Body Movement by Landon Taylor Wheeler

Objective: Students will demonstrate their awareness of body movement by performing an observation presentation.

Class Level: Beginning

Main Concepts: Body Language, Facial Expressions, Gestures, How Movement is Affected by Different Circumstances and Elements

1994 National Standards:

CONTENT STANDARD 1: Script writing by improvising, writing, and refining scripts based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and history.

CONTENT STANDARD 2: Acting by developing, communicating, and sustaining characters in improvisations and informal or formal productions.

Lesson Plans

Lesson 1: What is your body doing when you move?

Students will demonstrate their understanding of how the body moves by successfully completing a basic anatomy quiz.

Lesson 2: Mirroring Movement

Students will demonstrate their ability to observe and mimic movement by successfully mirroring another student’s movement.

Lesson 3: Gestures/Facial Expressions

Students will demonstrate their ability to pick up on and understand gestures and facial expressions by performing a silent skit.

Lesson 4: Body Language/Posture

Students will demonstrate their understanding of body language and posture by being able to identify how a person is feeling based on their body language.

Lesson 5: How different ages move

Students will demonstrate their ability to move as if they were a different age by being able to identify what age-range each peer is acting out.

Lesson 6: Movement with Props

Students will demonstrate their ability to move with props by incorporating a prop into their movement around the classroom.

Lesson 7: Movement with Music

Students will demonstrate their understanding of how music influences movement by choreographing thirty seconds of a dance to a selected song.

Lesson 8: Presentation of Another’s Observed Movements

Students will demonstrate their understanding of how movement is used every day by completing a report of another’s observed movement and presenting their observations in class.

Lesson 1: What is your body doing when you move?

Objective

Students will demonstrate their understanding of how the body moves by successfully completing a basic anatomy quiz.

Materials Needed

You will need to have posters of human body prepared and a quiz worksheet for each student.Classroom should also be prepared with blocks and ramps set up around the room.

Lesson Directions

Anticipatory Set/Hook

As students come in the room, ask them to put all of their stuff down against one wall and have them line up against another.Be sure that you have set up blocks and ramps all over the room, including through the center of the room.Have one student come up to the front of the class and go join the rest of the students in the line against the opposite wall.Then ask the first student, “Mother may I take ______” and begin a game of Mother May I.Don’t let the students try to move around the obstacles, but have the students move over them!Play a couple rounds of the game (about 10 minutes).

TEACHING PRESENTATION:

  • Halfway through the last game, have students sit where they’re at, where ever they’re at.If students are sitting behind blocks and you can’t see them, invite them to move around the block so that everyone can be seen.
  • Ask the students what they’ve been doing for the last 10 (or so) minutes.
  • Playing Mother May I
  • Goofing Off
  • Ask them “What were you doing, more specifically?”
  • Hopping like Bunnies
  • Skipping
  • Running
  • Taking Giant Steps
  • Taking Baby Steps
  • Climbing over blocks
  • Running down ramps
  • “So, you were moving around the classroom and over obstacles?”
  • Ask students how they were able to move.“How does your body move?What is your body doing when you move?”
  • Move with muscles.
  • Ask for two volunteers.Have these two students hold the two poster boards.This will begin the more lecture oriented part of the lesson.Let students ask questions and give comments as needed.
  • Go over the functions, properties and types of muscles.Go over the major muscles.
  • Thank your two poster holders and have them sit down.Hang the posters up on the wall.
  • Have students pair up.Ask them to decide who is number one and who number two is.Tell the students that number one will be the identifier and number two will be the dummy.Ask the identifying students point on the dummy where a certain muscle is.
  • Go through all of the muscles
  • Deltoid
  • Pectoralis major
  • Biceps brachi
  • Rectus Femoris
  • Gastrocnemius
  • Do not do “gluteus maximus” for the sake of avoiding sexual harassment accusations.Make a joke out of it saying something along the lines of “I’m sure you all know this one.There are songs that even talk about it!So since you know it so well, we’re going to just skip over this one.”
  • Go over the muscles more than once.Have the students switch roles so that both can have turns identifying and being the dummy.
  • Ask for another volunteer.Have the student come up in front of the class.Ask them to point out on themselves where a certain muscle is.Use one volunteer per muscle.
  • Have all the students find seats again in the classroom.Take the posters down.Hand out the anatomy quiz, identical to the diagrams on the posters minus all the answers.Have students fill out the worksheet, but don’t tell them that it’s a quiz.Let them fill it out in teams or by themselves.

CLOSURE:

Go over the quiz with the students.Let them ask any questions about the worksheet.Have them turn in the worksheet.

ASSESSMENT:

Students will turn in the worksheet for an assessment.Students will also be assessed on their participation in classroom activities.

Author's Notes

See attached for poster outlines and quiz worksheet.Information for posters and quiz worksheet can also be found at

Lesson 2: Mirroring Movement

Objective

Students will demonstrate their ability to observe and mimic movement by successfully mirroring another student’s movement.

Materials Needed

You will need a worksheet for each student to record observed body movement.Talk to the P.E. teacher at the school before the lesson and arrange for your class to come in and watch for 10 minutes.

Lesson Directions

Anticipatory Set/Hook

When students walk in, silently begin mimicking their movement, how they walk, and their facial expressions.Mirror different student’s movements.If this is near the beginning of the year, select a few students you know won’t be offended or embarrassed to mimic.

TEACHING PRESENTATION:

  • Wait for students to notice and ask you what you’re doing.Respond by asking, “Did you know that that’s what you look like when you move?Do you ever think about what you look like when you move?”Begin a discussion of movement.
  • Last class, the anatomy of body movement and how the body moves was discussed.Begin discussion with a review of what we learned last class.Then start talking about what your body looks like when you move.How do you look when you’re running versus when you’re walking versus when you’re sitting?How are those movements different?
  • Give each student a body movement observation worksheet.Instruct the students that you are going into the school gym and they are to watch how the other students are moving and how they move in response to the different activities they are doing.Let them know that they are to record what they observe.On the worksheet, there are different categories for them to observe.They can work by themselves or in groups, which ever they would prefer.
  • Spend 10 or so minutes in the gym observing.
  • Bring students back to the classroom (depending on the class, retake attendance).Ask them what they observed.Ask them to demonstrate what they observed.
  • Ask students if it is easier or harder to mimic someone’s movement than their own.What difficulties arise in imitating movement?
  • Start playing a game of Simon Says by saying “Simon says turn all of your observation worksheets in to the front of the class.”Continue the game, and then say, “Simon Says ______is the new Simon” and have the students lead each other in Simon Says.
  • Do not limit the Simon Says activities to “touch your nose.”Let the students explore the whole classroom and all ranges of movement.
  • Put the students into pairs.Tell them that they are to pretend that they are each other’s mirror and that they are to mimic what the other person is doing.Have a pair of students demonstrate what they are to do for the whole class before letting the whole class begin the activity.
  • Walk around the room, evaluating the mirroring.
  • Depending on time, have the students switch partners to gain more practice.

CLOSURE:

Is it any more difficult to mirror someone instead of imitating them?What are the difficulties?Why would you ever want to mimic or mirror someone’s movement?

  • The goal of this discussion is to get students to think deeper about the activity that they’ve done and to find the value and purpose.

ASSESSMENT:

Students will receive some points for filling out the observation worksheet.Students will be assessed on their participation in the mirroring activity.If they participated and actively tried to mimic their partner’s movements, than they get participation points.

Lesson 3: Gestures/Facial Expressions

Objective

Students will demonstrate their ability to pick up on and understand gestures and facial expressions by performing a silent skit.

Materials Needed

You will need a list of strong, known characters for the students to draw from.You will need situations or objectives for students to create silent skits around.You will also need different emotions for the students to create facial expressions out of.

Lesson Directions

Anticipatory Set/Hook

Ask for four volunteers.Have the volunteers each draw a character out of a hat.Tell the other students that they will be observing a party and that they are to guess who each of the characters are.Ask the students what kind of party it should be.

TEACHING PRESENTATION:

  • The game will proceed similarly to the game onWhose Line Is It Anyway?Have one of the students who is a character be a host.Instruct the four students that they are to impersonate their characters specifically through facial expressions and popular motions that they use.
  • Have each of the three other students come in one at a time and then exit one at a time.
  • After the party is over, ask the students who they thought the characters were.Ask them how they knew who the characters were.
  • Gestures!
  • Begin a discussion about gestures.What are gestures?Why do we use gestures?
  • You can recognize a character because of their gestures.Gestures make a character more real.
  • Ask the students to come up with some examples of characters with famous gestures.
  • Ask for another volunteer.Have the student draw an emotion out of another hat and show the class the facial expression they would make for that emotion.
  • Ask the class, “What do you see here?What’s going on in this student’s face?”Have students guess the emotion.
  • Take many volunteers to do this same exercise.
  • So, we not only use words to communicate, but we also use gestures and facial expressions.
  • Tell the students that they are not to take anything with them, but that they are to follow you out of the classroom.Take the students on a field trip around the school.
  • If the class is during a lunch period, take them to the cafeteria.If not, take the class around different classrooms where people will be talking.
  • Ask the students to watch specifically for gestures and facial expressions.
  • Take the students back to the classroom.Ask for volunteers to demonstrate the facial expressions and gestures that they saw.
  • Ask the other students “What do you see?”
  • Break the students into groups of 4-5.Have them select an objective for a skit out of a hat.They will perform this objective silently for the classroom.
  • Instruct the students that they are not to use any dialogue, only facial expressions and gestures.
  • Give the students 10 minutes to work on their skits.Let them know that there is a time limit.Walk around the groups to give instruction and to give assistance as needed.

CLOSURE:

Ask for volunteer groups and have the students perform their skits for each other.

  • Ask the other students after each group is done performing “What gestures did you see?What facial expressions did you see?”

Ask students, to recap, how gestures and facial expressions can be helpful in theatre and every day in communication.

ASSESSMENT:

Students will be assessed on their participation in their group skits.If they participated and used, or made very strong attempts to use, facial expressions and gestures, they will receive full credit for the day.

Lesson 4: Body Language/Posture

Objective

Students will demonstrate their understanding of body language and posture by being able to identify how a person is feeling based on their body language.

Materials Needed

You will need enough photocopies of the Body Language Worksheet for every student as well as video clips of different characters do demonstrate emotion through body language for the worksheet and an projector.

Possible Movies to Use and Characters to Focus On:

Indiana Jones (Indiana, Father, Nazis)

Ten Things I Hate About You (Kat, Patrick, Bianca, Joey, Cameron and Michael)

Star Wars I (Anakin, his Mother, Obi Wan)

Life is Beautiful (Father, Mother and Son)

Dead Poet’s Society (Mr. Keating, Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, Charlie Dalton, Knox Overstreet

Lesson Directions

Anticipatory Set/Hook

When all the students are in the classroom, without speaking, turn off the lights in the classroom. Set up a projector on the ground to project a large area of light against an unblocked wall. Then, still without speaking, bring 4-5 students up to stand in the light. By the time you have gotten the 4-5 students to stand in the light, the others should be quiet and wondering what is going on.

TEACHING PRESENTATION:

  • Whisper to the students standing in the light that you are going to give them 10 extra credit points if they help you with this activity.
  • Ask the other students how they think the students in the light are feeling right now from what they can see of their shadows.
  • Once you have let a few students respond tell the rest of the class what you already told the students in the light.
  • Ask the students standing in the light how they were feeling.
  • Did the class get it right? How did they know? Or why didn’t they get it right?
  • Begin a discussion about body language.
  • What is body language?
  • Body language lets us communicate how we are feeling, or our attitudes, without words.
  • When do you use body language?
  • Every day!All the time!
  • Why is body language helpful?
  • It lets us communicate how we feel without words.
  • Have the students in the light then demonstrate a few examples of body language
  • Happy, Sad, Excited, Tired etc.
  • As for more volunteers to do the same activity.Repeat a few times to allow many students to explore body language. If time permits, let all students participate.
  • Go back to the discussion about body language
  • Ask if there are any questions about body language.(Check for understanding.) What do they notice about trying to portray or understand body language?
  • What are the differences between gestures and body language?
  • Gestures are character specific, make a character more real, specific traits that help audience members remember a character. Body language shows a character’s emotions.
  • How would we use body language in theatre? Why is body language important?
  • Audience members won’t know how our characters our feeling if we don’t show them. Audience members in the back can’t see our faces, so it’s important that we use body language to show our character’s emotions.
  • Ask for a volunteer. Have them demonstrate any emotion. Ask the class what they see. Have them guess what emotion it is. Repeat with different students.
  • Pass out the Body Language Worksheet and tell students to watch the body language in these different scenes. Instruct students to fill out the worksheet for each clip they watch, including the name of the character and their observations, and most importantly to write down each character’s emotion.
  • Play the different clips from the same movie or various movies and allow students time to respond.

CLOSURE: