The Class Play Begins
Since November now I've been teaching an after school ESL class to about twelve students two times a week. Some of the other teachers I know say, "Why in the world would you do that?", but it's actually been my favorite thing about teaching so far. I invited the students from my intermediate/advanced ESL class that I thought would benefit from the extra instruction and most of the kids have enthusiastically participated every Tuesday and Thursday. After coming back from a week of winter vacation, I decided that I would help the kids put together a play to perform for the school later on in the year.
I let them look at several different excerpts and then the students decided that they wanted to work on James and the Giant Peach . Last week I held auditions, asking another teacher to judge the readings with me, and then announced to the students what parts they would play. Much of the language in the script is actually quite difficult (it was actually a Roald Dahl book before it was adapted for theater). Still, I know they can do it if they work hard. The greatest part about the auditions was that one of the boys wanted to play the part of ugly, crotchety old Aunt Sponge. He was hilarious reading the part, throwing his voice high and waved his arms about. Joel is shorter than almost all the girls in my class, but he definitely has a lot of personality. Needless to say, he got the part he was interested in. I'm excited about seeing how all this comes together. I told the students that we actually wouldn't perform until May, but we have a lot of work to do before then. One of them mentioned that we might be able to perform at the local elementary schools. I said I would definitely look into it and they all got excited that they might get to go back to their old schools and show all the teachers and students how much they've learned.
Today I'm showing the Disney live-action/animation film version during after school. I told the kids I would even order pizza if they paid for it this time. Hopefully it will be a fun afternoon for all.
I let them look at several different excerpts and then the students decided that they wanted to work on James and the Giant Peach . Last week I held auditions, asking another teacher to judge the readings with me, and then announced to the students what parts they would play. Much of the language in the script is actually quite difficult (it was actually a Roald Dahl book before it was adapted for theater). Still, I know they can do it if they work hard. The greatest part about the auditions was that one of the boys wanted to play the part of ugly, crotchety old Aunt Sponge. He was hilarious reading the part, throwing his voice high and waved his arms about. Joel is shorter than almost all the girls in my class, but he definitely has a lot of personality. Needless to say, he got the part he was interested in. I'm excited about seeing how all this comes together. I told the students that we actually wouldn't perform until May, but we have a lot of work to do before then. One of them mentioned that we might be able to perform at the local elementary schools. I said I would definitely look into it and they all got excited that they might get to go back to their old schools and show all the teachers and students how much they've learned.
Today I'm showing the Disney live-action/animation film version during after school. I told the kids I would even order pizza if they paid for it this time. Hopefully it will be a fun afternoon for all.
posted by Sarah at
1:28 PM
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