ALL GRADES
Today the children were slightly horrified as they listened to the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
It was the original version, written by Charles Perrault, where the wolf eats the Grandmother and then eats Little Red Riding Hood - no one saves them.
They were then told that the many different versions arose from this one.
The next version listened to was Roald Dahl's - they unanimously preferred this one, as Little Red Riding Hood takes care of the nasty old wolf and her wardrobe. Unfortunately pistols and knickers were involved.
JK's and SK's
The Junior and Senior Kindergarten classes, upon hearing the story and poem, proceeded to act out scary ferocious animals without words. First we spoke of frightening animals and creatures. They then individually showed the class how the animal would walk, what other movements it would make, and what noises it would produce. The rest of the class had to guess what animal they were pretending to be. Some of your children were quite frightening!
Grades 1 and 2
This group is very eager to discuss any upcoming productions! They are more than willing to sing, dance, and act, but we did get down to basics. The moral of the story of Red Riding Hood was discussed and they all agreed that it is important to be polite, but not to enagage in conversations with strangers, unless okayed by a parent or close guardian.
The class decided the poetic version by Dahl was much better and the importance of learning to take care of yourself really helped Red Riding Hood in the end.
This left little time to put on a short production of the story, at which point every child thought that the wolf should be ignorned and or reported or "dealt with" according to Dahl.
Grades 3 and 4
We began with "fluency in reading exercises" through idiomatic and proverbial expressions. Children are to focus on proper expression, breathing techniques, and reading according to punctuation marks. This is important to comprehension, without which we cannot achieve proper expression on stage.
This exercise was followed by the story of Little Red Riding Hood, followed again by shock. We will review the poem the following week. The children are to focus on understanding the characters and their intentions, thereby helping to develop proper expression. They are just beginning to realize that the characterization can take on animal form, but refer to different types of characters of people.
Grades 5, 6, and 7
This group used the story and poem to delve deeply into the meaning portrayed. The analyzed the characters in each story and offered comparisons to the real world. The story was portrayed against the poem using descriptions from real life. The overlay of the moral was very clear to the group, and the poem allowed them to express themselves in similar situations, offering "stay-safe" techniques. We have to work on expression without giggling, but then again, the poem kept giving them "unrealistic" defense ideas.
Regards to All,
Mrs. Deras
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