Shadow Puppet Assignment

 

9th graders read Never Fall Down, listened to live music by Arn Chorn-Pond, and saw a Khmer dance performance at the Joyce Theater. They reviewed methods found in Cambodian shadow puppets online and made a puppet theater in five, 50-minute visual art classes.

 

1. Students quickly modeled poses for corresponding torn paper collages. Each selected a final pose to glue and title.

     
         

         Lesson plan (click to enlarge)

2 + 3. Working in self-selected groups, classes storyboarded narratives. Using cardstock paper, x-acto knives, hole punchers, fasteners, tape and dowels students made puppets with movable parts. 

                        

4.  Students practiced choreographing movements. Groups performed and recorded their skits with a digital camera. Some added backgrounds by illuminating sharpie drawings on transparencies.

5.  Finally, 9th graders edited their shadow puppet videos using iMovie in a school computer lab. 

Below: 3rd graders narrated skits in Spanish and French. They worked with their foreign language teachers to script and voice record dialogue. I combined the audio and video files.