Over the course of 4 to 20 weekly visits, teaching artists lead K-6th grade classes through acting, playwriting and songwriting workshops, resulting in each class’ adaptation of a children’s book. Residencies that run 6 sessions or more culminate in a Sharing Day in which students present their original plays or musicals for a partnering class. Literature at Play meets the NYC DOE Theatre Blueprint Benchmarks and English Language Arts Standards.
- Residencies can occur during the school day or as an afterschool program.
- Residencies can include a Making Books Sing production (either a mainstage in a professional venue or a traveling show that comes to your school). Including a performance option extends and deepens the students’ learning experience.
- Because all productions are adapted from children’s books, they act as a models of artistic interpretation and mirror the students’ creative process in the residency.
ACADEMIC GOALS:
Literature at Play curriculum will:
- Reinforce students’ language and literacy skills through theatre and songwriting
- Expand students' writing abilities with an emphasis on strengthening literary elements, dialogue, expressive or descriptive language
- Foster comfort and competence with speaking and listening for our large population of English language learners
- Increase reading comprehension skills, such as sequencing, making predictions and text-to-self connections
ARTISTIC GOALS:
Students will learn:
- To write a play with a clear beginning, middle and end
- To understand the elements of a well-written play (i.e. inciting incident, conflict, resolution, action, high stakes, low stakes)
- To understand characters’ motivations and express dialogue with appropriate emotion
- To speak/sing in front of a group, demonstrated through greater risk-taking, projection and articulation
TARGET AUDIENCE:
K-6th
Particularly English Language Learners
PRICE:
- $100 per class, per session
- One time $150 fee for planning and materials (resource guide, planning meeting, documentation and final anthology)
- Musical theatre residencies that run 6 sessions or longer and include a Sharing Day will cost an additional $50 per class for the final session to cover the cost of two artists in the classroom.
With funding from the NEA in 2010, Making Books Sing assessed the impact of our education program in seven New York City public schools. In five areas associated with English Language Learning, our students' proficiency doubled, at minimum, in every category!
SAMPLE ANTHOLOGIES FROM PAST SCHOOL RESIDENCIES:
Every school will receive a personalized anthology that documents each residency and includes all student-written work. Here are two of our favorites:
PS161 Queens Powerpoint (pdf)
PS199 Queens Powerpoint (pdf)
Literature At Play is available to schools and community centers in the New York City area. To book, please contact Education Director Brooke Boertzel at (212) 573-8791 x14 or bboertzel@makingbookssing.org.
