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Subject(s): Theatre, English  

Goals: Students will be able to:  

• Appreciate the variety of communities to which they belong.  

• Use examples from their knowledge and experience to support the main ideas of their oral presentation.  

• Promote collaboration with others both inside and outside the classroom.  

• Distinguish one’s own ideas from information created or discovered by others.  

Show Connection:   

In Here’s the Deal, the students strive to stay connected with one another and forge new relationships in an unfamiliar social space. Mrs. Day places the students in new and unusual pairings that take them out of their comfort zones and makes them find new ways to bond and relate to one another through their work on their performance pieces.  

Resources:   

How to Tell a Story Effectively  

Set-Up:  

• Divide students into two-person breakout rooms sessions that will take place later in the lesson. (We recommend doing this ahead of time for the sake of saving time, focusing on the exercise, and having fun with the students.)  

Description:   

Partnership 1:   

Send students to their two-person breakout rooms.  

Give the students in each breakout room five minutes with the following tasks: 

• Find out where the other was born. 
• With that information, each partnership is to create a “secret Zoom handshake” (utilizing gestures) somehow inspired by that information.   

Bring the groups back together and have a few groups present their “secret handshake.”  

Partnership 2:   

Create new randomized two-person breakout rooms.  

Give the students in each breakout room five minutes with the following tasks: 

• Tell each other one of your earliest childhood memories.
• With that information, each partnership is to create a nickname for the other inspired by shared memories.   

Bring the groups back together and have a few groups present their “nicknames.”  

*Partnership 3: *  

Create new randomized two-person breakout rooms.  

Give the students in each breakout room five minutes with the following tasks: 

• Tell each other about one recent failure (big or small).
• Inspired by the info gleaned, each person creates a life motto for the other. A lesson or moral learned. “Never chew gum in bed!” etc.   

Bring the groups back together and have a few groups present their “motto.”  

Partnership 4:   

Create new randomized two-person breakout rooms.  

Give the students in each breakout room five minutes with the following tasks: 

• Tell each other about one recent success (big or small).
• Create two separate touchdown dances, one dance celebrating each success.   

Bring the groups back together and have a few groups present their “touchdown dances.”  

Discussion: 

• How has your relationship with friends, family and loved ones shifted as the world has shifted to a more socially distanced world?  

• What successes or shortcomings have you found in your life when it comes to fostering new relationships or developing existing ones? Do you have any tips, tricks, warnings to offer up?  

• How do you build new norms (good or bad) in a challenging environment?