Bring theatre into your classroom with Berkeley Rep’s new elementary school residency program, Target® Story Builders. Students in Grades 2 and 4 will bring a folktale, myth or fairytale to life under the guidance of a Berkeley Rep Teaching Artist. Target® Story Builders uses a curriculum which incorporates pantomime, critical analysis and dramatic dialogue into a short performance piece for the whole class to participate in. All exercises coincide with California Standards of Education in Language Arts and Theatre. Teachers will be provided with a supplemental guide and a choice of three pieces of children’s literature to work with. Each classroom visit is one hour in length. Book Target® Story Builders now for a visit to your classroom! Target® Story Builders is available between January 9 and March 3, 2006. LITERATURE SELECTIONS FOR GRADE 2 Brundibar retold by Tony Kushner, pictures by Maurice Sendak, after the opera by Hans Krasa and Adolf Hoffmeister Based on a Czech opera, Brundibar is a tale of a brother and sister who are desperately trying to get their hands on some milk for their sick mother. Part of the 2005/06 season at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Brundibar shows how a group of children are able to work together to triumph over evil and overcome the town bully. Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn It’s Chinese New Year and Sam must choose how to best spend his “Lucky Money”. Join Sam as he explores the smells, sights and sounds of Chinatown and learns that it is more rewarding to give rather than to receive. This story of generosity contains some basic Chinese vocabulary. Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears by Verna Aardema This West African folktale begins with a mosquito teasing an iguana, causing the iguana to panic. The panic is contagious and is eventually traced back to the mosquito. Students explore the consequences of how one simple lie can affect a community. LITERATURE SELECTION FOR GRADE 4 The Talking Eggs by Robert D. San Souci A Caldecott Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Award Honor Book, this Creole version of the Cinderella folktale features African American characters. Enter a world where rabbits dance, eggs talk, cows have two heads and inner goodness prevails over outer beauty. Goin’ Someplace Special by Patricia McKissack In segregated 1950s Nashville, a young African American girl, ‘Tricia Ann, braves a series of indignities and obstacles to get to one of the few integrated places in town where “all are welcome”—the public library. Appropriate for Black History Month, this story teaches students about segregation during the 1950s in the South, and ‘Tricia Ann’s search for equality, humanity and pride. La Mariposa by Francisco Jimenez A story of tolerance, La Mariposa will take your class on a journey to a young boy’s first year of school where he is unable to understand what the teacher is saying—because he speaks only Spanish. A small caterpillar in a jar in the classroom will pave the path for acceptance and respect. Written in English, La Mariposa is infused with some basic Spanish phrases. For more information about Target® Story Builders, or to book a workshop for your classroom, please contact Jessica Modrall at 510.647.2978 or jmodrall@berkeleyrep.org. BACK TO TOP REGISTRATION FORM Registrations will be processed in the order that they are received. We ask that each classroom pick three possible dates and times of day (morning or afternoon). Registrations will be accepted until all dates and times are full. Please fill out one form per classroom. Please coordinate dates and times with other classrooms interested in booking from your school. • Call us at 510.647.2978 • Fax this form to 510.647.2979 • Mail this form to Berkeley Rep School of Theatre / Attn: Jessica Modrall / 2025 Addison Street / Berkeley, CA 94704 ***Registering does not guarantee a day or time!!*** SCHOOL NAME SCHOOL ADDRESS CITY / STATE / ZIP SCHOOL PHONE TEACHER NAME CONTACT PHONE CONTACT E-MAIL GRADE 2 or 4 (please circle) LITERATURE SELECTION TOP 3 PREFERRED DATES AND TIMES (morning or afternoon) (Target® Story Builders runs January 9–March 3, 2006): 1. 2. 3. BACK TO TOP INTRODUCING THE TARGET® STORY BUILDERS PROGRAM Everyone knows the story of The Frog Prince. Nevertheless, it has probably never been told the same way twice. Joanne Seelig’s fourth and fifth grade Beginning Acting class at the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre was no exception. Clustered in groups around the room, her students were busy brainstorming new ways to retell sections of this popular fairy tale. On this day, Seelig noticed the work of one student in particular. 11 year-old Samuel Miller* was a highly energetic student, but he often seemed to hang back when he was feeling unsure of himself. He had confided in Seelig once that he had trouble reading by himself, but today in class he had expressed great enthusiasm when hearing the story read out loud. Now, while working with his student group, Miller was emerging as a strong leader who worked well with his peers as they gathered objects in the classroom, including a cane and a cart to fashion a royal coach. Samuel supervised the creation of sound effects and directed his peers in short scenes from the story. In one short class period, Samuel and his group had served as adaptors, sound designers, directors, actors and props managers. Not bad for one day in the life of a Beginning Acting class student. Inspired by the success of classroom experiences such as this, Seelig began to envision a new program for Bay Area elementary schools that combined language arts, theatre games and playmaking techniques. This program is called Target® Story Builders. The Berkeley Rep School of Theatre’s new elementary school program, Target® Story Builders, is a program designed to respond to the lack of arts funding and limited teacher time with a dynamic and interactive creative drama workshop that brings theatre into the lives of young students while increasing literacy and encouraging writing skills. Target® Story Builders is a workshop for grades Two and Four that explores the process of bringing a chosen story to life through improvisation, written dialogue and physical movement in a one-hour workshop. The short time commitment and low cost per classroom ($50.00) will make this program a viable option for many teachers in the area. In the Target® Story Builders workshop, Berkeley Rep teaching artists lead each class in analyzing story themes, characters and setting. The students then re-enact the story—first through “frozen” pictures that depict different parts of the story before finally bringing their scene to life with dialogue. Like the students in Seelig’s Beginning Acting class, Target® Story Builders participants will work on a variety of activities that take advantage of many different skills. The program allows its students to take their books out from behind their desks and to transform their classroom into a theatre. Joanne Seelig, education associate at the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre and creator of Target® Story Builders, has worked with the Theatre as an instructor, playmaking coach and intern. Prior to her time at Berkeley Rep, she worked with the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and trained with the Center for Artistry in Teaching. Seelig’s long-standing involvement with the arts in education has made her committed to creating programs that allow children to succeed and grow through the arts. In keeping with Seelig’s goal, Target® Story Builders is especially suited to children like Samuel Miller, who might have trouble learning in more traditional classroom settings. Seelig stresses, “Those students who have a harder time with reading, or have difficulty with traditional audio-visual skills will be given an opportunity to have a successful classroom experience. They will be encouraged to think outside the box and use a variety of skills.” Additionally, this program is geared to introduce children to playmaking at a very basic level. The introductory nature of the program will allow students who are not experienced in theatre to have an initial arts experience that is active. “The experience of being an audience member is invaluable,” Seelig states, “But this program demands active participation from the students, as well giving them the opportunity to act as audience members for their peers. It enhances classroom time and gives children a really individual interactive experience.” This bridge between classroom learning material and the creativity of a theatre arts experience is Target® Story Builders’ strength and the compact nature of the program makes it a logistically possible commitment for teachers to make. Seelig also points out, “This program serves teachers as well. The simple structure of the workshop is something that teachers can learn from and perhaps emulate. If teachers like what they see, they can adapt their lesson plans accordingly and perhaps theatre can become a more common vehicle for exploring story in the classroom. Everyone is learning something, even the adults!” Even with a shortage of dollars and time, Target® Story Builders is striving to make the presence of theatre arts a doable and useful reality for classrooms. The Berkeley Rep School of Theatre has risen to the challenge of finding places for the arts in area classrooms, will you be next? For more information about Target® Story Builders, or to book a workshop for your classroom, please contact Jessica Modrall at 510.647.2978 or jmodrall@berkeleyrep.org. The cost is $50.00 per classroom and the workshop is one hour in length. *Name has been changed to protect the student’s privacy. BACK TO TOP