Black History Month Lesson Plan

contributed by Megan Woodward 

OBJECTIVES:  The students will learn to

*Control and manipulate voice, movement, space and/or physical objects to express or 

        communicate thoughts, feelings, and ideas both in improvised and scripted activity.

*Use vivid language to create a script around a character

(Language Arts: Writing Application)

Week One:

       Introduce children to the prospect of Acting

Portraying characters/ character development

Physicalization

Voice (diction, annunciation, projection, breathing)

Basic Emotions

Gestures

Not putting too much of yourself into a character

Introduce Black History Month topic

Games:

Who's Knocking? A  (Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theatre)

This game lets kids open their imaginations. Work on who, what, where, physicalization,

               and characterization.

Mirror

This games helps students with visualization and helps them learn to follow direction and

             natural chemistry can be see.

Homework: Each person must find an influential African American that they would like to portray for the class.   Discussion: Talk about African American roles in movies television and theater!

Materials: Important Women Crossword   Handout on Sidney Poitier

Week Two:   Focus on People of Choice

Warm-ups- 

head isolations

hip isolations

arm circles

full body shake

BIG BODY little body

Talk about Uses of space

Props

Using all of the actors space

Stage Presence

Areas of the Stage

Stage Direction

Set/ Using the Set

Collect Homework each icon can only have 2 to 3 people portraying them.  Encourage students to think more about the character they chose, and what they would do in many situations.

Games: 

Story Building (Viola Spolin)

This game will let them build their story telling skills and let them be creative.  Must stress the

                  who, what, where, when, and beginning, middle, and end.

Typewriter:  This game encourages students to open up their imaginations when it comes to

                   story writing.  Gets them into writing

Stage Directions:

       Simon Says- teaches children the basics of stage direction in a fun and easy to remember way

Homework:  Think about the character they just picked.  If you have the same character as someone else how can you make them seem different.

Materials:  Pencil & Paper for writing

Week Three: Developing Characters (if students are exceeding expectations can be combined with week two)

Talk about other theater jobs

Lighting

Sound

Set-building

Set-moving

Costumes

Make-up

Props

In depth improvisations:  Character Focus

Welcome the class

Warm-up-

head isolations

hip isolations

arm circles

full body shake

BIG BODY little body

Day in the life of their character,  How would the character wake up? Brush their teeth?  What kind of breakfast would they eat?

Games:

Roving Reporter A  (Viola Spolin)

    This game will help students fully understand the who what where of  their character.

           Plus the reporter can come up with very imaginative questions enabling

                   students to flex their creative muscles.

Typewriter

Homework: Write 2 to 3 sentences on what this person did to change history. 

Week Four:   Writing Process Begins

Warm up-

Breathing exercises

Relaxation techniques 

Have each student read their sentences out loud to the class. 

Brainstorm for play ideas!!! Or  Plan B- have a party where each student is a character.  The Black History Month celebration party featuring all of the important African Americans of the world.  If there were some children who were shy about being characters or the had the same characters they could narrate.  Introduce the other characters and explain where and why the party is taking place. Or brainstorm theater jobs, such as props or costumes for students who don't want to perform.

Games: Story Boarding

Homework:  Think about what your character will tell the audience about themselves.  Think about how would this person stand? Talk? Gesture?

Materials:  Basic storyboard papers & pencil

A Sidney Poitier movie

Week Five :   Putting the play together! 

Look at the structure of a play Beginning middle end, make sure play includes everything a play should have!

Warm-up- Let the students choose ones we have done in class or ones they want to do, student lead warm-ups.

Get them pumped about performing the play

Go over performance  techniques once more based on where they need work

One or two  run-thrus

PERFORMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!BREAK A LEG!!!!!!!!!!!

EVALUATIONS: Student will do peer and self evaluations based on the things talked about in class

Voice

Characterization

Performance

Info on Sidney Poitier:

Movie actor. Born dangerously premature at only three pounds on February 20, 1924, in Miami, Florida. Sidney's father, a tomato farmer, had already saved a shoebox to bury him in when he miraculously recovered. The family moved to the Bahamas, where Poitier grew up as the youngest of eight siblings on Cay Island and Nassau. After attending school for only a year and a half, Poitier dropped out to help his ailing father tend to the tomato farm during the depression. At age 15, he moved back to Miami to live with his brother Cyril, working as a drugstore messenger. It was then that the young Poitier experienced the first sting of racial prejudice in the United States, which was markedly different from his island home.

After a warning visit from the Ku Klux Klan at his brother's home, Poitier decided to flee Miami for New York City. Not having funds for transportation, he rail hopped and finally arrived with only a few dollars in his pocket. He found work washing dishes and slept on a roof across from the Capitol Theatre; however, the onset of a harsh winter prompted Poitier to lie about his age and join the U.S. Army, with hopes of being stationed in a warm climate. Instead, he received a post at a mental hospital in Long Island and eventually feigned mental illness himself to escape duty in 1945. Back in the city, he came across an advertisement in The Amsterdam News that would change his life forever: The American Negro Theatre was looking for actors. After being laughed and booed off the stage at his first audition, Poitier returned to the theatre and was granted free acting lessons from director Frederick O'Neal in exchange for completing backstage chores. He eventually won a part, alternating with fellow struggling actor Harry Belafonte, in Days of Our Youth. One role led to another and soon Poitier was commanding the limited black roles available on the New York stage.

In 1950, after performing successfully on the stage for several years, Poitier made his Hollywood debut in No Way Out, playing a prison ward doctor struggling to do his job amidst escalating racial tension in the cells. A string of strong leading roles followed, and Poitier became the trailblazer for black actors in Hollywood. In 1958, he was the first black actor nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in The Defiant Ones; in 1963, he won the Best Actor Oscar for Lilies of the Fieldv and in 1967, he initiated the first on-screen kiss between a white person and a black person in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. His other successful films of the 1960s include The Bedford Incident, A Touch of Blue, and In the Heat of the Night. Civil rights advocates praised Poitier for portraying characters whose reserved dignity demanded respect; however, not everyone was a fan. Many activists found his characters too rational, too composed, and lacking in the passion they felt was needed to fuel the civil rights movement. Poitier has always disassociated himself from either claim, telling Newsweek in 1957, " ...what I want is the kind of role that makes me feel worthwhile. I will work anywhere - movies, theater, TV - provided the material has texture, quality, something good to say about life."

In the 1970s, Poitier turned away from acting to take the director's chair and made several films in the popular Blaxploitation vein, including Buck and the Preacher (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974). In 1977, he directed the hit comedy Stir Crazy, pairing charismatic comedians Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. His film appearances since the 1970s have been noticeably scarce. He played an FBI agent in 1988's Shoot to Kill, and in Little Nikita that same year. He has also appeared in Sneakers (1992) and in 1997's The Jackal, with Richard Gere and Bruce Willis. In 1999, Poitier appeared alongside his youngest daughter, fledgling actress Sydney Poitier, in Showtime's Free of Eden. Now in his seventies, he still receives the occasional script, and still employs the same policy in choosing his roles. He told Bob Thomas of the Associated Press in 1999, "I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that 8 or 10 or 12 scripts came per month, but I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots."

Poitier and his second wife, Joanna, live in Beverly Hills, where Poitier continues to write screenplays and study philosophy. In 1980, the notoriously private man published his autobiography, This Life