Unit(s): Acting
Purpose:
To learn to concentrate on several things simultaneously (This skill is used by performers continuously.)
Objectives:
Students will focus on writing about three different subjects at the same time, experience the mental process of turning on and turning off specific thoughts, and convince themselves that they are in complete control of their concentration processes. No one forces another person to think about something. We choose or choose not to think about something.
MATERIALS:
- Each group of four or five students sits around a table or moves their desks into a circle.
- Large piece of poster paper for each group.
- The poster paper is divided into three columns with a word or subject written at the top of each column.
- Each group should have a colored writing marker (one).
PROCEDURE:
- One person from each group will take the paper and marker.
- The teacher will call out one of the three words or topics at the top of one of the columns, and the student is to immediately begin writing on that topic.
- After about two minutes, the teacher will call out one of the other two column topics and the student will immediately begin writing in that column for two minutes.
- Then finally, the teacher will call the last column and the student will begin writing in the last column.
- At the end of this last two minutes, the teacher will say stop and rotate paper one student to your right, or two places to your left.
- The paper is moved to that new student along with the marker, and the teacher calls out one of the topic columns. The student immediately writes for two minutes on that topic.
- The teacher then says go to column one or column three and begin writing.
- Each student in the group gets a chance to continue writing in each column beginning where the last writer stopped. It is not necessary to complete sentences when the writer is told to stop and go to another topic or pass the marker to another writer.
- Each group can then choose their best story of the three and do an improvisation of it for the rest of the class. If you choose to improvise all three from each group, this exercise will take two class meetings.