I'll email the script to Sedina and Adam. I don't know how to attach it here. Suggestions are welcome. Also, would you like me to have students choose their parts before Tuesday?
Sona
Friday, February 6, 2009
New Songs
Introduction Song #1
Working hard is not for me
Tricking people is the key
The charming spider that I am
I get my way whenever I can
As small as I appear to be
I’m very smart … just wait and see!
Beginning Part Song #2
The villagers carve the drums all day
Anansi turns his head away
I’ll take the drums along with me
And bring back all the gold you’ll see
Selfishness fills his greedy heart
Happily he goes to make a brand new start.
Middle Song #3
Anansi arrives in Sierra Leone
He sees a potion that makes things grow
Eight legs he has to do things faster
The farmers didn’t think it would be a disaster
A gulp of potion makes him tall
Now he feels like the king of all!
Ending Song - Journey Song #4 (Repeated 3 times throughout the ending)
Walking, walking tall and lean
Can’t wait to find my cocoa bean
Walking, walking all day long
My cocoa bean will make me strong!
Working hard is not for me
Tricking people is the key
The charming spider that I am
I get my way whenever I can
As small as I appear to be
I’m very smart … just wait and see!
Beginning Part Song #2
The villagers carve the drums all day
Anansi turns his head away
I’ll take the drums along with me
And bring back all the gold you’ll see
Selfishness fills his greedy heart
Happily he goes to make a brand new start.
Middle Song #3
Anansi arrives in Sierra Leone
He sees a potion that makes things grow
Eight legs he has to do things faster
The farmers didn’t think it would be a disaster
A gulp of potion makes him tall
Now he feels like the king of all!
Ending Song - Journey Song #4 (Repeated 3 times throughout the ending)
Walking, walking tall and lean
Can’t wait to find my cocoa bean
Walking, walking all day long
My cocoa bean will make me strong!
Revision!
With alot of enthusiasm, we have revised most of our story! It's been alot of work but the students have learned alot from the process. We have completed the script and new songs also. Here is the outline:
Anansi’s Journey Through West Africa
Beginning
Setting – Guinea
Anansi is carving a drum on a hot sunny day. He feels tired and lazy to complete carving the entire drum. He tricks the villagers by telling them they if they help him with his drum, he will share the gold he will get from the emperor in return. When the villagers are done carving the drums they are ready to go with Anansi to the emperor to drop off the drum and get the gold. He tells them that they should rest because they have worked so hard and he would take the drum to the emperor. The villagers go and rest and they never see Anansi again. He leaves Guinea with all the gold.
Middle
Setting – Seirra Leone
Anansi notices the farmers in Seirra Leone using a special potion that helps their crops grow big. He wonders if he could also grow big if he drinks the potion. He tells the farmers that he could do their job of spraying the potion on the crops much faster because he had 8 legs that he could use all at once. They love the idea and go and do some other work that needs to be done. While they are gone, Anansi drinks the potions. Instantly, he grows big! When the farmers come back, they realize Anansi had tricked them because their crops had not grown. He leaves the country before the farmers could find him.
Ending
Anansi is proud of himself because he has successfully tricked the villagers into doing his work for him and without sharing the gold with them. He also can’t believe how foolish the farmers were to trust him with the special potion. Flaunting his gold, he arrives in Ghana. The evil lion notices Anansi flaunting his gold. He goes up to Anansi and asks him if he wants to grow even bigger so he could be the largest insect in the forest. Without hesitation, he agrees. However, the lion tells him that in return, Anansi must give him all his gold. Of course, Anansi does not like this idea. So he secretly exchanges the gold in his bag with stones and gives the bag to the lion. When he ask how he can get bigger, by eating the cocoa bean on the largest tree by the Niger River. Throughout his journey to the Nile River, he gets lost and needs directions. Every time he stops and asks the villagers for help they ask him for something in return – his gold. By the time he gets to the Niger River, he has no more gold left. When he gets to the tree he eats as many cocoa beans as he can. To his surprise, he starts to shrink! Everyone laughs at him and the lion realizes that he also got tricked when he notices the stones in his bag. He finally learns his lesson – What goes around, comes around!
The villagers all celebrate!
Anansi’s Journey Through West Africa
Beginning
Setting – Guinea
Anansi is carving a drum on a hot sunny day. He feels tired and lazy to complete carving the entire drum. He tricks the villagers by telling them they if they help him with his drum, he will share the gold he will get from the emperor in return. When the villagers are done carving the drums they are ready to go with Anansi to the emperor to drop off the drum and get the gold. He tells them that they should rest because they have worked so hard and he would take the drum to the emperor. The villagers go and rest and they never see Anansi again. He leaves Guinea with all the gold.
Middle
Setting – Seirra Leone
Anansi notices the farmers in Seirra Leone using a special potion that helps their crops grow big. He wonders if he could also grow big if he drinks the potion. He tells the farmers that he could do their job of spraying the potion on the crops much faster because he had 8 legs that he could use all at once. They love the idea and go and do some other work that needs to be done. While they are gone, Anansi drinks the potions. Instantly, he grows big! When the farmers come back, they realize Anansi had tricked them because their crops had not grown. He leaves the country before the farmers could find him.
Ending
Anansi is proud of himself because he has successfully tricked the villagers into doing his work for him and without sharing the gold with them. He also can’t believe how foolish the farmers were to trust him with the special potion. Flaunting his gold, he arrives in Ghana. The evil lion notices Anansi flaunting his gold. He goes up to Anansi and asks him if he wants to grow even bigger so he could be the largest insect in the forest. Without hesitation, he agrees. However, the lion tells him that in return, Anansi must give him all his gold. Of course, Anansi does not like this idea. So he secretly exchanges the gold in his bag with stones and gives the bag to the lion. When he ask how he can get bigger, by eating the cocoa bean on the largest tree by the Niger River. Throughout his journey to the Nile River, he gets lost and needs directions. Every time he stops and asks the villagers for help they ask him for something in return – his gold. By the time he gets to the Niger River, he has no more gold left. When he gets to the tree he eats as many cocoa beans as he can. To his surprise, he starts to shrink! Everyone laughs at him and the lion realizes that he also got tricked when he notices the stones in his bag. He finally learns his lesson – What goes around, comes around!
The villagers all celebrate!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Homework - How could I forget?
Here is the homework:
Sona’s Class Homework
-Finish dialogue that has been started
-Create a celebration dance (we’ve started this and finish it), use movements from visiting artist and their own inspired movements
-Been split into two groups, each group must create and present two drumming patterns, either based on visiting artist or their own ideas (which they had plenty)
Amanda & Mubeen Homework
-6 groups, 4 lines, each group will come up with the genre they want for each song, write some notes about the mood or ideas for the feel of their songs, describe what the song will sound like, fast or slow, loud, soft, mood, what is being expressed
**finish song lyrics and email to Adam by Friday
-Edit dialogue to less than what is there
-simplify and refine story, less = more
Sona’s Class Homework
-Finish dialogue that has been started
-Create a celebration dance (we’ve started this and finish it), use movements from visiting artist and their own inspired movements
-Been split into two groups, each group must create and present two drumming patterns, either based on visiting artist or their own ideas (which they had plenty)
Amanda & Mubeen Homework
-6 groups, 4 lines, each group will come up with the genre they want for each song, write some notes about the mood or ideas for the feel of their songs, describe what the song will sound like, fast or slow, loud, soft, mood, what is being expressed
**finish song lyrics and email to Adam by Friday
-Edit dialogue to less than what is there
-simplify and refine story, less = more
4th Class Wrap Up
Tuesday’s class went very well, if not a little chaotic. We started off with a quick game and a vocal warm up as per usual.
With Amanda & Mubeen’s class, we delved right into making some decisions about the style of their opera and some starting places for movement. We made the following decisions:
-their opera would be based on a rock, hip hop and r & b base
-we would create different themes for the different contests in the story and for all the different characters
-we would create movement for the winner’s dance as well as incorporating movement through out the piece
We then broke down into three groups: movement, text and song to work on those aspects of the piece. I challenged Amanda or Mubeen to work on the text and pare it down as it was quite lengthy. I worked with the movement group to come up with some movement vocabulary. We came up with the beginnings of a dance and some movements to represent the goddesses and gods in the story. Adam worked with the music group to begin a lyric creation process.
My only concern for this A & M’s class is the story is a bit confusing and needs to be ironed out. If I can give them the task of doing this next week, then I think we will be well on our way.
Sona’s class went very well. We started off with a warm up game and some singing. I really got them to over exaggerate the vowels and open their mouths and this helped their sound immensely.
They wrote some great lyrics which Adam will work on music for next week. We also had a brainstorming session with this class for some starting ideas from the story for movement and music. We broke down into smaller groups like we did for A & M’s classes, but I gave Sona the task of creating some dialogue and narration bits as this story didn’t have much dialogue at all. For Sona’s class, Adam and I already have some ideas of character breakdowns and how the final piece might shape up. I am thinking, we will have a narrative chorus of about 10 - 12 students, a movement chorus of about 10 – 12 students and Anansi and other character might be played by 3 different students and then another 6 students providing instrumentation. This is just an idea however and I will flesh out more in the next few days.
Next week, I have the daunting task of piecing all of the work together...These operas are really shaping up!
With Amanda & Mubeen’s class, we delved right into making some decisions about the style of their opera and some starting places for movement. We made the following decisions:
-their opera would be based on a rock, hip hop and r & b base
-we would create different themes for the different contests in the story and for all the different characters
-we would create movement for the winner’s dance as well as incorporating movement through out the piece
We then broke down into three groups: movement, text and song to work on those aspects of the piece. I challenged Amanda or Mubeen to work on the text and pare it down as it was quite lengthy. I worked with the movement group to come up with some movement vocabulary. We came up with the beginnings of a dance and some movements to represent the goddesses and gods in the story. Adam worked with the music group to begin a lyric creation process.
My only concern for this A & M’s class is the story is a bit confusing and needs to be ironed out. If I can give them the task of doing this next week, then I think we will be well on our way.
Sona’s class went very well. We started off with a warm up game and some singing. I really got them to over exaggerate the vowels and open their mouths and this helped their sound immensely.
They wrote some great lyrics which Adam will work on music for next week. We also had a brainstorming session with this class for some starting ideas from the story for movement and music. We broke down into smaller groups like we did for A & M’s classes, but I gave Sona the task of creating some dialogue and narration bits as this story didn’t have much dialogue at all. For Sona’s class, Adam and I already have some ideas of character breakdowns and how the final piece might shape up. I am thinking, we will have a narrative chorus of about 10 - 12 students, a movement chorus of about 10 – 12 students and Anansi and other character might be played by 3 different students and then another 6 students providing instrumentation. This is just an idea however and I will flesh out more in the next few days.
Next week, I have the daunting task of piecing all of the work together...These operas are really shaping up!
Week 4
I am really impressed with the lyrics my students came up with while I was away all of last week.
After reading a few stories about Anansi myself, I have realized my students have protrayed Anansi incorrectly in their story. Something, I should have done before which I did today was have groups of students (7 groups) read 7 different stories involving Anansi. After reading the stories, the groups came up with characteristics of Anansi and provided proof from the text. We have know concluded that Anansi is not the nice and kind spider we protrayed in our story but infact he is a trickster, greedy, naughty, lazy, etc.
So, as a class we have decided to start the opera with a song that outlines these characteristics (Adam, we'll have the lyrics ready for this for next week!). However, throughout our opera, Anansi wants others to change their opinions about him and hence is trying to be kind and helpful to everyone.
The students want to change some parts of the story we have written after reading the stories today. We will work around the story not making any changes to the lyrics.
In the groups we were seperated in yesterday, my group worked on the text and changing it into a script. This was more difficult than I had thought. Even though we didn't get much written down, we had a great discussion about the characters that were involved and talked about possible settings. It was great to hear the students incorporate what we have been learning in class about physical regions of Africa, natural resources, how drums are craved, etc. into their opera.
The students were really excited and wanted to include a lot of dialogue. They had so many ideas and wanted to include them all! I am trying my best to keep it short and simple. This is such a difficult task!
In my notes I have the set design and costume prep scheduled for next week. Is this still on for next week?
Sona
After reading a few stories about Anansi myself, I have realized my students have protrayed Anansi incorrectly in their story. Something, I should have done before which I did today was have groups of students (7 groups) read 7 different stories involving Anansi. After reading the stories, the groups came up with characteristics of Anansi and provided proof from the text. We have know concluded that Anansi is not the nice and kind spider we protrayed in our story but infact he is a trickster, greedy, naughty, lazy, etc.
So, as a class we have decided to start the opera with a song that outlines these characteristics (Adam, we'll have the lyrics ready for this for next week!). However, throughout our opera, Anansi wants others to change their opinions about him and hence is trying to be kind and helpful to everyone.
The students want to change some parts of the story we have written after reading the stories today. We will work around the story not making any changes to the lyrics.
In the groups we were seperated in yesterday, my group worked on the text and changing it into a script. This was more difficult than I had thought. Even though we didn't get much written down, we had a great discussion about the characters that were involved and talked about possible settings. It was great to hear the students incorporate what we have been learning in class about physical regions of Africa, natural resources, how drums are craved, etc. into their opera.
The students were really excited and wanted to include a lot of dialogue. They had so many ideas and wanted to include them all! I am trying my best to keep it short and simple. This is such a difficult task!
In my notes I have the set design and costume prep scheduled for next week. Is this still on for next week?
Sona
Hi All!
So here's my update on yesterday's classes at North Kipling JMS:
In Amanda and Mubeen's class, we split into three groups. Sedina polled the class about musical styles they wanted to work with, and came up with Rock, Hip-hop and R&B. I took the group of students who wanted to work on music, and we talked a bit about song-writing (rhythm and rhyme scheme, etc.) and character introductions through song. I split my group further into six groups of two, assigned each group a character and assigned them the work of writing a four to eight line song about their character. There were only five main characters, so the last group is going to write a 'challenge' song, to be sung when Aries challenges Zeus to a duel. As well as a few lines of lyrics, they have to write a few words describing the mood and character of the song, and jot down any ideas they have as far as the musical quality of the song. Hopefully, they can get that to their teachers by Friday, and I'll have the weekend to set their songs to music, since it's getting down to crunch time.
Sona's class presented their songs, which are fantastic:
Anansi only wants to help,
The others turn their heads away.
Dulayha makes a strong command,
"Out you go...go today!"
All alone, he leaves his home,
Sadness fills his heart.
To a new land he sadly goes,
Forced to make a brand new start.
Anansi arrives in Sierra Leone.
He is feeling low.
Very soon he meets a stranger,
A man he does not know.
A potion given
Brings new hope.
His tiny size
makes it hard to cope.
Conflict and anger are in the air.
King and traders are head to head.
Anansi has an idea to share.
"Listen to me," he firmly said.
Such a small spider,
No one believed.
When the truth came out
All were relieved.
Happiness was felt by all,
Anansi saved the day.
Judging other is not right
And often gets in the way.
I'll set these songs to West-African inspired melodies...I'm thinking to keep it mostly a capella. Sedina then split the class into three, and I worked again with the group of students interested in making music. We came up with points in the story where we would like to use the Guinean drumming they know, and I split them into two groups. Each group will have to come up with two differnt rhythm patterns for next week and present them on the Djembe, Kashishi, Ahache and Gankoqui. We'll use those patterns to accompany the movement parts of the story, when Anansi travels between countries, etc.
Well, that's all for now...next Tuesday should be interesting, putting it all together!
So here's my update on yesterday's classes at North Kipling JMS:
In Amanda and Mubeen's class, we split into three groups. Sedina polled the class about musical styles they wanted to work with, and came up with Rock, Hip-hop and R&B. I took the group of students who wanted to work on music, and we talked a bit about song-writing (rhythm and rhyme scheme, etc.) and character introductions through song. I split my group further into six groups of two, assigned each group a character and assigned them the work of writing a four to eight line song about their character. There were only five main characters, so the last group is going to write a 'challenge' song, to be sung when Aries challenges Zeus to a duel. As well as a few lines of lyrics, they have to write a few words describing the mood and character of the song, and jot down any ideas they have as far as the musical quality of the song. Hopefully, they can get that to their teachers by Friday, and I'll have the weekend to set their songs to music, since it's getting down to crunch time.
Sona's class presented their songs, which are fantastic:
Anansi only wants to help,
The others turn their heads away.
Dulayha makes a strong command,
"Out you go...go today!"
All alone, he leaves his home,
Sadness fills his heart.
To a new land he sadly goes,
Forced to make a brand new start.
Anansi arrives in Sierra Leone.
He is feeling low.
Very soon he meets a stranger,
A man he does not know.
A potion given
Brings new hope.
His tiny size
makes it hard to cope.
Conflict and anger are in the air.
King and traders are head to head.
Anansi has an idea to share.
"Listen to me," he firmly said.
Such a small spider,
No one believed.
When the truth came out
All were relieved.
Happiness was felt by all,
Anansi saved the day.
Judging other is not right
And often gets in the way.
I'll set these songs to West-African inspired melodies...I'm thinking to keep it mostly a capella. Sedina then split the class into three, and I worked again with the group of students interested in making music. We came up with points in the story where we would like to use the Guinean drumming they know, and I split them into two groups. Each group will have to come up with two differnt rhythm patterns for next week and present them on the Djembe, Kashishi, Ahache and Gankoqui. We'll use those patterns to accompany the movement parts of the story, when Anansi travels between countries, etc.
Well, that's all for now...next Tuesday should be interesting, putting it all together!
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