Lights! Camera! Dialogue from the book!

Add a director to make dialogues from the book come alive

Rationale

Where I work we use the Super Minds series with our primary classes. Most units have a dialogue for the students to listen to, practise reading together and then adapt (at the higher levels). I find these kinds of activities really useful for the students but sometime the students are either reluctant to practise or go through the dialogues as quickly as possible, seeing the activity as something to get done rather than something that has value. Heaven forbid you ask them to repeat the task! I find this tweak makes the activity more enjoyable and makes the students happy to repeat the task.

Here is an example from page 48, unit 4 of Super Minds 6 ©CUP

The Tweak

Once I have done any lead in activities I want; clarifying/pre-teaching vocabulary, listening, talking about how the people feel, how you would describe them, etc. I then elicit from the students as many movie genres as possible and board them.

Then I split the students into groups of three, for dialogues with two people, where one student is Olivia, one is Charlie and one is the director.

The two students start the dialogue and the student who is the director listens and shouts out a movie genre whenever they want and the students acting out the dialogue, without breaking stride, have to continue the dialogue in the style their director has just given them. They continue in this style until the director changes the genre again.

Swap and repeat twice so everyone has a chance to be the director and everyone role plays each person in the dialogue.

Notes

The first time I do this I normally act it out with myself as one of the people in the dialogue so the students get the idea. After that I just refresh their memories of which movie genres they can use. There's no need to make the students listen to the frustrated thespian at the front of the class, let the students get on with it!

If necessary I clarify that there is no set frequency with which the director has to change the genre, although too frequently and too infrequently are to be avoided.

The same activity can also be done using adverbs of manner, adjectives to describe personality, famous people and probably several other options I haven't thought of! If you can think of any more please share them in the comments below