Calling all performers! Scholars present a modern-day theme of adversity by performing their narratives for the class. As individuals watch their peers, they take notes on each performance using an Audience Note Sheet.

The Blue Man Group, three bald performance artists painted blue, offer lessons designed to engage, intrigue, and excite the imaginations of all ages of learners. Groups craft a trickster tale, invent melodious mathematical instruments,...

That old fashioned rock and roll comes alive as theatre arts students prepare to attend a live performance of the musical School of Rock. Packed with both pre- and post-production materials, the guide has it all. Rock on!

Turn your classroom into a music studio as groups work together to determine why music sounds different when performed live versus a recording. After listening to some different music, each group picks a poem, creates a recording, and...

Lights, Camera, Action! Pupils read Little Women and create, act, and direct a melodrama that Jo March and her sisters would enjoy. The lesson plan comes complete with resources for the educator on melodrama as well as examples...

The Learning Network section of the New York Times produces high-quality teaching materials. This issue gets middle or high schoolers reading an article about how people use art to express their response to high-stress events. They work...

To appreciate the value of seeing and hearing a poetry performance, groups prepare readings of selected poems and then compare and critique their interpretations and videotaped versions of the same poem. Included in the resource are...

Class members take center stage as groups perform scenes from Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope. Actors are encouraged to add stage directions to the script, as well as create costumes and props to...

Students in groups create, produce and perform as many poems as there are members of the group. They choose between recording them, reciting them orally with music or interpreting them with dance or acting. Each group attempts to add in...

Examine two works of art and use these pieces as inspiration for dialogues. The whole class discusses Renoir's Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise and Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge. Then, in groups of either three or ten, pupils...

What makes a poem difficult? Explore that topic and more with your class as you work through the lesson detailed here. Using materials from Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation contest, individuals or small groups examine poems and...

Sometimes, it's fun to follow the rules. Using their drafts of an evidence-based essay from previous lessons, scholars write their final informative essays about rules to live by. Next, they choose and share quotes from their essays that...

Immerse your class in a good story with an extensive resource featuring reader's theater techniques. The worksheets are designed for both teacher and student, and carefully explain how to organize, write, and perform stories in a...

Even the most thrilling sports career can end in an asterisk if the player uses performance-enhancing drugs. Focused on the topic of doping in sports, a seventh grade unit breaks down the arguments for and against steroids in five...

Get inspired to help those creative juices flow. Using the resource, scholars write their final, best version of their narrative monologues or concrete poems. Next, they prepare for a performance task by watching and discussing a video...

Students encounter how to use SOAPSTone--a strategy that helps students break down a text to comprehend its intended point of view and audience--in order to analyze Shakespeare's sonnets. They then physicalize their knowledge through a...

Aladdin, Disney's Broadway musical comedy, is a magic carpet ride. Prepare your class for a field trip to the show with a study guide that is a treasure trove of activities, cultural connections, and background information.

A phenomenal activity on Shakespeare! Middle and high school learners create WebQuests about the texts and authors that Shakespeare himself studied when he was in grammar school. They use a variety of media in order to create dramatic...

This lesson will focus on the aspects of Shakespeare's comedy that become more evident in performance. By viewing clips of the same Shakespeare scene in different film versions, high schoolers have the opportunity to engage in a close...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

Reading the original Hans Christian Andersen tale of “The Little Mermaid” and viewing the Great Performances: The Little Mermaid from the San Francisco Ballet video offers class members an opportunity to consider how artistic decisions...

Susan VanHecke's Under the Freedom Tree is transformed into a 12-part readers theatre script appropriate for a performance by upper-elementary classes.

Learners, utilizing video clips and Web sites, compare specific passages from original texts to moments in Broadway musicals on which they were based, analyzing similarities and differences between them. They adapt literature into a...

Drama is ever-present in our daily lives and eloquently depicted on stage. Middle schoolers practice writing scenes based on different prompts and frameworks, and then perform those creative scenes for their classmates. The...