In the video below, teachers perform movement scenes from "The Haunted House", a story that appears in the 10th grade English Language textbook in Cambodia.

Pre-Reading/Listening Part II

Story Image and Movement

The second part of the reading/listening sequence is a movement creation activity. This comes after word orchestra and a first read or telling of the text. I break the story into about 5 movement images. In this example it is the whole story, but for longer text I sometimes work with chapters. Basically, it is a manageable chunk of text. You can see from my example that these “images” are key components to understanding the text. I usually break the class into groups of 4 or 5, and write enough images for everyone to work with. Each group gets an image and has a set amount of time to create a moving image for it. I don’t, at this time, want the students to add dialogue (although, as you can see in the video, some do anyway). After each group rehearses, we put it together into a sequence. I have at times added music to the performance. From here there are many possibilities. One is a final read or telling of the story. In this way, even students who are not at the level of understanding that the text demands, are still able to follow along because they have acted it out. Other possibilities include: thought tracking, conscience alley, at this moment and other possibilities that will be described in future posts.