Thus, to prepare for an all-school festivity called Serenade where each class or group of classes performs for
an audience of parents toward the end of the school year, Nicole has proposed that the class's presentation incorporate color
and that the theme be based upon on object: a hat.
A hat is passed around and the students must decide who the hat belongs to, what was the interesting thing about it,
its past and its future. With these instructions as a beginning, the class is divided into four groups. Each group starts
with a line and then the scripts are passed to the next group to write more. The exercise is included here in full below.
Developing a Script
Task One
An object is passed around the circle. The pupils have to guess what the story behind the object could be: Is it magic
or ordinary? Who did it belong to? Is there a story behind it?
Task Two:
In small groups, we work out a possible story about the object.
Task Three:
In the whole group, we agree on one story and decide on a beginning, a middle, and an end. The teacher writes down on
a big piece of paper:
1. the plot of each scene
2. the characters and their names
3. locations/scenes
Task Four:
In groups (G W 4) (as many groups as there are scenes), each person writes down one line spoken by any person in
the scene assigned to the group. The teacher has handed out narrow slips of paper to write the lines on. The name of the character
must be on it, but the group shouldn't discuss what they are writing.
Task Five:
The slips of paper are passed on to the next group. The lines are ordered and one line is added to each one. The lines
can also be reordered. Before they are passed on, they are numbered.
Task Six:
Process 5 is repeated with 3 additional lines. Ideally, the lines are passed around many times until they reach the first
group again. Then, the group can start writing the manuscript. (The teacher provides paper that is clipped to cardboard.)
Task Seven:
Performance: the scenes are read out.
(Somewhere along the line, a title can be chosen.)
Variation: More lines can be added, stage directions can be included (also concerning the tone of vioce, facial or vocal
expression, etc.)
___________________________________________________________
The scripts resulting from the first round are shown below. Please click on each file.
