Stagecraft fundamentals, lighting design, and sound engineering for live performance. Develops skills in set construction, prop making, and costume design while addressing safety and stage management routines.
Unit 1, Lesson 9: The Frame Festival. A celebration block where students showcase their completed historical stop-motion animations, conduct peer critique reviews, and evaluate final projects using the comprehensive unit rubric.
Unit 1, Lesson 6: The Animation Studio - Day 6. Teams establish collaborative group norms and class safety norms, delegate professional roles, and capture the first 30 frames.
Unit 1, Lessons 6-8: Multi-day animation studio production block. Teams establish student roles, execute industry production cues, and shoot their 10-fact historical stop-motion animations on iPads.
Unit 1, Lesson 5: The Physics of Animation. Combining Squash and Stretch, the 1-Stud Rule, set construction stability, lighting consistency, and storyboard revision.
Unit 1, Lesson 4: Introducing the anatomy of a storyboard, exploring visual action, camera shot directions, and drafting an 8-frame visual storyboard plan for the stop-motion animation.
Unit 1, Lesson 3: Synthesizing historical research into 10 punchy factual sentences for the stop-motion script, while conducting an internet safety scavenger hunt on Phishing, Digital Footprint, and Privacy.
Unit 1, Lesson 2: Introducing the S.E.E.K. digital search strategy to help students research, verify, and document credible facts about a historical figure for their future stop-motion script.
Unit 1, Lesson 1: Persistence of Vision lesson outline exploring frames per second (FPS), professional exemplars, and flipbook creation.
An introductory lesson on the fundamentals of scenic design, guiding students to create their own stage groundplans using industry-standard drafting symbols.
A creative hands-on activity where students create their own Elephant and Piggie puppets to act out stories. This lesson focuses on fine motor skills through coloring and cutting, followed by imaginative play.
A versatile peer feedback form for any digital project. Based on the Solution Tree model, it provides structured spaces for 'I Like...', 'I Wonder...', and 'I Suggest...' prompts to guide constructive student feedback. All writing and input fields have been made completely blank.
A formal, teacher-facing grading rubric for the stop-motion animation project. Features technical Look Fors, Urbandale district priority standards, a 1.0 to 4.0 grading scale, and dedicated scoring/notes areas for final grade entry. The score column has been removed so that grades can be highlighted directly on the matrix. Now updated to 5 learning requirements.
A student-friendly, printable summative self-reflection sheet. Features simplified 'I can' performance targets, checkable circles across a 4.0 scale (Developing to Exemplary), and high-contrast, standard-spaced writing lines for student production reflections.
High-impact student slide deck for Lesson 9: The Frame Festival. Guides students through presentation parameters, film festival norms, active critiquing structures, and final rubric evaluation. Slide 4 has been updated with the 5 actual learning requirements, and slide 6 has been corrected to refer to the 4-point proficiency scale.
A comprehensive, sub-ready teacher lesson plan for Lesson 9: The Frame Festival. Now updated to 3 pages, detailing that students complete exactly 1 peer feedback form, and removing redundant look-for blocks.
High-impact student slide deck for Day 6 of the Animation Studio. Guides students through class/team norms, role responsibilities, the daily 30-frame goal, and the storyboard/group action reflection protocol.
A comprehensive, sub-ready teacher lesson plan for Day 6 of the Animation Studio. Fits the Lesson 1-5 Urbandale UCSD template. Includes class/team norms, role setup guides, detailed scripts, 45-minute block timeline, reflection protocols, and exact proficiency scale alignment.
A student-facing, printable summative self-reflection sheet. Features simplified student-friendly 'I can' performance targets, checkboxes for self-evaluation (1.0 to 4.0), and dedicated high-contrast writing lines for student and group production reflections.
High-impact student slide deck for Lesson 9: The Frame Festival. Guides students through presentation parameters, film festival norms, active critiquing structures, and final rubric evaluation.
A comprehensive, sub-ready teacher lesson plan for Lesson 9: The Frame Festival. Includes step-by-step presentation scripts, peer critique procedures, and a high-value unit rubric mapping the 4 core course learning requirements from 1.0 to 4.0.
Unit 1: Stop-Motion Animation & Foundational Research. Students explore persistence of vision, digital research credibility, storyboarding, animation physics, and production.
A comprehensive introduction to theater for elementary students, covering acting techniques, playwriting, stage types, theater history, and technical "behind the scenes" magic. Students move from basic expression to designing and performing with confidence.
A project-based learning sequence for theatre students focused on the directorial challenges of staging Matilda Jr. in two vastly different performance spaces: a traditional proscenium auditorium and a modern thrust-stage black box.
A 10-day unit exploring 3D paper construction through the creation of animal forms or masks, focusing on precision, perseverance, and paper engineering.
A comprehensive four-week unit and independent study guide for contemporary drama. Students analyze scripts, research playwrights, design technical elements, and stage scenes for a final production portfolio.
A comprehensive workshop where students in grades 5-8 master the art of digital storytelling by blending narrative structure, audio production, and visual composition into a final multimedia project.
This sequence explores the representation of apes in the film 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes', focusing on the transition from scientific subjects to sentient leaders. Students analyze the use of motion-capture technology and narrative techniques used to humanize non-human characters.
This graduate-level sequence explores the intersection of labor law, fiscal strategy, safety protocols, and crisis management within professional theater production. Students develop the leadership skills necessary to navigate union environments and high-stakes technical environments.
An advanced technical theater sequence for graduate students exploring the intersection of light physics, human perception, and visual storytelling. Students move from the biological mechanics of the eye to high-level system integration and dramaturgy.
Students investigate how costumes and properties (props) function as tools for character development and storytelling. The sequence guides students through the process of distinguishing between prop types, exploring costume psychology, fabricating safe props, and mastering backstage organization.
