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Musical Plays Add Pizzazz and New Depth to Your Classroom

By Greg Miller
Reprinted from Gifted Education Communicator * Fall 2008 * Vol. 39 * No. 3

One teacher shares his path from being terrified of performances to becoming a master of classroom plays.

Dear Colleagues, lean closer and concentrate; I am about to divulge my most embarrassing hidden secret: I have been taking guitar lessons on and off for close to 35 years and I still can't play very well at all! In fact, I believe that I just might be the "drooling idiot" my mother warned I'd become if I even stepped into a room with somebody who smoked those "funny cigarettes." I never did step into one of those rooms, but when it comes to music I still drool a bit!

That first paragraph might make more sense if I digress a bit and share with you some success I've had with musicals over the past 13 years in elementary school classrooms.

I landed my first job in the number one school in the largest school district in northern California; it was a "Rapid Learner" center – a step up from the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program in that district. Not only that – all the primary classes were expected to perform a musical during the winter holiday season! The entire school board would be there along with the five largest news stations in Northern California and three cameras for recording the show for all of the parents too! I closed my eyes and watched my hard earned credential fly away into the distance in my mind's eye. My heart sank as I sat through my first real staff meeting.

Luckily for me, my first assignment was to go to the state conference of the California Association for the Gifted. During the conference I met two guys who changed my future and mitigated the possibility that I would get fired because my class musical actually caused mental illness in our principal! The two guys: Ron Fink and John Heath and their company, "Bad Wolf Press"! The subtitle of the company is: Musical plays for musically timid teachers!

See tips below on simple ways to use plays in your classroom!

Musically timid – that's me! (OK, I'm really a musical goofball!!) I chose: "Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock" because Ron and John said it was fun, a bit silly, supported our curriculum and like all of the plays included a cassette (now they come with CD's) with the words and music on one side and just the music on the other side. I sat in their booth, read the play, and asked a bazillion questions. They answered them all, didn't roll their eyes once, and took my money. I returned to the booth numerous times during the conference to ask more questions and got my answers and friendship too!

Now, I know that most of you out there are thinking: How, in the current climate of "High Stakes Testing" can this clown justify taking valuable class time for producing plays? If you choose carefully, musical plays can add a tremendous amount of depth to the curriculum without wasting your valuable class time. There are plays that are based on history, science, math, and even language arts. I choose ones that fit well with something we are studying and use the show to go "deeper." I had no choice about doing my first musical, but I continue to do them for many reasons: students think they can't memorize anything, and plays and musical show them that they can and it can be fun. Plays are a great way to teach study skills: highlighting, summarizing, and note taking. Plays are, in my opinion, the absolute best way to introduce and further public speaking skills. You can really do some great team building exercises too. Plus, I always throw in some Physical Education with dance: small and large group synchronized movement, and a lot of silly running around ala Monty Python's Flying Circus! How else would you end a comedy musical of Macbeth!?!

My class practiced and practice until we were ready for Broadway – err, that is – our little stage in the cafetorium. We did exactly what my teacher's guide in the back of the script said to do. I incorporated all the elements Ron and John said I needed, and to my utter disbelief we were the hit of the show. There were "speed bumps" of course, but we got over them. Ron told me to have some understudies for the most important parts, and luckily I did. Not two minutes into the performance Devon, who played "Anansi" reached up and dug a particularly large booger out of his nose and ate it in front of 500 people and cameras; his mother shorted "Oh! *?&", ran up to the stage, grabbed the boy, and ran out the back door – we didn't see him again for three days! But being forewarned, Misty stepped into Devon's place and finished the show to a standing ovation!

Fast-forward about ten years worth of musicals and you will find me at the "oldest continuously inhabited school west of the Mississippi." I kid you not; we still use skeleton keys to get into the classrooms in the main building! We have a beautiful theatre – not a cafetorium, not a multipurpose room of a cafe-multiofficeatorium – a theatre that was used for honest-to-goodness vaudeville shows. I can "fly in" things to the stage; there are nine backdrop lines and real stage lighting. We have done one or two musical plays each year for many years now, and I am the "old pro" of musicals in the school, having produced more than anyone else.

Many of my colleagues and their classes have joined me in a night of musicals. We've learned from experience that these plays are fun to produce, tied to the curriculum, easy to produce, and did I mention that they are really fun! Plays where followers become leaders, leaders become better leaders, shy kids "Explore" onto the stage and steal the show, outgoing kids learn to rein in their enthusiasm, and students learn to work together for an audience . . . actually working together for someone else's enjoyment! Students learn some cool history, language arts, science and math too.

Every year after "Play Night," students from all the other upper grade classes come to me and ask if they can be in the next play . . . or if I can "make sure that they are in my class next year." I'm considering taking bribes.

So, to get back to the "drooling idiot" thing, I still can't play the guitar . . . but I can produce some tremendous plays. This "musically timid" teacher has learned everything I know about musicals from Bad Wolf Press in the persons of Ron Fink and John Heath . . . and I "Double Dog Dare" you to give their plays a try!

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Simple Ways to Use Musical Plays in the Classroom

In many schools, teachers integrate musicals right into their classroom activity with minimal costumes or props. Multiple explorations of simple plays with little production hoopla (whether with or without music) can touch on more areas of curriculum and be much less imposing (and time-consuming) than one big production per year. And if teachers still want to do an end-of-the-year big performance for parents and the school, students will be all the better prepared for such a production.

Readers theater approach. Simply having students read a play through once or twice is a terrific way to increase fluency as well as review whatever curriculum the play is built around. Some teachers merely copy the script and have students take turns reading the parts. If there are songs, then the CD is played at the appropriate moment, or lyrics are merely read by the "actors." This reader's theater approach give more time in class for questions and discussion of curricular material.

Focus on individual scenes. Another useful tactic is to read and perform individual scenes from a play – again, with or without singing – only as the topic of the scene crops up in student assignments. For example, students studying U.S. History might spend a class period on a scene about the Louisiana Purchase just when the subject is part of the curriculum. A single play could be stretched, one scene at a time, throughout weeks or even months of study.

The simple approach. There are tremendous benefits to putting on a musical play as some form of theater. Although kids and audiences do love costumes, props, and fancy sets, they can also be the source of many headaches, both before and during a performance. Since the real point of doing musical plays is to enhance, support, and review the curriculum in an exciting cross-curricular fashion, too much time and energy spent on production values can take away from the educational benefits. Simple but complete productions throughout the year in the classroom that cover several different curricular topics may be the best way to take advantage of all the benefits of musical plays.

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