Teaching Portfolio
Sample Lessons
To provide a tangible showcase of my work, I’ve included a portfolio of theatre/arts integrated lessons from a variety of settings. These include lessons from both my work as a classroom teacher and teaching artist. See below for excerpts from residencies, pre-show workshops, resources for teachers and more. As an arts educator, I am passionate about creating inclusive, equitable communities where students are artists, advocates and scholars. If you would like to see full unit or residency lessons, please email me at simone.becker36@gmail.com.
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Imagining Justice Unit Plan
HRL Learning Goals - Imagining Justice: A Theatrical Exploration with 2nd Graders
Identity: Students will investigate the process of defining, imagining and enacting justice through self-reflection, collaboration and research of those whose imaginations led them towards justice.
Skill: Students will be able to make connections across multiple texts, compare and contrast how imagination plays a role in enacting change in fiction and non-fiction texts and synthesize their explorations by creating a theatre piece that imagines what justice looks like for them and their community.
Theatre/Art- Students will be able to create a theatre piece that embodies their vision for imagining justice.
English/Language Arts- Students will be able to analyze how imagination and justice show up in fiction and non-fiction texts by making inferences and text-text, text-self, text- world connections
Social Studies- Students will research and explore change-makers in history and the present and in their own lives through interviews and present their data artistically.
Intellect: Students will examine how imagination and justice present themselves in different kinds of texts and in their own lives.
Criticality: Students will identify, define and work towards creating what justice looks like and feels like for them and their community through engaging with multiple texts, art, their community and their own lives.
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Unit Breakdown
Week 1: Imagining Justice in Fiction Texts
Day 1: What is Justice? How do we imagine justice?
Text: Milo Imagines The World by Matt De La Pena
Day 2: Justice is an idea…
Text: What do you do with an Idea by Kobi Yamada
Day 3: How does who we are (our identity) help us to imagine justice?
Text: When Aidan Became A Big Brother by Kyle Lukoff and Kaylani Juanita
Day 4: How does who we are (our identity) help us to imagine justice?
Text: The Transition of Doodle Pequeno by Gabriel Jason Dean
Week 2: Imagining Justice in Non-Fiction Texts
Day 1: How can we use art to imagine justice?
Text: Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javanka Steptoe
Day 2: How can we work with others to imagine justice?
Text: Someday is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma Sit In by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
Day 3: How can we use our skills/talents to imagine justice and bring our community together?
Text: Pies from Nowhere by Dee Romito
Day 4: How can people who inspire us help us to imagine justice?
-Tying all of our texts together for reflection/exploration
Week 3: Imagining Justice in Our Lives
Day 1: Introduction of Interview Project
Day 2: Interview Project Work Time/Exploration
Day 3: Interview Project Work Time Cont/Rehearsal
Day 4: Oral History Rehearsal/Performance
Week 4: Imagining Justice Theatrically
Day 1: Brainstorming- using all of our texts/source material
Day 2: Exploration/Experimentation/Design Time Break Out Rooms
Day 3: Rehearsal and Imagining Justice Facilitation Day 1
Day 4: Imagining Justice Facilitation Day 2 and Reflection/Celebration/Wrap Up
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I Never Saw Another Butterfly Unit
Unit Overview
In this 6 day mini unit in an 8th grade Social Studies class, students explored the primary source material of I Never Saw Another Butterfly through the play I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Celeste Raspanti. Students explored this text through multi-disciplinary devising/artistic response to primary sources, text exploration of the script and a staged reading on Day 6 with the option to present a stage design based on language from the text.
Goals for this unit included:
1) Develop empathy and an active relationship with this period in history.
2) Center the experiences of young people from this period in history
3) Provide students with a space to explore and process difficult historical material artistically.
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Please see here for unit overview, sample lesson and Google slides.
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Playback Theater- The Skin I'm In
In this arts integration project, 6th grade ICT ELA students read The Skin I'm In and analyzed the role that justice and equity played in the story. To concretize their learning, they created their own playback theater scenes. This required students to adapt a scene from the book, identify what they would change to make it more just and rewrite the scene with those changes. All of this culminated in the performance of their scenes.
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Here is a sample lesson and slides from this arts integration project.
Pantomime Project
Many of my students are new to theater and feel a little overwhelmed with the literacy and memorization elements of a scripted text. To support them in developing theater skills and literacy, I facilitated a pantomime unit. Students researched pantomime, physical theater and created their own pantomime. This culminated in a fully student performed and designed Pantomime lunch time showcase where each student got to invite three friends.
Please see here for sample slides from this unit.
Social Justice Devising: Black Lives Matter
Students were tasked with creating a short performance piece for our Black Lives Matter school assembly. We explored how to devise off of source material, collaboratively write and workshop scenes together and how to share our activism in a theater space.
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Please see here for learning materials and my students' final script.
Young Playwrights for Change
In this lesson, students explored the theme: "Discovering the Truth about Ourselves and Others" through class discussion and individual reflection using mind-mapping and Role On the Wall as learning activities.
Objectives/Essential Questions:
Why and how do we share stories?
What is playwriting?
How does theme play a part in the stories we tell?
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Outline:
5 minutes: Introduction
5 minutes: Check In
5 minutes: Playwriting Community Expectations
5 minutes: What is YPC?
15 minutes: Theme Brainstorm: Role on the Wall
5 minutes: Closing
Pre-show Workshop
This workshop is designed to be a pre-show workshop for Triad Stage's production of A Christmas Carol. It introduces major themes and invites students to build tableaux and reflect through poster dialogue.
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PRE-SHOW WORKSHOP
Objectives:
Students will make personal connections to the themes of the production.
Students will be able to identify major characters, groups and settings in A Christmas Carol.
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Full lesson plan available here.
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Resource Guide Lesson Plan
For every production at Triad Stage that has student- matinees, we produce a resource guide for teachers that includes dramaturgical information and learning activities for teachers to use with their students. This lesson is a part of Triad's Stage's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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Classroom Activity: Building the Play
Overview: Students will work together to build images describing major events in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Age Group: 6th and up.
Materials: None
Content Area: ELA/ Theatre
Approximate Time: 25-30 min
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Belle Teal Novel Unit Sample Lesson
In this theatre-integrated social studies unit, students explored connections between the Civil Rights Movement and their own role as activists and artists.
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Arts Integrated Residency: The Civil Rights Movement
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Day 1: Introducing the Civil Rights Movement + Image Work
Day 2: Overview: James Meredith Research Exploration + Staging the Research
Day 3: Overview: Children’s March + Creative Writing/Spoken Word
Day 4: Overview: Introducing Equity + Image Generation
Day 5: Inspirational Kids Project- Research/ Rehearsal
Day 6: Inspirational Kids Project- Performance and Debrief + Devising
Day 7: Inspirational Kids Project- Inspirational Kids in Conversation + Devising
Day 8: Reflect/ Debrief
This is using the Social Studies National Standards, the Pennsylvania Common Core Standards and the National Core Art Standards
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Animal Habitat Residency
In this first grade creative drama lesson, students traveled to the tundra and arctic ocean and explored the adaptations that musk oxen and seals need to survive.
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Objectives:
Identify the characteristics of the Arctic Tundra habitat.
Identify the characteristics of the Arctic Ocean habitat.
Explain how Arctic animals have adapted to the Arctic Tundra and the Arctic Ocean habitats.
5 min: Review from Yesterday
3 min: Travel Time
5 min: Guided Imagery: The Arctic Tundra
5 min: Think/Pair/Share
5 min: Introduce Arctic Tundra vs Arctic Ocean
10 min: Animal Movement Exploration
1 min: Travel back
4 min: Recap: Adaptations.
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The Woman Who Lived In a Tree Storyworks Lesson
CC.1.1.3.E
Read with accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Read on-level text with purpose and understanding.
CC.1.2.3.A
Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.
CC.1.2.3.D
Explain the point of view of the author.
E03.B-C.2.1.1
Objectives:
Students will be able to identify the main idea of The Woman who Lived in a Tree
Students will be able to analyze key moments of the text using textual evidence
Students will be able to dramatize/ physicalize key moments of a play
Students will be able to sequence events from their reading.
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Timeline:
5 minutes: Living in Tree Intro
30 minutes: 1st Read "Woman Who Lived in a Tree"
15 minutes: Sequencing Tableaux
10 minutes: Modeling a Rehearsal
20 minutes: Small Group 2nd Read/Rehearsal Time
1 minute: Closure/Exit Ticket
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Curriculum Specialist
I work with new educators in the youth development space to support them in creating their teaching pedagogy through one on one coaching, lesson plan feedback and observing lessons.
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