Lesson Activity Plan #1: Introducing Streetcar
Moving from The Kite Runner into A Streetcar Named Desire was a momentous shift in genre, style, and format. So, I needed to transition students into the life of early twentieth-century New Orleans. For the first day of the unit, students looked at the setting and opening stage directions to get a sense of the scene. I showed some images and helped facilitate a discussion on essential questions as I do for all of my units.
Lesson Activity Plan #2: Reading Streetcar
Typically on Mondays and Tuesdays, we picked up our copies of A Streetcar Named Desire as well as our bluebook journals to begin reading and synthesizing what we read. In this second LAP in this section, I detail some of our reading strategies.
Lesson Activity Plan #3: Persuade to Audition
A typical Wednesday involved some writing about what role each student wanted for performances later in the week (see below). Today, though, we spent some time with prompt books. I gave students print-outs of the text in order for them to annotate based on nuances of the characters. How does inflection and potential character motivation impact our reading?
Lesson Activity Plan #4: Casting Streetcar
On Thursdays, while students did a variety of SAT practice exercises as laid out by their team teachers, I worked to review students’ weekly persuasive writing to assign them roles for the next day in class. Then, when the class came back together, we reviewed the roles and (re)read the scene as necessary.
Lesson Activity Plan #5: Lights, Camera, Action!
Finally, each Friday in class, we would put on a scene from the play that we had been working with recently. Students took all their efforts and conversations from earlier each week to inform their performances. They actually learned about drama through performance. There are examples in the Video & Commentary section, where students begin taking ownership the more we conduct these activities.
