Alex Saint

Technofied Lesson Plan

**Comments on the lesson plan posted in Blue Italics**


High School Lesson Plan
Grade Level: 10-12
National Arts Education Standards:
Theatre: 3c, 3g, 4a, 5a, 5b, 6c, 7b, 7d
Montana Theatre Standards:
Materials: Montana OPI 2-2: Techniques
Copies of Drum Taps (Large Cast Edition) by Lindsay Sterling
Preparation:
Read the play as a class or individually.
Procedure:
The teacher/facilitator serves as the director of the play and the students become the
design team.
Divide the class into six small groups: scenery, properties, costumes, makeup, lighting, and
sound.
Each design team is responsible for exploring a variety of sources to research the
backgrounds of the characters' lives and, incorporating that knowledge in their group
designs
Student will make thumbnail sketches. The point is to get student to think beyond the
library for design research. As opposed to sketches, students could also create digital
renderings of their final designs.
o For example, the group responsible for scenery might examine visual art,
photographs and old videos for sources of cultural motifs to incorporate in a
backdrop design. On top of that, they also might be able to use one of many CAD
programs available to schools to incorporate these designs into an actual scale
model of the set.
o The costume designers might explore a variety of sources such as old mail- order
catalogues or advertisements in newspapers and magazines, visit vintage clothing
Alex Saint
Technofied Lesson Plan

stores. Most museums have online galleries of all of their holdings, especially
historical clothes! The students can build their proposed outfits from those sources
as well.
o The property crew can visit world museums online, visit local antique shops, talk
with relatives.
o The make-up designers might look at cosmetic catalogues and makeup design
texts to discover the proper cosmetic palates of Civil War-era Citizens. Students
may also access makeup catalogs online, to broaden their searches.
o The group responsible for lighting details might contact area lighting houses or
theaters as well as lighting texts to discover how bomb explosions can be
simulated on stage. Students may also use What You See Is What You Get
(WYSIWYG), which is a lighting simulator for stage productions.
After several days of work, have each team present its research and preliminary
designs at a simulated production meeting. Designs and research can be compiled
into a single Google Doc.
As director, respond to your design staff on the appropriateness of their artistic
choices.
Have the class collectively evaluate these choices for cultural (period) authenticity,
production validity and practicality.
Discuss strategies to unify the six visual and aural design elements for the
productions.
Have the students redesign their portion of the production and make a final
presentation.
Assessment:
Work with the students to create a criteria for addressing the validity and practicality of their
designs as well as how the designs contribute to the whole and are aesthetically pleasing.
Attention to visual art elements and principles and musical effectiveness should be included. Have
the students include their first and second designs in their portfolios along with their personal
assessment of the improvement of the second design and a plan for further improvement.
Based on a lesson plan by Johnny Saldana, ASU




Alex Saint
Technofied Lesson Plan

REDONE LESSON PLAN

High School Lesson Plan
Grade Level: 10-12
National Arts Education Standards:
Theatre: 3c, 3g, 4a, 5a, 5b, 6c, 7b, 7d
Montana Theatre Standards: Montana OPI 2-2: Techniques
Materials:
Copies of Drum Taps (Large Cast Edition) by Lindsay Sterling
Preparation:
Read the play as a class or individually.
Procedure:
The teacher/facilitator serves as the director of the play and the students become the
design team.
Divide the class into six small groups: scenery, properties, costumes, makeup, lighting, and
sound.
Each design team is responsible for exploring a variety of sources to research the
backgrounds of the characters' lives and, incorporating that knowledge in their group
designs
Students will use either any of the programs listed below, photographs, or digital collages
to present their research and final designs.
o For example, the group responsible for scenery might examine historical online
sources and photographs, and use a CAD program to build a design for the set.
o The costume designers might explore a variety online clothing museums and use
the references from there to build photo collages of their desired costume designs.
They may also use online vintage advertisement scans to give them a better idea
of fashion at the time.
o The property crew can visit world museums online, visit local antique shops, talk
with relatives.
Alex Saint
Technofied Lesson Plan

o The make-up designers might look at cosmetic catalogues and makeup design
texts, as well as online makeup stores and tutorials to discover the proper
cosmetic palates of Civil War-era Citizens.
o The group responsible for lighting details might contact area lighting houses or
theaters as well as lighting texts to discover how bomb explosions can be
simulated on stage, afterwards, they can simulate what they know by using
WYSIWYG to set up their initial lighting design.
After several days of work, have each team upload their designs to a Google Doc
file, and have the file be shown the following class.
As director, respond to your design staff on the appropriateness of their artistic
choices.
Have the class collectively evaluate these choices for cultural (period) authenticity,
production validity and practicality.
Discuss strategies to unify the six visual and aural design elements for the
productions.
Have the students redesign their portion of the production and make a final
presentation.
Assessment:
Work with the students to create a criteria for addressing the validity and practicality of their
designs as well as how the designs contribute to the whole and are aesthetically pleasing.
Attention to visual art elements and principles and musical effectiveness should be included. Have
the students include their first and second designs in their portfolios along with their personal
assessment of the improvement of the second design and a plan for further improvement.
Based on a lesson plan by Johnny Saldana, ASU

CAD PROGRAMS:
Google Sketchup
http://sketchup.google.com/intl/fr/
Blender
http://www.blender.org/


Alex Saint
Technofied Lesson Plan

ONLINE CLOTHING MUSEUMS:
Chicago History Museum Digital Collection
http://digitalcollection.chicagohistory.org/

ONLINE MAKEUP PREVIEWS
Graftobian Makeup Company
http://www.graftobian.com/

ONLINE LIGHTING SOFTWARE
What You See is What You Get
http://www.cast-soft.com/wysiwyg/overview





This lesson plan is centered on independent student learning, so incorporating technology
was quite the challenge. I have always found it troubling to include technology within a Theatre
classroom beyond the usual Lets act for cameras! model that most classes seem to use as an
inclusion to technology. Design has more roots in using technology to make the very foundations
of a show run, so I decided to find a lesson plan that more centered on that facet of the all-
encompassing Theatre subject. When looking for lesson plans, most already had technology
Alex Saint
Technofied Lesson Plan

inclusions, but they were far beyond the reach of a student in High School, and the average
programs cost way to much money for an average budget. This is where my second problem arose.
I wanted to include technology that was easy to use for the students, but also make it affordable
for any teacher to use. I am a huge fan of FreeTech4Teachers, so I wanted to follow that model as
closely as possible for this lesson. I wasnt able to find a free program for every facet of design,
sadly, but I was able to find free versions for most of the parts of the lesson. Also, for purposes of
this lesson, along with design guidance, the teacher would also need to facilitate the student
learning of the programs used in this lesson.
The original lesson purpose was listed as getting to students to go beyond the normal
resources such as the library in terms of design research. I decided to take this a step further and
implement modern technologies within this lesson to further to research and designs students can
do. I wasnt a big fan of Sketch Thumbnails when there are many other resources that students
will be using in the theatre world to present their designs!
I tried to pick digital resources that were both easily accessible and easy to learn and use,
since the students do not have a large amount of time to learn overly complicated software for the
purpose of an introductory lesson. The inclusion of these resources provide not only an
introduction to industry standard design software, but also keeps students current with
technology in general by learning to use these new programs.
Lastly I included the google doc option to the lesson because I find that uploaded designs
are easier then packing an entire set of references to a single class.