OPTION 2: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND SCENE WRITING- PLANT MEETS ANIMAL
1. Spend at least 10 minutes outside in nature.* This could be in your yard, a park, on an apartment balcony, etc. Be still (seated, lying down) or slow (standing, walking) so that you can be present to your surroundings. Just be in the space for 10+ minutes, interacting with nature and noticing your 5 senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hear).
2. Observe the different plants and animals you might want to explore through character development and scripting.
3. Choose one plant and one animal. Create a character summary for each including voice, movement, body language and mannerisms. Write about the life history of the plant/animal, what is important to them, and how they accomplish their goals.
4. Write a script containing a plant and an animal meeting. Script should be approx. 350-500 words.
5. Submit the script and character summaries.
6. Journal entry: Complete a 500-700 word, double-spaced journal write-up that explores your artistic process and applications to teaching.
Character Summaries
Dog: The dog, Nugget, is walking around at a fast pace, eager to keep moving. At the odd time, Nugget will stop to catch their breath before continuing the walk. While catching their breath, a large pant followed by a sign is made. While Nugget is walking along, he uses all four of his legs, moving them in sync with each other. Every so often, Nugget will get a bit too excited and his feet will move faster than his body, making him trip a little bit. The entire walk, Nugget continues to be at the end of his leash constantly ready to keep moving along. While being at the end of the leash, he is also constantly looking around at the surroundings for cars, people, trees, or grassy areas.
Tree: The tree is quite empty when it comes to the branch-to-leaves ratio. Since it is the end of winter, this tree has not been given a chance yet to regrow the leaves. However, as the wind goes through the air, small cracking noises can be heard as the tree branches clash together. The trunk of the tree is large and does not move at all, but the top of it definitely sways away. The tree appears to be healthy as it is growing straight up and has had no curve yet to the growth.
Script
It is a sunny yet windy day outside. The owner has just left their house to take Nugget for a walk. As Nugget is walking, his tail is blowing the wind. Stopping at almost every tree or bush, Nugget is determined to meet each one. After going to the bathroom on a bush, Nugget stops what he is doing while looking ahead. He is in shock. Nugget notices a huge tree a few houses down the road. Nugget gets so excited that he begins to run as fast as his owner will let him towards this tree. As Nugget reaches the tree, he walks laps around the trunk. While walking these laps, Nugget is constantly looking up to see how tall the tree is. Suddenly, the wind knocks one of the smaller tree branches onto the ground in front of Nugget. As the branch hits the ground, Nugget jumps and backs away a few steps. However, the owner assures him that he is okay and Nugget resumes walking around the tree trunk. After four laps around the trunk, Nugget finally finds the perfect place on it to go to the bathroom. Before going to the bathroom, he sniffs the area to make sure this is where he wants to go. After sniffing, Nugget decides this is the place and presumes to go to the bathroom. After going to the bathroom, Nugget stops moving once again. Then, he runs away from the tree in happiness. However, as Nugget and his owner continue walking forwards, Nugget keeps stopping to look back at the tree. At last, the owner decides to turn around and walk to the tree again. With excitement, Nugget jumps up and starts running in that direction. After a few minutes, they reach the tree once again and Nugget stops to stare at it again. While staring, Nugget quickly catches his breath with a large sigh. Then, he begins to walk another five laps around the tree. During these laps, no tree branches fell down this time. Anyone walking past was able to see just how happy Nugget was to be observing this tree. Eventually, the owner decides it is time to go home so they continue walking. The rest of the way home, Nugget’s tail was waving back and forth at a fast pace while a huge smile was on his face. This might be one of the best walks Nugget has had in a while and he definitely will be going back to that tree!
For this journal entry, I decided to take my dog on a walk outside since it was so beautiful out. While I was on the walk outside, I noticed a small puppy on a walk with its owner. While walking, this puppy seemed very eager to keep moving, but also got distracted easily from several things. Then, I noticed this puppy kept getting super distracted by a tall tree in one of the parks. After seeing this, I continued on the walk with my dog while observing my surroundings. Once I got back home, I realized that the puppy seeing the tall tree was quite interesting. Therefore, I decided to build a script around the small puppy and tall tree.
For the puppy, I chose the name Nugget because it seemed to fit the appearance quite well. Once I began to create my script, I built off the observations that I had while watching this puppy on a walk. Since I was walking behind them for the majority of my walk, I was able to truly observe its characteristics. There were parts in my script that I actually observed and also parts that I created based on my own observations. For example, the puppy walking fast and getting distracted by the large tree was an actual observation. As well, the puppy did walk quite a few laps around the tree trunk before going to the washroom on it. However, I did create the part about a branch falling in front of the puppy. Since it was windy out this day and I noticed the puppy get startled by small things, so I figured that it was a fair assumption to make with a tree branch. After I saw the puppy stop at the tree, I eventually passed them, making myself walk in front of them. However, about five minutes later I turned around and the owner was walking back to that tree for the puppy. Although they just walked past the tree this time, I made the fair assumption in my script that they had actually stopped at this tree once again. The last assumption that I made in my script was about the puppy will definitely be going back to that large tree. While I am unsure if they actually will, I do have a feeling that the puppy will want to. Overall, the puppy seemed very happy and appeared drawn to this tree. therefore, I would not be surprised if I see them stopping at that tree the next time that I am on a walk.
I feel that this activity could easily be incorporated into my classroom. Since I do plan to teach grade one, an activity like this will keep the students both entertained and intrigued for quite a long period of time. Since it might be difficult to take the students on a walk with only me, I could take them outside onto the playground. Perhaps, we could go to a grassy area of the playground and look for any animals or insects. Instead of doing the activity on their own, we could pick two or three plants and two or three animals, then brainstorm characteristics back in the classroom. Then, based on the characteristics, we could build character summaries for each of them. Once the character summaries are finished and written in large print on the board, the students could go into groups of four to create their own scene. After creating a small scene of what the plant and animal/insect might do, they can present it to other groups or the class if they feel comfortable. Additionally, this activity could be incorporated into other subjects as well to create a cross-curricular approach. Perhaps, they could create a scene about humans eating lunch in a park and what might occur, which would relate to the grade one Social Studies curriculum. Overall, I could see myself using this activity in my class to incorporate several different subjects.
In addition, I feel like this activity is very process-oriented. There is a set goal at the end of the activity, which is to create a scene to act out. However, the students have a choice about how they are going to create the scene. In other words, the students are given all of the resources but are able to create their own personalized scene. As well, this tends to be very learner-oriented since the students are creating the scene to act out, rather than the teacher creating it. This activity allows for students to use their own ideas and I truly want to honour this in my teaching practice.