The more engaged students are with a story, the more they look forward to seeing it on stage. After sharing the folktale version in the PDF, guide students to explore the story through drama as below.
Procedure
- Students stand in personal space. Let them know they will create statues of parts of the story.
- Prompt students with, ‘Show me how you look…’ using vocabulary words such as naïve, complain, plow, weed, accuse, hull rice, weep, stunned, blush, humiliate, jealous.
- Encourage students to exaggerate their statues, count to three and call freeze.
- Guide them to try more than once, each time finding more expressive, creative ways.
- Share good ideas. Repeat with each word.
Second, guide pairs of students to create statues together to show character relationships.
- Pairs stand together in personal space.
- Prompt pairs with, ‘Show me how it looks when…’ The stepmother makes Kongji work, the animals help her, the mayor is stunned by her, the mayor tries the shoe on others, the stepmother and sister in the ‘dark prison.’
- Give pairs 10 seconds to decide who is which character and then call freeze.
- Guide them to try more than once, each time finding more expressive, creative ways.
- Share good ideas. Repeat with each story moment.