My English group have been working on a project to produce their own short play. First of all they took a short story called: 'They forgot to plant an acorn on the moon'. This story by Phil Shapiro (an American Primary School teacher - see his website for this and more stories) had no speech within it. The children in small groups turned the Narrative into a short Play Script - see example. We looked at examples on guidance on the internet (via our school website) about writing play scripts.
Following rehearsals of the plays we looked at how the scripts & the role of a narrator could be improved / adapted to tell the story. Some children also added their own slant to the story.
The finished scripts were then recorded on digital audio recorders. We started by r
ecording one scene at a time and looked at issues such as speaking into the microphone, speaking slowly and clearly, rustling of papers etc.
ecording one scene at a time and looked at issues such as speaking into the microphone, speaking slowly and clearly, rustling of papers etc.The recordings were imported into Windows 'Movie Maker'.
We talked about how radio plays have sound effects and background music. The children then found and used some space sounds and suitable background music to go with their recordings.
In movie maker they then added titles, text and credits plus some images.
You can see below some of the final productions. All of the children are in Year 5 (9 and 10 years old).
