1. BRINGING LITERATURE TO LIFE THE GREAT KAPOK TREE Ms
BRINGING LITERATURE TO LIFE THE GREAT KAPOK TREE Ms. Arnal’s Montessori Summer Program 2015

2. Communication and Production
ARTS SOLs
Communication and Production
K.2 The students will express ideas and feelings through the creation of works of art.
K.5 The student will create a work of art that depicts a specific animal or plant.

3. K.1 The student will demonstrate growth in the use of oral language:
Language Arts SOLs
K.1 The student will demonstrate growth in the use of oral language:
Listen to a variety of literary forms, including stories and poems.
b) Participate in choral speaking
c) Participate in creative dramatics.

4. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
“Bringing Literature to Life” explores the drama strategy of story dramatization. Drama is used for learning purposes to:
engage students in the learning process,
promote students’ oral skills,
motivate students to use higher level thinking skills,
develop literacy skills, and
develop students’ self awareness, self-esteem and self-control in a positive developmentally appropriate manner.

5. STEP 1 Skill-Building Activity
Step 1 – Skill Building: Creating a Personal Space.
This activity provides students with spatial awareness of their bodies and helps them control their bodies. They create an imaginary bubble around them.

6. Step 2: Skill Building: Shake and Freeze
This activity is designed to help students control their bodies, focus, and concentrate. In this activity students hone their concentration skills by learning to fix their eyes and energy on one particular focal point.

7. Step 3 Cooperative Body Shapes
In this activity, students take on the shape of the animals and objects they will imitate in the dramatization of “The Great Kapok Tree”: the boa constrictor, monkey, jaguar, porcupine, and Kapok tree.

8. Step 4 Familiarize Students With the Text
Students listen to the story of “The Great Kapok Tree” a tale of the Amazon rainforest by Lynne Cherry. Teacher asks direct questions to brainstorm possible thoughts and statements a character might be thinking or saying. We concentrate on the characters: tree, boa constrictor, monkey, jaguar, porcupine, and Yanomamo tribe children.

9. Step 5 Defining Acting Area and Acting Roles
Students are assigned acting roles and they rehearse the body and and voice of the characters. The acting area is defined and students follow the story dramatization conducted by the teacher. They learn to take turns as the narrator prompts them to act and speak.

10. Step 6 The Actors Take Turns to Perform
The porcupines skid over and gasp to the sleeping man’s ear: “Senhor, do you know that trees give us life?” The great Kapok tree watches them

11. Step 7 The Last Scene
Two Yanomamo tribe children approach the sleeping man and murmur: “Sehnor, when you wake up, make sure you stop cutting the trees down.” In fact, when the wood cutter wakes up, he looks at all the animals, drops his ax, and walks out of the forest.

12. Step 8 A Research Activity
As an extension to the story dramatization, the older students completed a research project about some rainforest animals.

13. STUDENT REFLECTIONS I liked…
when the howler monkey told the man that the rainforest will become a desert if he cuts the trees down
being a boa because I could slither on the ground.
how the jaguar growls
when the man walks away and stops cutting the tree down
the porcupine because he whispers to the man
swinging like a monkey
the way the jaguar moves

14. TEACHER REFLECTIONS
“Bringing Literature to Life” has been a revealing experience for me because children showed me that they were spontaneous actors. It was evident that they used their imagination, voice, and body, the three basic acting tools. Through their reflections, they showed that they were using higher level thinking and developed their reading comprehension skills. They internalized the gist of the story and used an enriched vocabulary pertaining to each animal’s movements and sounds. Their dramatization was the perfect culminating activity of our rainforest unit.