TeachersFirst's Dramatic Arts and Dance
Discover resources in this collection to infuse drama and dance into your lessons. This curated list includes musicals, readers theater, dance instruction, and more. You may find it helpful to use ideas from this list to plan your physical education and language arts lessons. This list includes resources for all grades.
See our complete collection of acting, plays, readers' theater, and dance resources.
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All the World's a Stage: Incorporating Dramatic Arts and Dance into the Classroom - TeachersFirst
Grades
K to 12tag(s): book lists (165), dance (28), readers theater (11)
In the Classroom
Include the books and activities this article suggests to engage students through movement and the arts. Have students create and share Reader's Theater productions to demonstrate learning of any content. Use Storyboard That, reviewed here to create storyboards as they plan their productions. After recording your students' Reader's Theater presentations, use Clipchamp, reviewed here to edit and transform your presentations into professional-looking productions.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Indigenous Peoples of the Americas - The Kennedy Center
Grades
K to 8tag(s): cross cultural understanding (167), cultures (145), dance (28), holidays (179), native americans (95), north america (15), stories and storytelling (50)
In the Classroom
Print lesson plans during Native American Month, as a supplement to social studies lessons about cultures and states, or during geography lessons. Lesson plans are available in PDF format or as Google Documents; save any lesson to your Google Drive as a copy of the original document and edit it to fit your curriculum or adapt it as desired to fit current lessons. Use any or all materials found on this site as a personalized learning lesson for students to complete in person or remotely. For example, add a video, poem, and reflective activity, and additional materials to a SchoolStack, reviewed here, an activity that offers students a choice of learning materials and activities. Consider asking students to work in collaborative groups to research indigenous people based on their interests. For example, have a group explore dance, another their art and sculpture, and a group that researches geographic locations of the different tribes. Ask each group to share their learning by creating simple websites made with Telegra.ph, reviewed here. Telegra.ph provides simple website creation tools without all the distractions of backgrounds, templates, and other distractions. Easily add text, images, and links to any Telegra.ph site.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Swing Your Partner: The Basics of Square Dancing - The Kennedy Center
Grades
3 to 6tag(s): dance (28), process writing (38)
In the Classroom
Use this lesson as an alternative to typical informational writing prompts. Engage students in learning about square dance as you introduce the first activity that asks students to share what they know about square dancing using an interactive whiteboard tool such as IdeaBoardz, reviewed here. For example, create a board with two sections - use one section for students to share what they know and the second section for sharing what they would like to learn. Use Padlet, reviewed here, to organize resources for students to use when researching the guide to square dancing. Include a column for videos, another for music, and another with tips on how to write an instructional guide. Enhance the video portion of lessons using playposit, reviewed here, to add comments that highlight specific portions of the video such as types of dance steps or choreography.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Baila! Latin Dance in the Spanish Classroom - The Kennedy Center
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): cross cultural understanding (167), dance (28), spanish (106)
In the Classroom
Use the ideas found in this lesson to incorporate dance into your lessons that feature the Caribbean or South American countries. For example, when studying the history of Cuba, include ideas from this lesson and additional information about the dances that originated in the country to help students engage in a deeper understanding of the culture. As students share their research and presentations, provide them with various options to share their learning. For example, allow students to choose from Sway, reviewed here, to create a multimedia presentation, or offer students the opportunity to create a video presentation using Adobe Express Video Maker, reviewed here, with audio and templates.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Kennedy Center Ballet Collection - The Kennedy Center
Grades
K to 12tag(s): dance (28), russia (35), stories and storytelling (50)
In the Classroom
This is an excellent site to use when introducing students to ballet as a form of dance or as an option to use with girls who are interested in athletics and sports. Consider including resources found on the ballet site as part of a storytelling unit or sharing ideas with students for finding role models when writing biographies. As you share information from this site and others, consider using curation tools such as Symbaloo, reviewed here, and Wakelet, reviewed here, to share information with students in an organized manner. Add information from this collection into an interactive lesson using Curipod, reviewed here. Include videos, articles, quizzes, and documents as part of your interactive lesson.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Kennedy Center Dance Collection - The Kennedy Center
Grades
K to 12tag(s): chinese new year (5), cross cultural understanding (167), cultures (145), dance (28), hispanic (32), jazz (17), native americans (95), poetry (192), stories and storytelling (50)
In the Classroom
Take advantage of the many free resources on this site to add dance to music lessons and cultural units and enrich topics featuring people and places worldwide. Each resource includes tags, and the lessons include suggested grade levels, use these links to find additional resources for classroom use. As you include information from this site, use an online whiteboard tool such as Google Jamboard, reviewed here, to engage students in learning. For example, add a link to a video from the site about a featured artist and ask students to share their learning or post questions to explore further. Ask students to share their understanding using one of the many tools found Adobe Creative Cloud Express for Education, reviewed here. For example, ask students to create a website of a featured dance style, while other students create a video sharing dance and cultural information about their chosen group of people or country.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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myShakespeare - Richard Clark and Greg Watson
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): england (51), literature (218), plays (29), shakespeare (96)
In the Classroom
This site is a must-have for teachers of Shakespeare! Engage students by sharing the video performances to help students understand key events during any of the plays. Share and point out the glossed (bold) words to help students understand difficult language. Find the tool for glossed words in the top menu to turn it on and off. Have students answer the comprehension questions as a formative assessment for their self-reflection and to guide your lesson planning. This site is perfect for use in remote classrooms or as a flipped learning activity. Assign portions of the text to students to read before class discussions. Using myShakespeare in this way offers many tools for students to view the material in different formats as they complete the reading. Use Padlet, reviewed here to enhance student learning throughout your Shakespeare unit by asking clarifying questions and have students post video responses. This is a link to Padlet's Help section for posting video or an image. Extend learning further by asking students to create short video explainers of different scenes of the play using Adobe Express Video Maker, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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ArtsAlive - The Stage is Yours - National Arts Centre
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): acting (19), design (80), plays (29), shakespeare (96)
In the Classroom
Use a projector or interactive whiteboard to present this outstanding site to your students. Students of drama, English, history, art, and architecture will find something of interest. Although the site is text heavy in places, you could employ a tool like From Text to Speech, reviewed here, for the interview transcripts to help weaker readers access information. Have students choose a category (design and production, playwright's corner, Shakespeare's plays, acting, etc.) of interest to investigate. Group students by interest. Within their small groups students can jigsaw, each taking a different facet of the category to learn about. After that they can put together a mini-presentation using one of many TeachersFirst Presentation tools reviewed here. Some tool suggestions are (click on the tool name to access the review): Adobe Creative Cloud Express for Education, Vevox, Animatron, Renderforest, and Presentious. Once everyone is done studying their categories, suggest producing a play by one of the scriptwriters from the group.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Drama Resource - David Farmer
Grades
K to 6This site includes advertising.
tag(s): acting (19), back to school (62), bullying (50), digital storytelling (152), stories and storytelling (50)
In the Classroom
Use this site as the starting point for individual or group projects. If you are looking for ways to get students more involved with history lessons, drama may be just the thing. Take advantage of the free lesson plans included on the site. Use lessons and activities as part of your storytelling unit, for beginning of the year activities, or to promote higher level thinking skills. Have students create their own mini-drama moment: upload a photo they have taken and add voice bubbles for dialog using a tool such as Phrase.it, reviewed here. Have students create animated movies online demonstrating different drama techniques using invideo AI, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Drama in the ESL Classroom - Jessica Davis
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): acting (19), creative writing (123), plays (29)
In the Classroom
Use this site as the starting point for group projects like having the students write and produce their own play(s). This is a great find for gifted students as well as students studying any modern language as the play writing and acting techniques can easily be adapted. Challenge cooperative learning groups to create videos of the plays they write and produce then edit and save them using using wevideo, reviewed here. Share the videos on a site such as TeacherTube reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Elizabethan & Jacobean Drama - Nicoleta Cinpoes
Grades
9 to 12tag(s): elizabethan (13)
In the Classroom
The timelines alone are a goldmine. Set students to work connecting political, social, and religious background with the rich drama of the 16th-17th century and you can have a fascinating blend of humanistic study.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Kennedy Center Digital Resources - Formerly ArtsEdge - Kennedy Center
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): african american (110), baseball (31), civil war (136), comics and cartoons (53), dance (28), folktales (34), greece (28), habitats (88), immigration (68), literature (218), mexico (30), musical instruments (49), myths and legends (24), native americans (95), painting (54), surrealism (2)
In the Classroom
Search this site for a topic that you are teaching in your class. Share the lesson on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Better yet, make the video or slideshow a learning station for students to watch in small groups. This site is so wonderful and HUGE, that after students are one with the resources you have for them, you may want to allow them to explore on independently or in small groups for a specific interest of theirs.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Reader's Theatre Scripts and Plays - Colleen Gallagher
Grades
1 to 9Editor's note: There is one group of links (to sites that start with "hometown.aol") that no longer work. Since this is only a small portion of the site, TeachersFirst continues to list the resource for its many GOOD links. Roll your mouse over the links before clicking and check the address in the gray bar at the bottom left of your screen. Don't bother with the hometown.aol links.
This site includes advertising.
tag(s): readers theater (11)
In the Classroom
Mark this one in your favorites, then let student groups select from scripts to record their own audio podcasts or create a Thinglink, reviewed here, of a tale, illustrated with a selection of copyright-safe images or student drawings. Or have students make a high-tech excerpt from a reader's theater script by creating avatars to read each part using Voki, reviewed here. Sequence the embedded conversation bits on a class wiki so viewers can enjoy the performance by clicking through them in order. These wiki excerpts could be used to "advertise" an upcoming performance or a featured literary piece.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Creating Dramatic Monologues from Grapes of Wrath - Alisa Soderquist
Grades
9 to 12tag(s): writing (323)
In the Classroom
This site works on so many levels from teaching what a monologue is and how it suits a particular character in literature to researching primary sources and understanding what they tell you. This is a good group project that could work for other novels as well as The Grapes of Wrath. Try using an online digital recording tool such as Podomatic (reviewed here)for students to record and share their monologues as a podcast.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Art of Teaching the Arts - Annenberg Media
Grades
9 to 12tag(s): creativity (91)
In the Classroom
This is a professional site rich in ideas for any teacher looking for new ideas or a jump-start to teach the arts. Make this course your personal goal for summer break or a collaborative professional development group.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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English Renaissance Drama - Anniina Jokinen
Grades
9 to 12tag(s): elizabethan (13), renaissance (38)
In the Classroom
Have students "become" one of the rival playwrights after researching the times and the playwright might be interesting. Perhaps students could do a panel discussion or write a blog entry as their "playwright." Don't miss the Introduction section to get valuable information about the theaters and the staging conventions of the time.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Applied and Interactive Theatre Guide - Toni Sant
Grades
9 to 12The top of each site will give you a brief overview and then there is a row of book sources that you can purchase (clicking on them will take you to Amazon). Scroll down past those for the wealth of the site.
In the Classroom
Setting up for a direct link to one of the main areas like History of Theatre will allow your students a veritable feast of areas to choose from. They can look from ancient Greek theatre to marionette puppets to magic-lantern shows. Theatre in Education and WWW Resources and Links are also very useful to the classroom teacher.If you teach Humanities, Radical Theatre is a good source for some of the epic, theatre of the absurd, and Guerrilla Girls art. Steer away from Drama Therapy, Hacktivism, and Psychodrama.
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The Educational Theatre Association - EdTA
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): acting (19)
In the Classroom
Going to the Eduction under the resources tab and scanning down the topics will provide you with a lot of information. They are selling their stamped goods, of course, but the goal of the site is to let people know about the society and provide support for those who teach drama. It is also a great place to network and they have programs for middle school as well as high school students.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Multicultural Theatre in Music - Iris R. Davis
Grades
4 to 6tag(s): diversity (37)
In the Classroom
The joy of units offered like this is being able to use them in their entirety or pick, choose, and adapt to your own classroom needs. If your language arts series includes a theme on creativity or drama, this is a natural extension of that theme.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Monologue Archive
Grades
8 to 12In the Classroom
If you are beginning podcasting in your clases, monologues could provide some material for your students to try. Consider creating a collection of monlogues on a certain theme or a "monologue of the week" podcast for your literature or drama class.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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