. Technology can enhance drama techniques and the quality of a performance/product.
8. Habits of mind (shows care, respect, perseverance, self-discipline, work ethic) are important to
making and experiencing the arts.
9. To continuously improve as artists, requires a person to be self-motivated, self-directed, and selfreflective while managing goals and time.
The Essential Questions for Performance Seminar
Content Questions:
1. What basic skills and resources are necessary to create?
2. How is dramatic performance defined?
3. How can a person communicate a message through a dramatic work?
4.
How can we use appropriate language and theatrical terms to reflect and to constructively evaluate
a performance?
Standards Based Questions:
5. What does it mean to collaborate effectively within a group?
6. How does working in teams increase innovation and quality of work?
7. How does drama impact one’s daily life?
Board Approved 05_09_12
8. How does technology impact the field of drama?
Essential Standards: Knowledge and Skills
K
Students will know, understand and be able to…
1. Apply the creative process to demonstrate originality, novelty, and inventiveness in their work
-input
-brainstorming
-finding potential
-reorganization
-production
-evaluation/reflection
2. Know and apply sensory elements (movement, sound, mind), organizational principles and
expressive qualities in the performing arts
3. Understand how the elements of acting, directing, playwriting, and designing combine with the
principles of tension, rhythm, pattern, unity, balance repetition and idea to communicate
4. Understand the basic elements of blocking/staging a performance (e.g. placement/movement of
actors, musicians, scenery)
5. Describe timing, reaction, rhythm, pacing, listening, and spontaneity as it relates to actor movement
6. Identify the effective use of vocal pause, rate, rhythm, pitch, intensity and volume
7. Analyze movement strategies to support conflict
8. Combine and defend physical shape, level, and/or facial expression to communicate theme,
emotion, mood, and/or character dynamics
9. Use verbal and non-verbal skills to communicate effectively
10. Understand color, sound, space and movement can communicate ideas
11. Articulate and support the meanings constructed from a story or dramatic performance
12. Analyze how character, conflict/problem, and resolution depend on one another to communicate
theme
13. Identify a script’s genre/style
14. Analyze the relationship of mood to tension and pacing
15. Compare and contrast how the same idea was performed by different groups
16. Demonstrate the collaborative nature of an artistic performance by planning, practicing, evaluating,
and revising the essential elements of a production
Board Approved 05_09_12
17. Use technology effectively to research, access, create, and communicate creative ideas and
information with an understanding of ethical and legal issues
18. Learn ways that technology will enhance performance technique
19. Explain the choice of support tools/design elements, such as props, costumes, lights, sound, makeup, and/or set, used to support an artistic performance
20. Use flexibility and adaptation to change in a variety of artistic contexts
21. Demonstrate care, respect, perseverance, self-discipline and work ethic (Habits of Mind) when
creating a performance
22. Work respectfully and effectively with socially and culturally diverse teams and content to increase
innovation and quality in their work
23. Set goals, accept responsibility, and refine work to meet high standards of excellence and
accountability
24. Reflect on one’s final product in order to assess its effectiveness in relationship to the original aim
25. Critique/peer review in a constructive manner the work of others based on criteria in a rubric
26. Use appropriate language and theatrical terms to reflect and to constructively evaluate a
performance
27. Identify how the arts have played a role in history, society, and everyday life
28. Identify and describe career and jobs in and among the arts and how they contribute to the world of
work
Assessment Evidence
Performance Tasks: for Performance Seminar
Performance Tasks:
 Produce an extended performance project: Examples include:
- One-Act or Scripted Plays
- Poetry Readings
- Podcasts
- Reader’s Theater Performance
- Improvisation
- Musical Theater
- Adaptations of a novel
Other Evidence:
 Teacher Rubric
 Compile and maintain a portfolio of work that represents the student’s enduring understandings
 Peer Critiques
Board Approved 05_09_12
 Written assessment
Student Self-Assessment and Reflection:
 Student Rubric -- self-evaluation
 Write reflective entries in journal format
References
The Illinois Learning Standards for the Fine Arts
http://www.isbe.net/ils/fine_arts/standards.htm
Partnership for the 2st Century Fine Arts Map
http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21_arts_map_final.pdf
The National Standards for Arts Education, prepared under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education,
the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities,
Board Approved 05_09_12
Board Approved 05_09_12