Second Grade

In second grade, there will be at least two projects:

1. Masks

2. Making stick puppets to act out a short story in a small group

MASKS

The masks will be an unstructed activity as part of Theatre Centers on Fridays. Outlines of Himalayan style masks will be copied onto cardstock. Pictures of actual masks will be available for them to see, as well as a mask from Nepal. Students will color them, cut them out, and tape them to a sentence strip that has been sized to fit their head and taped.

Second graders will probably also want to make a breaking news storiesof the tales. In this activity, some students pretend to be reporters and interview the characters after the event/story has happened. In some cases, they interview people that weren't actually in the story, like the parents, a neighbor, etc.

PUPPETS

Students will be told a few stories from the Himalayan Region. They will be divided into groups of about four by the story they want to perform. It is OK if more than one group wants to do the same story. Each group with receive a book or simple script of their story. (At this age it's better for them just to retell it in their own words rather than trying to hold and read a script.) Each group will receive the puppets needed for their story outlined on cardstock for them to color and cut out. I have traced paper doll children for the people. After they have done that, the teacher will give them a stick to tape on the back. BBQ sticks work great. Some teachers cut the points off. They rehearse at least three times and then each group performs for the rest of the class. We then discuss what went well and what we need to work on. A Venn diagram could be made of how they were the same and how they were different.

NOTE: In the past, for Japanese stories and Shakespeare, I've given them outlines of children and clothing options that they glue on. They made up their own stories with each child using a word or phrase in Japanese and a word or phrase that Shakespeare coined.

NOTE 2: Before using puppets, they have seen a puppet show on "the puppet rules" and consequenses if they aren't followed. These rules include: puppets don't hit puppets, puppets don't hit people, people don't hit puppets.

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Nancy L Barboza, in the 2008 NEH Literatures, Religions, and Arts of the Himalayan Region Institute, developed two reader's theatre scripts for the second grade.

Two Reader's Theatre Jataka Scripts