In this episode I'm going to tell you about how to use student actors to bring the noise in your classroom. So that you don't always have to be the funny one when you're feeling tired or sick or sick and tired or sick and tired of being sick and tired or you're just not the most dramatic leaf on the Christmas tree. It's good to have some student actors. You can rely on.So let's go. So the best way to get your actors hired is to tell the class that I call this the positive pre-emptive peer pressure trick, you tell the class that you need some actors, but you tell him this job is way too important for you guys to just nominate yourself. I'm going to be relying on these actors all year long. I'm going to be needing these actors to be to be basically be my puppet and tell you guys. He's in the language and show you what things mean. So these are not like a lightly chosen job. So I tell them point to somebody near you that you think wouldn't mind repeating after me in the language and showing you guys what things mean and somebody that you think would be fun to watch. So then everybody points a somebody. I mean some people might not point to somebody but you know, I look and see who's getting the most points at them and I basically go. Hey everybody clap for Keisha. So like everybody's clapping for Keyshia clap clap clap. Yeah Keisha it now you notice I haven't asked you she wants the job but usually your average student is like cool and they're already like getting up out of their seat because your average student, especially Isolate the teenage types cannot resist the Allure of their peers giving them positive accolades. So it's like The Whispers of Xanadu to them and then they'll just get up and start trying to act without even you like giving the actual job. So then I'm always like hey, do you want the job and they're like, yeah, like sometimes they say no, but most of The time they say yeah, so if they say yeah, I'm like everybody clap for them again. Yay, and I bring them up. If they happen to say no. Sometimes I'll ask them what point does somebody that you think would make a great actor and then they point to that person and I tell everybody clap for that person and it's you know, very rare. Like I said that any teenager can resist the call of the sweet sweet accolades of their peers. So most of the time they do say yes. So once you get your one actor, then I would keep them forever. For until they make me really mad. Yeah, like I have basically permanent jobs the idea for the jobs is to keep my life easier. So I treat it like a job like a real job. Like if they do a good job, if you do a good job at your job and you want to keep your job and your boss likes you and your boss is happy with your job performance. Well, you basically keep the job. That's how I treat my classroom jobs if somebody's really super like jealous that they don't have that job then I tell them well, you just need to wait until that job comes open again. I saw them the story of the time that I wanted this one job the job. I ended up getting for 12 years, and I'll tell it to you now once upon a time. I was a student teacher in 2003 at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. I was at a job. I like meeting a Java like meeting in Portland Public Schools is shorthand for getting together with people who have your same like job. So I was at a job. I like meeting at Lincoln High School where I was student teaching for the world language teachers and I met this woman. She was a little bit older. She had gray hair. She liked to knit so are sitting that our job alike meaning. I mean, it wasn't a job for me. It was student teaching, but I was supposed to follow my teacher around and do what she did so I went to this meeting and I met this woman who was knitting with gray hair and we going we're going around and saying what we do. So she says I teach French and Spanish at West Sullivan Middle School. I was like whoa middle school. I love Middle School French and Spanish. That's really cool. And I thought I don't know Spanish, but then I thought maybe one day I'll learn Spanish and then guess what I did I thought to myself back in those days. I want that lady's job. She looks kind of older. She's probably going to retire soon and I'm going to take her job and then guess what guess what 12 years later she retired and guess what? I took her job. That was the job that I took all the videos of the class. Isn't that crazy? I think it's kind of crazy. But anyway, the lesson is this maybe you don't have a story that crazy few people do that was kind of insane. But the lesson is this when you're in the world of actual adult work, you don't just get to have a job because you want a job you have to be good at the job has to be hired for the job and sometimes it's Little capricious, you know the whims of Fate will intervene and you'll get the job or not get the job and then if you don't get the job guess what you have to do another job until the job you want comes open. Maybe that job is never going to come open. Maybe that lady would have never retired. No way she did. Most people do end up leaving the job at some point. Anyway, once you get good actors, and you can trust them, you should treat them like pure positive gold because that's what they are for you. So I don't get a new actor every day. I don't get a new artist every day. I don't hire them all at the beginning of the year. I hire them when I need them. And if somebody else really think they want a job super bad. I just told him to go and talk to the human resources department and look inside the human resources manual and convince the human resources trainer that they can do the job. And then I've already coached by human resources department that they needed. Look at all the job descriptions and the desired qualifications and like interview that person there's probably a job that this kid could do like if they really really really want a job but it's pretty rare a that a kid like well, it's a job that bad especially in high school and it's also rare that be they're going to keep hounding me after they go talk to the human resources department. So it's like yeah, I got them off of my plate and now the kid that really really wants the job is like, I don't know. the phone answerer or the kid that Rice the quiz, whatever it was that HR decided they needed to have So anyway back to the actors the best way for you to train your actors is to do it before cycle to so before you start telling stories because when you tell stories, you're probably going to want some actors. It makes it a whole lot more fun. But before you tell the stories, you can get your actors hired a you can get your act restrained by using them during readers theater. It's so great like all's you have to do is do a write and discuss in the description site. All about something that you described. So there's no story there. It's just a description but you can take the description and spin it into a little story. It doesn't have to have much of a plot. It doesn't have to be Pulitzer prize-winning literature. It doesn't have to even have much of an ending except for just clapping most children and I'm talking anybody under the age of 20 most children actually think that something wrapped up just because she clapped it doesn't matter if it's all that exciting. It doesn't matter if nothing really even happened in the story. So that's what I want to teach you today is how to use your actors to just basically portray. Something that's not even a story like it doesn't even have a plot. There's not even any like suspense. There's nothing really going on, but you can use those actors you can make those actors ham it up if you have the right actors. You can make those and if you don't have the right actors, you should probably get different actors. Your actors are your biggest asset that's kind of a little known fact in comprehension Based Teaching your actors can help you get a lot more repetitions of whatever language that got used that day during the oral input kids need more repetitions. But like my friend Justin Slocum Bailey likes to say Ya gotta earn those repetitions. You can't just like repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat the same thing because that gets super boring. Then people's going to check out. You can't even tell sometimes if they have checked out if they checked out and they're just sitting there like a nice compliance smile on their face because there are really nice kid, but like they've totally checks out and they're totally thinking about the prom. You're never even going to know it. So your best bet is it get yourself an actor? Because that actor is going to help you get repetitions that are fun. If you have the right actor, you can learn so many repetitions but wait, it's not you earning the repetitions. It's that actor. Well, I just checked my phone looks like it was a junk mail call. So let's go over here and read about readers theater from Stepping Stones be on Year One. Readers theater is used by different teachers for all kinds of different purposes. This is a way of doing readers theater with a class text that I learned from been Slavic. He always recommended that we move into readers theater out of reading from the back of the room and that suggestion has always served me well as have so many of his ideas as you're conducting the class discussion if there's a passage in the text that lends itself to a little dramatization or if And some new information about students in a class through asking personal questions. You can call up a student actor to sit on a stool beside you in the back of the room and portray the character in that story. Or the student in class in a situation such as that, I like to first ask the student themselves if they want to play themselves, and if they don't I just call it one of my normal actors. The actors don't just have to portray people or characters. You could even call up an actor to portray a thing or a concept that was not exactly personified in the story. For instance. If you discuss the weather and it was sunny, you could call up a student to be the sun using student actors in This Way is an excellent method for you to practice your skills at directing your students to act. Without all the pressure of also simultaneously conducting a story with the class. It's a fantastic training ground for you and the class and the actors which will serve you quite well when you start creating stories with the class. One reason that readers theater is such a powerful way to practice your skills is because the pressure to entertain and create is almost completely off. You already have all the basic ingredients for the little vignette that you will create and there's no real plot. That's okay. That's to be expected because everyone knows that all you're doing is dramatizing the text that you just wrote. Here are some suggestions for using student actors. I suggest having three students that are your professional actors hired and managed by our human resources team having go to actors whom you can rely on is so key to your comfort and confidence with using student actors. To find your actors the first time that you do readers theater. You can just say I need an actor to portray Sally the Hat this person has to be willing to repeat after me in French to talk and think out loud point to someone in class that you think would make a good actor. Then you can look at the class and ask the Human Resources Director to select one of the kids who seems to be the People's Choice once they've made their selection you can get the class to applaud for the chosen one. This greatly increases the chances that A student will actually accept the job you're basically priming the student with positive peer attention to maximize the chances that they will be willing to serve the class by agreeing to try the job of actor. Then you can ask the kid. Will you accept the job usually this is sort of funny because most kids will actually be just heading up to the actor stool, please that they're getting all those Applause. Then you have your actors sit on stools beside you. Then Slavic taught me to use stools for my actors and I would never ever go back to having them stand or do crazy physical Feats. Like I used to it is best to train the actors to stay on the stools because that just keeps them from wandering here and there and being a distraction. It's also sort of visually and physically establishes the chain of command in this performance. You are the director are actually more like a puppet master. I like to tell my actors their job is to be the best visual aid they can be and they're sort of like a puppet or a ventriloquist doll, and they're just there to help the class understand the story. I also do not give my actors props anymore. I used to have all kinds of props and costumes and such but then again following bins advice. I stopped using these and all kinds of pressure was lifted from my poor teacher shoulders. Managing the classes of tension when one of their peers is pretending to shoot things with a pool noodle while wearing a feather boa fake muscles and a tutu. It was always so challenging that I would not recommend it to a friend at all. If I do use props and costumes. It's only in a video retail to make it more authentic and fun. But video retails are different from the sort of in the moment light improv that we're doing here because the details of the the action have already been established leaving you to focus on the actors plus since the class already knows what's going on because in a video retail your now retelling the story they can freely focus on the actors as they have it up for the camera and you can move into an off-camera role as narrator and director that is just a natural way to use props. I think of readers theater or any strategy in which I call up the actors to help me create something for the first time. As sort of like what a collaborative theater troupe would do when planning an ensemble piece. We're hashing out the details of how it will go and just relaxing on stools as I act as director and help the plot develop. In reader's theater. I recommend that you use a formula like this one to create a tiny little vignette with a bit of human interest. But not too much interest as you don't want to have too much to manage while you're learning how to manage the actors the class and the creative process all at the same time. A say this is whatever and point to the actual on the stool and have a class clap for them. Like hey class voici bill look burrito a pretty sick like then say this. Is that where Y is an emotion or X is Y where Y is an emotion show the emotion with your own face using the I'm kind of expression that you would use in any class activity when you say that emotion gesture to the actor expectantly and wait for them to portray that emotion. So like Bill the burrito is age we They like gesture to Bill and just want him to look feast. And then say no bill is a tree and gesture to the actor to really ham it up. But if they start talking even if they talk in the language just whisper to them. All you need to do is do what I say and repeat after me later. Once the actors have been trained you might start to allow them to ad-lib just a little bit once you know that you can trust them but at first It pays to be a rather strict boss so they get trained to follow early. You can for comedic effect use the No No, not like that strategy to keep exhorting the actor to a more and more dramatic portrayal of the emotion each time saying with morphine and impatience. No, no bill 8 least taste feel sad really really sad and gesturing to the actor to look more angry or more sad or more. Whatever this is. Quite amusing to the class as the actors ham it up and struggle to look more and more dramatic. Plus you're getting a lot of repetitions of the worse for the emotions and the repetitions go down like butter. Because the glass is so engaged with watching the poor actor try to be more and more dramatic just to please you who has morphed into a rather strict acting coach. You do not need to actually be doing that much in the way of super dramatic acting yourself. In fact often the emotional punch and the humor is actually heightened. If you remain calm and speak to the actor in a strict voice as if getting them to be so mad is just standard operating procedure in this theater troupe. Then after they've portrayed the emotion to your satisfaction say they think or say this where the thing is some non language utterance like AA or o or or la la this is a quick win for the actor since all they've done so far is portraying emotion with their face and body. And now all they have to do is make some kind of sounds with their mouths that aren't really any particular language. You can of course make the actors save a thing with more and more and more emotion if you feel the energy there and you have time. Then say whoever says whatever and gesture to the actor to repeat what you just said the thing that they say should be something very obvious from the right and discuss for instance. If you said Billy the burrito is very tall. You would have the actress a jean sweet a ghoul. I'm really tall. And gesture to the actor to repeat what you just said then say no no Billy a crease to Billy Dee just beat a gone taste ammo. So Billy is sad Billy says I'm really big sadly and then make the actor repeat that line with more emotion. You can for comedic effect keep exhorting the actor to more and more dramatic Renditions of their one little line saying each time with morphine and patients. No, no, no, no no Billy, it's Feast Billy Dee are just sweet a cool piece them all. Please don't Mom. Hi, Troy, please two-month Billy's really sad. Billy says I'm big sadly really really sadly sadly most actors love this it as it gets in another quick win because the class is laughing and enjoying their situation. Then you can get the second actor involved. If you haven't hired them yet hire them or call them up have them sit on a stool by the first actor get the An actor involved by stating their emotion, you don't have to get all tied up in any plot elements here. You can simply say this one is that too? Give them the same emotion felt by the first one or perhaps you say this one is not this this one is that where that is a different emotion, then you can either go through the same process of making the actor who's portraying that emotion be more and more and more emotive or depending on your relationship. But the actor portraying that emotion is sometimes funny to go super easy on the second actor and super strict on the first actor. Which will create this additional layer of humor if that actor is all laid back in there emoting and you just kind of let that slide. Well, you continue to exhort the poor first actor to higher and higher thespian accomplishments. Of course, if you don't have a warm supportive relationship, but the actor portraying the first character, you might not want to do this because they might start to resent it. But if you know that they can hang with you this uneven application of impossibly high standards for their dramatic arts generally makes for some very good comedy was very little effort on your part. Sometimes you can keep this little routine going every time the actors work with you always exhorting the first kid to huge. Experian Heights of comedy and tragedy well allowing the other one to just skate by on life. Somehow. This is just so darn hilarious to your average kid. Maybe it's because they're always thinking about how unfair Things Are. Then you want to engage your actors in a small dialog if you've decided to make one actor, you're super dramatic one and just let the other one do whatever you can continue that during this dialogue. Usually to Great comedic effect here is a suggested sequence of stuff. You can get them to say following a sequence like this has rarely let me down and you can actually get away with pretty much following this formula every single time. You do readers theater if you have good actors and you make them ham it up or Sometimes you just make one of them have it up. All the other ones allowed to be as lazy as a sloth as they want. The first one says I am whatever emotion the second one says I am that too or I am not that I am this the other one says the first one why are you so whatever the second one says Oh, no, sorry. The first one says let's just imagine we have a burrito and a taco the burrito is the first one the burrito says I am sad the taco says I'm sad too, or I'm not sad. I'm nervous or I'm not sad. I'm excited. Then the taco says to the burrito. Why are you sad? Even if they're sad, they still ask why they were sad if they're not said they still ask why they're sad basically the first one States and emotion. The second one says that they feel the same emotion or they feel a different emotion. Then they asked the first one why they're feeling that emotion. Then the first one says I am sad because and gives the reason the reason would probably come from the right and discuss and then the second one can either say something nice or give them something or take them somewhere or give them a high-five or blow their nose for them if they're crying. Whatever makes sense. Then you're done. You don't have to get lost in some complicated plot. You don't have to really have a plot at all. It's just readers theater. It's like doing a simple improv theater exercise. It's not Broadway. Okay, take it easy the actors if they're good ones will carry you and if you don't have good ones get good ones. You can just calmly leave them standing by their side and when you've used those dialogue ideas that I gave you you can simply say to the class clap. and the actors will feel awesome about their performance and become valuable resources for you as they will help you to earn more repetitions of all this language as my good friend and talented language teacher and all around bull Vivo Justin Slocum Bailey likes to say So, I hope this helps don't be scared of actors. They could be your best friends. Hey, it's Tina here, and I really want you to send me a message. So if you could just please hit the send a message button or go to Anchor dot f m / curriculum Club / message, then you can send me a voice recording. Who knows I might put you on a future episode. So if you could just let me know what you think or what you want to hear from me or how you think I'm doing or if you have a story to share or choke or you want to sing me a song. I Don't Really Care and here I'll even bribe you so by the end of the month whatever month it is that you're listening to this at the end of the month. I will go look through all the messages that I've gotten through the month pick one randomly and I will give that person anything they want any one thing at all from From our online school at CI - liftoff not teachable.com. So please hit me up. Send me a message by hitting that button or go into anchor dot f m / curriculum Club / message.
Learn more about the easy way to start using student actors to bring more fun to your lessons, and get in more dialogue using the "I" and "you" forms of verbs......and then please let me know what you think or if you have questions, comments, feedback, or anything else you want me to know! Leave me a voice message here. If you are not a Curriculum Club member, you can sign up for our waiting list. We will open registration around Thanksgiving for our Fall cohorts. The cost will be $34 a month -- about a dollar a day for daily lesson plans, weekly live coaching with recordings available for you to watch anytime. bonus live webinars (plus recordings available anytime) with Tina, our coaching staff, and special guests, and a private Facebook group where our goal is to answer every single one of your questions as we go through the curriculum and work together to get you where you want to be in your language classroom! To learn more about the book Stepping Stones Year One and Beyond, which this podcast series is based on, visit our online school. And if you want to chip in to support my coffee habit, you can donate to the podcast here. 