April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
NEW PROGRAM
Blessed Sacrament School spotlights theater education
Blessed Sacrament School spotlights theater education
Blessed Sacrament is hosting a 15-week pilot program in the Albany area for Stages on the Sound, a Brooklyn-based theater company, funded by a grant from the Whalen Foundation through the Albany diocesan Catholic Schools Office.
The program, which serves grades four, six and eight, immerses students in performing arts education and enhanced the school's English/language arts (ELA) curriculum.
On a recent morning, desks were pushed back and parts of a story written on a dry-erase board in the sixth-grade classroom as Sister Mary Ellen Owens, RSM, watched her students interact enthusiastically with the program's three actor-teachers.
They were playing a game that involves continuing a story someone else started. One group would write a character introduction, throw it into a box and pick out a different one written by another group, using that to continue the story.
Lessons learned
The exercise "teaches them structure," explained David Girard, one of the teacher-actors, turning to help the students come up with endings for their stories.
"It takes a really good writer to resolve a story," he told the class.
Sister Mary Ellen, the fourth-and-sixth-grade ELA teacher, said she likes the experience it gives her students to develop their writing: "What we did verbally last week, we're doing in writing this week."
Afterward, Mr. Girard and his colleagues read the students' stories, which had plots involving gymnastics, parent conflicts and witchcraft.
"We're learning things to build a proper story and ways to express our ideas so we can put them in a story," sixth-grader Jackson Parker told The Evangelist.
Because the sixth grade is learning about screenwriting, the students are focusing on the different elements of stories at the moment. Each grade participating in the program is focusing on a different subject: Fourth-graders are learning filmmaking; eighth-graders are examining Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet," which they will perform at the end of the 15-week program.
"I'm learning more than I thought," remarked sixth-grader Bridget Soden, who has a story in mind about siblings who "get stuck in another dimension and have to protect the world from evil." She's hoping that, after honing her writing skills, she can get her story published.
Kids' perspective
In the sixth grade, the theater classes start with a warm-up game like Evan Parker's favorite, which involves counting: "We have to count but we can't say the same number at the same time" as another student, he explained.
Evan said the theater program is inspiring him to write more, something that didn't interest him before. He called the program the most exciting part of being in the sixth grade.
Though the program is in its early stages, Mr. Girard believes the students are showing great potential: "We're not asking them to be polished actors and writers.
"Kids understand fairy tales," he added -- and so, by looking at specific elements of a tale, the students are forced to go back and think deeper about stories with which they're already familiar.
Principal Sister Patricia Lynch, RSM, said she "can't wait to see the play at the end.v "I'm excited about the whole thing," she said of the theater program.
"The overarching theme for this program was to provide arts programing and an appreciation of the arts," said Scott Barrow, education director for Stages on the Sound. He hopes to enhance students' understanding and usage of narrative, as well as their self-awareness.
Although the program is primarily focused on the fourth, sixth and eighth grades, students in the lower grades went to the Palace Theater in Albany to see the play "The Frog and the Toad."
Sixth-grader Bridget believes the program is "encouraging people." She called it her "big chance. It gives kids hope." [[In-content Ad]]
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