Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program

Category: Drama

  • Africa Project – Part 2

    as told by our favorite Art Coach, Bruce Hucko

    The Performance

    This really needs to be experienced in person. We have a video and it’s wonderful, but it’s just not the same as having been there in Ms. Sheila’s music room, which had been converted, quite simply, easily and indeed, magically, into a hybrid theatrical performance space and African ceremonial plaza laying deep in the jungle.

    The background was hung.

    Stage sides were set.

    Drums, Xylophones and other instruments were placed.

    Characters held their dance masks.

    Introductions were made.

    Everyone took their place.

    Actors, parents, and audience held their breath.

    Boom. . . Boom!

    HOW THE LION GOT ITS MANE

    By Olivia Jackman

    All: Eons ago, a lion roamed the grounds. She was a little lion and a fat one too.  She was slow.

    Lion: Everybody makes fun of me! I don’t like it.

    Falcon: Are you okay lion?

    Lion: Yeah, I’m just so fat.

    Zebra: Haha, hee hee. I need to show hyena this. He’ll love a fat lion for lunch.

    Lion: What?

    Zebra: You know what I said.

    Snake: Ooh, I want to eat that fat lion.

    Lion: Oh, please don’t eat me. I’m stiff and gross. Please!

    Falcon: I ask what is going on?

    Snake: Well, you see, lion tried to eat zebra.

    Lion: What? You lied.

    Falcon: Is this true lion?

    Snake: If you say no, I’ll eat you.

    Lion: Maybe? Yes.

    Falcon: Okay.

    Lion: Phew, they did not eat me.

    Hyena: Did someone say fat lion?

    Lion: What? Please no.

    Hyena: I will eat you, Hahahaha.

    Lion: Phew, I got out of that, but I wonder if there’s a way to lose weight?

    Hyena: Okay, if we eat him, we’ll have food for months.

    Others: Yeah, let’s eat him! Yeah, let’s eat him! Yeah, let’s eat him! Let’s eat  that fat lion.

    Zebra: Wait! If I’m an herbivore, why am I helping? Wait a minute, you wanted to eat me too!

    Lion: What are you doing here, zebra?

    Zebra: They lied to me! Since you lost your family, you can join my herd.

    All: Lion joined Zebra’s herd. Sometime later, he noticed some things.

    Lion: I never thought joining your herd would mean eating grass, but it’s kinda good. Wait a minute, I’ve been losing weight. And, and…is that grass growing out of my neck? Cool! I will call it a mane!

    All: And now you know how lion got her mane.

  • The Day the Crayons Quit

    Debbie Beninati, BTSALP Music specialist at Sandy Elementary School in Canyons School district wrote two original songs and one original rap for a production of The Day the Crayons Quit. Students in the after school program did the rest: staging, casting, orchestrating on Orff instruments, painting protest signs for the crayons to carry, and creating art work that accompanied the story. Their only “script” was the text of the story, The Day the Crayons Quit , by Drew Daywalt.  Safe to say it was a SMASH HIT!

  • Art Works for Kids Lesson Tool Arts Integrated Lessons for your K-6 Classroom

    Education is much more than just academic achievement. The classroom needs to be a place where students can learn about themselves as well as the world around them. Integrating the arts into the core curriculum is a proven strategy for helping to address all the needs of students. In elementary schools, arts-integrated learning has been shown to improve students’ social, emotional, core academic, and arts learning.

    Art Works for Kids is happy to announce the new and improved Lesson Plan Tool is up and running! Lesson plans for all grade levels, art forms and subject matter are available for your use. CHECK OUT THE SAMPLE LESSON PLAN below (PDF versions of every lesson plan are available for download.) Follow the arrows to ALL THE LESSON PLANS ON THE BTSALP WEBSITE located in the menu located above.

    Calling all BTSALP Specialists: If you have a lesson plan to share with others, please send it to: contactus@btsalp.com and help our database grow!

  • Sunshine 2.0

    Sunshine 2.0 is a professional traveling theater troupe based at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in Rochester, New York. The troupe provides performances and activities for deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults that highlight the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEaM), as well as educational topics pertaining to the Deaf experience. The theater troupe travels to schools, and programs serving deaf and hard-of-hearing students, colleges, museums, conferences, civic groups, festivals and other venues.

    Performances are presented in voice and in American Sign Language, are accessible to all audience members and cover subjects for people of all ages. And these performances can come to your school at no cost!

    Using an array of performance techniques, Sunshine 2.0 offers a series of engaging programs and workshops. Sunshine 2.0 audiences have a rare opportunity to see exciting and entertaining performances that will create a lasting impression.

    Sunshine 2.0 partnered with the University of Utah, Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program specialist, students and faculty from the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind, students and teachers from West Kearns Elementary School in Granite School District for a day of presentations, workshops, sharing and learning. The interaction between elementary students, teaching professionals, theater troupe members and university faculty and staff was amazing, informative and heart warming. Learn more about this professional troupe and highlights of the day below.

  • Under the Sea

    First graders at Monte Vista Elementary School in Jordan School District, under the direction of BTSALP Music Specialist, Amanda Maloy, presented a musical and visual extravaganza for parents and students!!!! All the students in the five first grade classrooms participated in the performance. Amanda wrote the script and directed the first graders in a rollicking good show! See for yourself!

  • A Day at Thunder Ridge: Part 3

    Robert Smith, BTSALP Art Coach in Alpine School District, led Ms. Decker’s 5th grade class through an integrated lesson using the book, The Mountain Dance by Thomas Locker. He started by having students close their eyes and listen to a Beethoven selection that complemented the wonderful illustrations in the book. Students listed words that described the music such as happy, intense, adventurous, calming and relaxing.

    He then read the book to the students, pausing at certain passages for the students to visualize the words being read. The class then discussed the vivid verbs and interesting adverbs they found in the text. Breaking into small groups, students listed and recorded Earth Science vocabulary words. These words were tied to passages in the book.

    Each group was given a different page from the book and asked to create a movement that illustrated the picture, text and vocabulary words. Students then performed their movements for their classmates.

  • All In The Family

    Spencer and Camilla Duncan are BTSALP Drama specialists and . . . they are also husband and wife! Spencer teaches at Copper Canyon Elementary and Elk Meadows Elementary in the Jordan School District while Camilla is at Edgemont Elementary and Park Lane Elementary in the Canyons School District.

    Spencer’s sixth grade class Copper Canyon have been studying and acting out the Egyptian myth of Osiris during drama class this month. Below is a short synopsis of the Egyptian myth.

    The Osiris myth is the most elaborate and influential story in ancient Egyptian mythology. It concerns the murder of the god Osiris, a primeval king of Egypt, and its consequences. Osiris’s murderer, his brother Set, usurps his throne. Meanwhile, Osiris’s wife Isis restores her husband’s body, allowing him to posthumously conceive their son, Horus. The remainder of the story focuses on Horus, the product of the union of Isis and Osiris, who is at first a vulnerable child protected by his mother and then becomes Set’s rival for the throne. Their often violent conflict ends with Horus’s triumph, which restores Maat (cosmic and social order) to Egypt after Set’s unrighteous reign and completes the process of Osiris’s resurrection.

    From right to left: Isis, her husband Osiris, and their son Horus, the protagonists of the Osiris myth

    “Death on the Nile River”

    Camilla Duncan uses the book, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, to integrate problem solving , weather and simple machines with her 4th graders at Park Lane Elementary. After a quick warm up, students discuss issues in their imaginary town, Burgertown. How will they clean up all the food that has fallen from the sky? What types of machines can they create that could solve Burgertown’s sanitation problem?

    Group Assignment for the Day: Physically create a machine that can solve the problem. Explain how your machine works (Sound effects appreciated!) Name your machine.

  • Infuse Art – Change Our World

    The University of Utah, College of Fine Arts, presented their ArtsLink 2019 conference on Saturday, March 2nd. ArtsLink is free to students and is a daylong introduction into the wonderful world of arts integration. Plus breakfast, lunch, swag bags, and lesson plans for all!

    It was a fun day filled with art making and educational conversation. Breakout sessions, integrating the beautiful book, Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, by Oliver Jeffers, were held in the four art forms of Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts.

    Dance with Jana Shumway: “Here We Are” on the LAND THAT WE LOVE!

    Curriculum Connections: At the end of this workshop, students understood more about our earth’s land. They danced the different biomes (desert, plain, tropic, tundra, grassland, mountain, forest, wetland.) They choreographed movement about the levels in the soil (topsoil, subsoil, bedrock;) and created shapes of many land forms, then moved like the forces (water, wind, gravity, ice) that case weathering and erosion. Quite a workout!

    Drama with Penny Caywood: Notes for Living on Planet Earth

    Curriculum Connections: Students in the Drama workshop connected the Drama standards of Creating, Performing and Responding with Literacy standards (Connect.) Students read, listened to and told stories from a variety of cultures, genres and styles. They identified characters, setting, plot, theme and conflict in the stories. They also identified historical, global, and social issues connecting them through drama/theater work. Sounds heavy duty but it was SO MUCH FUN!

    Music with Susan Swidnicki: Come Dance and Sing Around the Ring

    Curriculum Connections: The geography of a community influences the cultural development of the humans who inhabit the community. There are relationships between climate, natural resources and other geographic characteristics and a community’s cultural development.

    Students explored the idea of interrelationships between community and environment. Susan explained ways people respect and pass on their traditions and customs. Students then identified physical features of a community and could explain how they affect people’s activities in that area – All Through Music!

    Visual Arts with Jen Terry: Animal Maps

    Curriculum Connections: Mapping builds higher order thinking skills and brings meaning-making to place, thing, concept and idea. This sense of scale, perspective, representation, symbol and observation connects deeper understandings to the experience and helps break apart place, thing, concept or idea into meaningful chunks of information to form an understanding of the whole

    Students created a variety of maps – animals maps out of shapes, map of a fish, character maps and scientific drawings. So many ideas. So little time!

  • There’s So Much “Drama” at Suncrest Elementary

    Guest Blogger: Rachel Zumaya

    Drama Specialist at Suncrest Elementary School, Alpine School District

    Pantomime /ˈpan(t)əˌmīm/ noun
    a dramatic entertainment, originating in Roman mime, in which performers express meaning through gestures accompanied by music.

    In the Drama space at Suncrest Elementary School, students have been learning about pantomime and how tableaus can tell stories. 2nd graders learned to do “the rope” and had a pantomime Tug-O-War that they acted our for their class.

    The 5th grade also did a Tug-O-War activity integrating the Underground Railroad and the Salem Witch Trials with drama skills.

    3rd graders worked on a collaborative project where they performed a “Biomes” poem. They each took turns doing moving tableaus that portrayed the various biomes of the earth. They then performed that for their teachers and classmates.

    Tableau /ˌtaˈblō/ noun
    a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant.

    The 4th graders were given a project where they researched Utah Native American legends. Groups planned 3 tableaus to narrate the beginning, middle, and end of their stories. These were performed for teachers and classmates.

    6th graders did a similar project, using Greek mythology as their point of study. They told their story through 3 tableaus, narrating and performing it for their class.

    We certainly had a lot of fun workshopping the tableau and pantomime projects together as a school. Student learned concepts of Science and Social Studies in a deeper way.

  • Arts Day on the Hill 2019

    BTSALP Student performers advocated for continuing funding for Arts Education at the Utah State Capitol. Student artwork was displayed and students performed musical numbers, theater and dance productions. Thank you student advocates. Thank you Utah State Legislators.