Gift Giving
Decision-making is a skill that must be learned and practiced. When someone’s decisions are constantly made for them, this skill is lost. Though your students may not be able to make every decision on their own, you should proactively prioritize ways for your students to develop choice-making. That's where Gift Giving can help!
Check out this lesson from Teaching Theater to Students of Varied Abilities and download the lesson plan to follow along.
Here’s how it works:
Objective: Students will use context clues, gestures, and body language to understand what their peers are communicating.
- Gather in a circle.
- Direct the first person to pantomime giving a gift to the student beside them.
- The person receiving the gift uses context clues to decide what the gift is, and then replies, “Thank you! I’ve always wanted a [fill in the blank with a gift that corresponds with the size and weight of the imaginary item given]."
Variations:
Level Down
- Visual Aid: Provide the Gift Giving choice board for inspiration. Or, build your own choice board using this template.
- Slow Motion: Perform the pantomime actions in slow motion. This encourages students to focus on their movements and gestures in more detail, enhancing their ability to convey and interpret meaning non-verbally.
- Tactile Aid: Add a tangible element by using a prop (See Not a Ribbon)
- Verbal Clues: Allow students to provide verbal clues along with their pantomime actions. When giving a gift, they can say a few words or phrases that hint at what the gift might be. This adds an additional layer of communication and comprehension.
- Group Pantomime: Divide the students into small groups. Each group will work together to pantomime giving and receiving gifts. This promotes collaboration and teamwork as students coordinate their actions and create cohesive pantomime scenes.
Level Up
- Facial Expression Emphasis: Instruct students to focus on conveying emotions and context through facial expressions. The explicit focus on facial expressions can be particularly beneficial in developing social awareness and emotional understanding, as it helps students observe and interpret non-verbal cues, which is an essential skill in social interactions.
- Dialogue Exchange: Encourage students to incorporate short dialogue between the person giving and receiving the gift.
- Characterization: Embody a specific character or role while giving the gift. Use gestures, facial expressions, and body language to portray the character and their emotions.
- Narrative Pantomime: Each gift-giving interaction becomes a part of a larger narrative, and the students need to connect their gift to what has come before in order to create a cohesive story arc. This challenges storytelling abilities and encourages students to think about the progression of a scene.
