The Last Day: A Commercial
This entry was posted on 11/5/2006 12:00 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
November 5, 2006
We took our time with the warm up today, and I played our "circle game" a few times because the students asked me to. We finished acting out the script. The students really get a kick out of the final arrest scene--especially with our bumbling cops. After it was over, I told the students that we would now need to create a commercial, so people would know to watch the show. I asked who we wanted our audience to be: adults? children? families? Jasmine spoke up, asking, "Why don't we take a vote?" The class was getting the hang out of our process drama decision-making tools! So, we took a vote--and the students wanted to add aliens to the list of possible audience members. I think this showed their willingness to suspend their disbelief for the sake of the process drama. The majority of the class voted for an alien audience, so we created a commercial geared towards the aliens. The students wrote it and acted it out as a voiceover--someone read the commercial as the students acted out scenes from upcoming episodes. It served as a great way to recall some of the earlier parts of the episode as well as remembering some of the characters we came up with weeks ago that did not star in the specific episode we created.
I gave out certificates of achievement from myself and "Miss Z"--the students appreciated it and asked when i was going to be back. The teacher also seemed eager to work together again. I said I would do my best (I would have to check with my employer), and we said our goodbyes as they tried to guess who Miss Z was. One student did say, "It's you, isn't it?" But I left without answering the question. It was a great last day. In some ways, although I wanted to expand on the media education concepts, it felt like that specific project (episode creation) was finished. The students are now ready to challenge themselves with forming a network--programming, advertising, etc, and I would love to challenge them with additional roles to play--producers, advertisers, etc.
