Grade Level: Kindergarten
Content Integration: Theatre/ELA
Essential Question:
Why is a picture worth a thousand words?
Descriptors:
Standards:
Theatre
Visual and Performing Arts: Theatre
2.0 Creative Expression: Creation/Invention in Theatre
2.2 Perform group pantomimes and improvisations to
retell familiar stories.
5.0 Connections, Relationships, and Applications:
Patricia Arzola
Arts Every Day
Integrated Lesson Plan
May 2009
Title of Lesson: Do you see what I see?
Integrated Student Objective:
Students will create a tableau to demonstrate a character and
what his/her relationship was to other characters.
English Language Arts
Reading
2.0 Reading Comprehension: Comprehension and Analysis of
Grade-Level-Appropriate Text
2.2 Use pictures and context to make predictions about story
content.
2.4 Retell familiar stories.
3.0 Literary Response and Analysis
3.3 Identify characters, settings, and important events.
Careers and Career-Related Skills
5.2 Demonstrate the ability to participate cooperatively
Student Objectives:
Assessment
Key Knowledge:
Prior Knowledge
New Concepts
in performing a pantomime or dramatizing a story.
Students will be able to create a tableau to imitate a Students will be able analyze tableaus to make predictions/draw
character in a familiar story
conclusions about story content
Were students able to create a tableau to imitate a Were students able to identify the characters, settings and
character or emotion in a familiar story?
important event of a familiar story?
Were students able to make predictions about the story content
based on performed or viewed tableaus?





Body/ Spatial Awareness: Personal Space
Ability to freeze their body
Ability to distinguish emotions (sadness, joy,
excitement, anger, frustration etc.)
Uses of their body and face to create a character
Participate cooperatively with a partner to
dramatize a character/setting/ important event
of a story


Story sequence (BME)
Identify character, settings



Making Generalizations
Noting Detail: Cause and Effect
Monitor and Clarify characters, settings, and important
events concepts/themes
Patricia Arzola
Arts Every Day
Integrated Lesson Plan
May 2009
New Vocabulary
Key Skills
Prerequisite Skills
New Skills



Tableau
Improvisation
Emotion



Character
Setting
Event



Basic physical control of the body
Able to identify specific emotions
Use their body and face to create an emotion on
demand

Able to identify character, setting, important events in a
familiar story
Able to note details in facial expressions
Able to identify characters, settings, and important
events


Materials/Resources
 Grade Level Stories such as Ruth Krauss’s Carrot Seed, Watty Piper’s The Little Engine that Could, or Aleksei Tostoi’s The Great Big Enormous
Turnip.
 Chart paper and Markers
 Graphic organizers: such as a Flow Map to deconstruct the story into Beginning, Middle and End, , Multi-Flow Map to analyze cause and effect in
character relationships, actions, and/or emotions
Phase
Learning Sequence
1. Discuss emotions
Student Engagement
2. Look at picture books and draw conclusions about possible stories
(5-15 minutes)
3. Read Grade Level Story such as the Carrot Seed
4. Class will create graphic organizers to discuss characters or the main character’s emotions , setting or important
events throughout the story
Aesthetic Exploration
1. Teacher will prompt students by calling out random emotions. Students will physically respond by creating the
(5 minutes)
emotion with their body or facial expression. Teacher will ask students to “freeze” their body to capture the scene
when a cue is given
Creative Expression
1. Teacher will now prompt students by calling out a character’s name to evoke an emotion for students to imitate
(20 minutes)
2. Students will freeze
3. Teacher will either take a picture or “unfreeze” a student; the student will be asked to recall what they see
4. Teacher will unfreeze all students, remind them of the character once more, and ask them to recreate their tableau
Reflection
1. Journal prompt: write a sentence and draw a picture about a chosen character and that character’s feelings
(10 minutes)
2. Open ended questions:
 How can tableaus be used to help people who do not speak the same language understand each other?
 Can you name one or more emotions that might be more meaningfully shown through tableaus than through
Patricia Arzola
Arts Every Day
Integrated Lesson Plan
May 2009


written or spoken words?
How did your tableau show who each character was or how he or she related to the other characters?
What was challenging about creating your tableaus?
Extensions:
 Usually student focus only on main characters, move their focus to supporting characters
 Have students create flash cards (drawings) of characters, settings, important events to later re-create or sequence during free time or at home
Connections:
 SECOND STEP violence prevention program whose intent is to strengthen skills, such as empathy, emotion management, problem solving,
and cooperation in children of all ages
Differentiation:
 Review and model the concept of personal space
 Refer or Defer to learning charts for clarification of concepts
 Take and use pictures of student to use for topics of discussions about the story or as models for specific emotions