The fourth graders at one of my buildings are creating their own fractured fairy tales in Drama class. They took a fairy tale and altered it slightly to make a new story. The students will be performing their creations in December and I thought, "Wouldn't it be neat if the students created movie posters to hang in the cafetorium during their show?" So I took my idea to the drama teacher and she was really excited about the idea - so off to planning my lesson. I created a slideshow with many kid friendly movies - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Goonies, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, the Emperor's New Groove, etc. I asked the students to raise their hand when there was something they noticed that most of the movie posters had in common. I gave them a round or two of watching the slideshow before I started to call on students. I got great answers which I placed into two lists. List one had things they would have to have on their poster and the other optional choices -- I did not label these lists just yet. Students reported great observations - title, characters, background, dates, actor names, presented by, etc. Once we had our lists I told the students that they have been working on something in another class that had a title, characters, a setting, and a date it would be presented to an audience -- sure enough the excitement in the room started to grow. I then explained that they would be creating "movie posters" for their Fractured Fairy Tales. For the first class each student was responsible for making a rough draft of a poster for their group - they could discuss titles and such next class. So, each student created a version of their Fairy Tale on paper. Next class I had the students get together in their Fairy Tale groups and discuss each other's rough drafts. I gave examples of things I should hear, "I like the way you drew your letters, but I like this other title" or "I like where you placed the characters" or "I like your wolf and I like your pig" - After about 5 minutes of them discussing their work I handed out another piece of paper to be their 2nd rough draft. I asked students to either re-draw or cut out pieces they liked from their papers and arrange them on their next draft. The 3rd class I handed out their Final Draft paper - poster size. The students then had to re-create their 2nd rough draft onto their final paper. The classes worked really well together and I only had to help a couple of groups work through some issues -- mostly based on how they were talking to each other. After helping them through their issues they were off and running! A few classes later when I was talking with the Drama teacher about the project she mentioned that she wanted them to do backgrounds that we could project behind them while they were presenting. I offered to have them do it in art! The technical theatre person in me was so excited! The following class I had the groups split up their teams - some students worked on their poster while the remaining people in the group worked on different backgrounds for their story. Most groups are ending up with 2-5 background scenes! The students are drawing their backgrounds with pencil, coloring with oil pastel and watercoloring overtop. The depth of color in these are beautiful! When they are complete I will be making a slide show of their backgrounds by taking pictures and entering them into the computer. During their show we will sit with the script and as they change scenes I will be able to go to the next slide! I am super excited for these shows and will post an update on how everything turns out!

An original rolled one-sheet movie poster (27" x 40") from 1999 for The King and I. Not a reproduction. Certificate of Authenticity (COA) included.