The Beginning Steps of Our Play....

Interest in plays and performances has been growing in our Prek class and we are excited to begin to explore this area in a more intentional way. Jonathan Shandell, Miranda's Dad, teaches theater at Arcadia University and has generously offered his time and talents in working with our class to explore play writing. The children's love of community helpers still runs quite deep and we unanimously decided that our Prek play should center on a central theme of community helpers where all of our 'in-house' community helpers would have an important role! Jonathan visited with us today to begin the process of learning how to write a script. This project will extend over several weeks with the hopes of a final celebratory production! We are very much looking forward to this work together.

There were several important things that we discussed at our first playwright meeting with Jonathan this morning. We first learned a new really grown –up vocabulary word that describes Jonathan’s role. Dramaturg is someone who helps write a play. The dramaturg helps synthesize ideas and helps to organize thoughts and puts them into a literary form that can eventually be performed as a play. We discussed the difference between a story and a play and learned that a play needs to be ideas that will be able to be retold in a way that can be performed on stage.

The first step was to think about ways to include in a story all of our community helpers: firefighters, veterinarians, astronauts, nurses, doctors, chefs and police officers. After sharing various ideas, we began to feel like we had a beginning outline of a story We learned that was called a ‘scenario’.

The experience of writing our own play will be an opportunity for the children to engage in a multitude of rich literacy and language experiences. Through our work today, the children practiced expressive language skills, receptive language skills, creative thinking skills as well as reinforcing the connection of spoken words with print.