Theater Arts gives students the chance to express oneself and be creative through performance.
Caleb Francis’s Theater Arts ll class adapted, directed and performed plays from a few fifth grade students at Homecroft Elementary.
“It benefits the fifth graders because then they’re exposed to what theater is,” Francis said. “They kind of get to see what it is before some of them go through middle school where they start to get introduced to it and then they come to us.”
Initially, the Theater Department partnered up with Homecroft Elementary, who gave their fifth graders an assignment to write a short story.
Once they wrote the short stories, the Arts ll class then read through all of them and adapted them into scripts.
Once adapted into scripts, a select few are chosen that the class thinks are the best, and those were rehearsed and directed in preparation for the performance of the short plays for the fifth
graders.
“It’s a great opportunity for my students because it shows them how they can take the most essential parts of the story and … either elaborate or cut it down to just the most important bits,” Francis said. “As well as it’s a whole lesson in play writing on how to form a fully developed script with a beginning, middle and end.”
Though he’s not sure who exactly started this program, he knew it was something that previous theater teacher Kimberly Roberts always did, and that was an idea that he really enjoyed coming into the role.
“I know that it was something that Roberts always did with the teachers over at Homecroft, and that was an idea I really enjoyed coming into the role so I wanted to make sure I kept that up,” Francis said.
The performances were filled with props, wild acting and lots of giggles from the fifth graders.
“They were so excited to write their stories and couldn’t wait to see who was chosen,” Homecroft Elementary teacher Shaele Massey said. “It’s been a really exciting experience for them.”
She said they absolutely love continuing to partner with the Theater Department and doing this every year and that the kids always enjoy it.
“We absolutely love doing it every year,” Massey said.
Massey believes that this benefits the fifth graders for they really learn to write fictional stories.
“We talked to them about plot and how to bring certain ideas and then how to write a story with a beginning, middle and end with characters and setting,” Massey said.
The fifth graders spent about three weeks writing these stories.
Massey thinks it gives them a vision of what they want to do in the future and gets a lot of the kids into Theater. She also thinks it really shows how things like books can be adapted into a movie.
Fifth grader Bryan Thawng was one of the lucky students to get his story chosen and he enjoyed writing it. Thawng said his favorite part was the bears.
“I think they did great,” Thwang said. “They were very accurate.”
