Tacky the Penguin - Movement
Tacky the Penguin was one of my absolute favorite books growing up. It tells the story of a penguin named Tacky who was different from the rest of the penguins. He didn't talk or sing beautifully like the rest of them. He didn't dive gracefully or march like the rest of them. But one day, hunters came along to hunt the penguins. And while the rest of the penguins hid, Tacky fearlessly stood up to them, confusing them with the way he moved and sang; that wasn't the way they thought the penguins they were hunting acted! So the hunters left and Tacky saved himself and his companions!
Not only is it a fun story with a nice message, but it also has wonderful unique characters students can enjoy exploring.
For these last few weeks I'll be visiting my first grade classroom, we're going to be working with this book, Tacky the Penguin, in order to prepare for a small performance we'll do for another class in the school. How the performance will end up will depend on how the student engage best with the material and what they seem most interested in.
This week, I started by introducing the book to them and doing some activities to engage in the movement of the main groups of characters. They marched around the classroom "follow the leader" style first like the penguins (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), then like Tacky the penguin (1, 2, 4, 2 1/2, 6, 0, 1, 3, etc.). The next week when I visited and asked what they remembered about the characters, the numbers they marched to ended up being what seemed to be most memorable. That just shows me that it's so true that when the students can move and engage with their bodies with the material, they remember it so much better!
I wanted to start to introduce them to the idea of performance, but in a safe and gradual way. So we worked as a class to act out a few pages of the book. We started out by all being the penguins, then we did it again and I asked some of the students to be hunters instead. Then we did it again and another group of students became the iceberg in the story. It actually worked really well to gradually add the different groups of characters. I think if I had started with all the students trying to act out different parts all at once, no one would have known what to do. The only difficulty was trying to get the students to wait patiently when their character wasn't doing anything. I found I sometimes needed to read faster and faster because the students were just so anxious to do their parts!
I am really excited about using this book to create a little informal performance for the class. I can see that the students are getting more and more comfortable with using movement to show character and I love that I have that enthusiasm and creativity to work with.
Tacky the Penguin - movement lesson plan
Not only is it a fun story with a nice message, but it also has wonderful unique characters students can enjoy exploring.
For these last few weeks I'll be visiting my first grade classroom, we're going to be working with this book, Tacky the Penguin, in order to prepare for a small performance we'll do for another class in the school. How the performance will end up will depend on how the student engage best with the material and what they seem most interested in.
This week, I started by introducing the book to them and doing some activities to engage in the movement of the main groups of characters. They marched around the classroom "follow the leader" style first like the penguins (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), then like Tacky the penguin (1, 2, 4, 2 1/2, 6, 0, 1, 3, etc.). The next week when I visited and asked what they remembered about the characters, the numbers they marched to ended up being what seemed to be most memorable. That just shows me that it's so true that when the students can move and engage with their bodies with the material, they remember it so much better!
I wanted to start to introduce them to the idea of performance, but in a safe and gradual way. So we worked as a class to act out a few pages of the book. We started out by all being the penguins, then we did it again and I asked some of the students to be hunters instead. Then we did it again and another group of students became the iceberg in the story. It actually worked really well to gradually add the different groups of characters. I think if I had started with all the students trying to act out different parts all at once, no one would have known what to do. The only difficulty was trying to get the students to wait patiently when their character wasn't doing anything. I found I sometimes needed to read faster and faster because the students were just so anxious to do their parts!
I am really excited about using this book to create a little informal performance for the class. I can see that the students are getting more and more comfortable with using movement to show character and I love that I have that enthusiasm and creativity to work with.
Tacky the Penguin - movement lesson plan
This sounds like such a great project to do with the students. I also love the Tacky the Penguin books and have used them many times in my own practice to teach art to students. Helping the students embrace the imperfection and find their own style is such an important principle to teach.
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