Professional Development

Our Professional Development Partnerships and Workshops give educators hands-on experience with teaching the art of theatre as well as arts-integration: theatrical techniques that teach across the curriculum. Arts Partnerships are custom-tailored collaborations in which you, the educator, work directly with our teaching artist to create curriculum designed to meet the needs of your students. Our artists will model lessons with your students in your classroom and then, after observing you working with your students, give your immediate feedback. Together, you both reflect and refine curriculum so you can then immediately implement lessons with your students. We also offer In-Service Workshops in which our teaching artists bring informative and lively workshops that provide you with accessible, skills-based theatre activities that are easily integrated across the curriculum.

Theatre Arts Partnership

Teachers and Students Learning Together

Stages Theatre Company’s teaching artists have more than 20 years experience “breaking open” curriculum in classrooms from kindergarten through high school. Our arts integrated programs apply creative dramatics activities to any curricular topic in a way that allows students to get the lesson “into their bones.” We find these methods especially suited to the non-traditional learner.  Students participating in Stages Theatre Company artist-teacher’s collaborations have shown improved test scores as well as stronger social skills such as leadership and cooperation.

We specialize in custom-tailored programs designed to suit the needs of both you and your students. Our teaching artists work closely with you, the classroom teacher, to create a collaborative partnership that provides an opportunity for you to observe and practice research-based arts strategies at work in your classroom. Design curriculum together with your artist partner and then observe as the teaching artist models lessons with your students. As you implement the lessons, our teaching artists observe and give you immediate feedback – allowing for opportunities to reflect and refine lessons throughout the partnership. Stages Theatre Company has found great success for both teachers and students with this collaborative process that promotes reflective learning as well as provides hands-on experience for you and your students.

Past Custom-Tailored Topics Have Included:

Science:

• Balance and Motion
• Terrestrial Food Chain
• Solids and Liquids
• The Human Body
• Sound

Social Studies:

• Multicultural Tales
• Cultural Dance Styles
• Egypt, Land of the Pharoahs
• Asia, Life on the River
• American History

Language Arts:

• Literacy Skills: Tableaux
• Literacy Skills: Reader’s Theatre
• Playwriting
• Poetry

In-Service Workshops

Our In-Service Workshops provide educators hands-on experience with theatre lessons and activities contained in Make a Scene, our K - 6 Theater Curriculum or In My Own Voice: Responding to Life and Literature, a curriculum guide for Secondary English and Language Arts Teachers. These engaging activities help build community, boost staff morale, and can jump-start ideas for engaging all types of learners across the curriculum.

 Registration includes:

• A free copy of Stages Theatre Company’s K - 6 Theatre Curriculum, Make A Scene or our Secondary Curriculum,  In My Own Voice: Responding to Life and Literature,

• Two hours of instruction for up to 30 teachers.

Contact

Free Curriculum

STAGES THEATRE COMPANY WARM UPS

• (19) Favorite acting warm-ups used by Stages Theatre Company teaching artists, actors, and directors
• Written for classroom teachers new to theatre arts
• Used to warm up the three tools of acting:  body, voice, and imagination
• Adaptable and appropriate for a variety of ages, theater projects, and curriculum areas
• Supports development of teamwork and personal focus

THEATER ARTS AND LITERACY CURRICULUM
Lessons for Pre-K to Grade 6

Purpose of the Theater Curriculum

With our Theater Arts and Literacy Curriculum, we share our expertise in integrating theatre arts across non-arts curriculum. The 18 lessons included, all written in accessible language and format, focus on building specific literacy skills of vocabulary, reading with expression and reading comprehension through theatre. The table of contents charts lessons by very specific areas of focus within each skill-set, demonstrating the versatile ways in which the theater arts integrated into a literacy lesson can "break open" content for multiple learners and address multiple standards within one lesson.  We know each classroom is unique, so each lesson also contains tips and variations designed to help classroom teachers extend, deepen, or adapt each lesson to students' needs. 

Who could use the curriculum?

Theater Arts and Literacy Curriculum is designed for multiple uses. Teachers new to using integrated theatre arts across content areas will find the activities to be an accessible starting point; teachers with more experience will be able to extend and adapt the activities to support their existing curriculum. Many activities may be used over and over again, with a variety of different age levels and within the context of different curricular areas. Teachers responsible for teaching and assessing literacy skills will find concrete and focused learning activities to support student work in the language arts standards.  

Contents 

• Theater and Vocabulary: phonics, definintion, using vocabulary in new contexts
• Theater and Reading with Expression: word emphasis, punctuation, presentation, interaction
• Theater and Reading Comprehension: setting, character, plot

How was our curriculum developed?                                                                                                      

Theater Arts and Literacy Curriculum was written by theatre educators and edited by a Graduation Standards specialist. It was piloted and reviewed by teaching artists and classroom teachers who participated in a long-term embedded professional development residency at the Mary Mcleod Bethune Community School in the Minneapolis School District.  Special thanks to all the teachers and students at Bethune Community School and to the Cargill Foundation for their generous support of this multi-year project.

In My Own Voice: 

Responding to Life and Literature Through Playwriting for Grades 6 -  12

Words, gesture, and actions are the tools of daily communication. In My Own Voice is a curriculum guide for Secondary English and Language Arts teachers intended to foster writing that expresses ideas and concepts in a way that can be engaging and fun. The activities range in complexity from simple monologue and dialogue writing to more advanced scenes.  Some basic exercises can be accomplished in a single classroom period. Others have numerous extensions that can last for several sessions. All are adaptable to various curricular themes and content, and they have been tested with students in a wide variety of age groups and settings.

Although the main focus on these strategies is to link student writing with literature, they can also be used to develop original written material that can be presented by groups of students in an informal public presentation. It is our hope that teachers will adapt the activities in this guide to best suit the needs of their particular classrooms.