Ideas

IDEA #12: Activity Set: Artistic & Performative

The following activities can support student agency through choice while also emphasizing skills such as creativity, composition, public speaking, and audience consideration.

Performative Activities

• Blocking of a Scene: Students can make choices about how characters might behave and interact in a scene (these might be characters from a text, figures from history, elements in scientific processes, or even mathematical coordinates on a grid).
• Monologue: Students compose, present, or record a monologue from the perspective of a character or an idea that they are studying.
• Comedy Performance or Script: Students create a short, comedic performance about a subject.
• Teaching a Lesson: Students teach course concepts or project creations to their peers.

Artistic Activities

• Cartoon or Comic Strip: Students create cartoons or comic strips to teach others about a topic, and they can practice presenting information using a mixed written-and-visual medium that is easily accessible to an audience.
• Book Cover: Students design a book cover for a concept by distilling the concept into its most important points and using those points to compose a title and to inspire illustrations with symbolic imagery that are representative of the whole concept.
• Graffiti or Murals: Students visually represent content that they understand and connect with in order to showcase it or teach others about it.
• Models and Dioramas: Students can apply and demonstrate research about a concept by creating two- or three-dimensional representations of ideas or processes.

For more ideas, see The Menu.

Resources