Students explore how props and costumes help tell the story in a dramatic performance.
Grades: K-3
Resource:
Cat and Rat
Teaching Concepts:
- Props and costumes in plays help tell the story.
- A storyteller and an actor in a play have different ways of telling stories.
Academic Content
- Drama: technical elements (scenery, props, and costumes)
- Creative Dramatics: role-playing, improvisation
Lesson Idea
Open: Bring in a box of Halloween costumes. Have students come to the front of the class in groups of three or four. Each student selects a costume and describes the character he or she portrays when wearing the costume. Define costume and prop. Talk about the effects of costumes and props in playing make-believe and in a play.
View: “Cat and Rat.” Discuss the main ideas of the story. Ask students to consider what they would need to make this a play. View the video excerpt “Wind in the Willows: The Motor Car” without the sound to explore how costumes and props create dramatic effects.
Discuss: The teaching concepts.
Expand: Have students create costumes and props to dramatize the story of Cat and Rat. Possible props for each character might include a knife for the cat, a rat’s tail for the rat, milk for the cow, hay for the barn, a key for the shop, coal for the coal bank, a feather for the eagle, a piglet for the sow, corn for the corncrib, and a key for the man.
Author: Mary Henson