4th Grade Trip Around the USA Concert and
Mrs. Lantz's Class Greek Myth Production
As one parent put it, "There are a ton of productions this year!" That is an understatement! Between Steward and Proctor School, we have 10 productions planned for this year. The CLIC stage crew at Proctor gets one production list done and then we are on to the next. This year is a reflection of the hard work of the teachers and the children on and behind stage. It is challenging to get everything ready, but it is worth it to see it all come together on performance day. It is exhilarating for the children to pull off the shows. The kids know they authentically created everything, memorized their lines, and creatively pulled it all together. It is a ton of pressure, but the pay off is huge.
Why do we want theater, musicals, music class productions? Performing brings out healthy risk taking to get up stage, commitment to learn parts and sequencing, and team work. For those doing stage crew, kids work together to visualize and create on large scale all of the details necessary to tell the story. Every layer of the stage is considered. Every costume has to be visualized. They must also work with the actors on stage. It is demanding!
Theater also engages children in learning. To have students transform historical literature like Greek Myths and Folktales into narrative plays takes many hours of writing and rewriting. The children not only wrote the plays but added humor and drama so beautifully. I bet most people did not know that the children wrote the plays themselves!
Above all, theater adds community to a school. There is so much excitement in the school on performance day. The kids love to come together and watch each other on stage along with the families. We are officially a theater school district!
Why do we want theater, musicals, music class productions? Performing brings out healthy risk taking to get up stage, commitment to learn parts and sequencing, and team work. For those doing stage crew, kids work together to visualize and create on large scale all of the details necessary to tell the story. Every layer of the stage is considered. Every costume has to be visualized. They must also work with the actors on stage. It is demanding!
Theater also engages children in learning. To have students transform historical literature like Greek Myths and Folktales into narrative plays takes many hours of writing and rewriting. The children not only wrote the plays but added humor and drama so beautifully. I bet most people did not know that the children wrote the plays themselves!
Above all, theater adds community to a school. There is so much excitement in the school on performance day. The kids love to come together and watch each other on stage along with the families. We are officially a theater school district!