One-act at a time [Classroom]

One of the hats I wear as my district's half-time K-5 TAG teacher is "Sixth grade Reading and Math teacher." This is because our district's 6-8 building is 10 miles away from our K-5 building. I have one fifth-grade student who is subject-accelerated for Reading and Math, so I meet with him every day in two half-hour blocks for those classes.

A challenge I've found is working my student's gifted needs into the sixth grade curriculum I'm teaching for the first time. I presented my student with a deconstructive learning opportunity after we finished the book Queenie Peavy. He broke the book down into the characters, symbols, and major plot points. His project was to turn his the multi-chapter, 100+ page book into a one-act play. His audience for the play was the two fifth-grade classes in the building. He took that into account when looking at what he wanted to get across in his play. We discussed the differences between static and dynamic characters. We engaged the process of script-writing.

I also took advantage of the opportunity to involve my fifth grade Reading Enrichment students. My accelerated student asked them if they wanted to take part in the acting of the play, and they did. I meet with them for 15 minutes on Thursdays and Fridays, so the first week, we did "read throughs" to make sure everything sounded right. The second week we practiced staging, and the third week we performed.