ABOUT LITERATURE AT PLAY®
Synopsis
Literature at Play residencies support the New York State Learning Standards and meet the NYC DOE Theatre and Music Blueprint Benchmarks
How the Program Works
In our signature residency program, Literature at Play, Teaching Artists lead students in theatre and songwriting exercises to adapt a children’s book into an original musical!
Curriculum Adaptations
All New York City Children’s Theater Teaching Artists are trained in how to adapt Literature at Play for special populations.
Students with Disabilities
Our curriculum is designed to meet the sensory, social, and behavioral needs of each participating student. We work closely with the classroom teachers, paraprofessionals and school administrators in order to specifically devise a program model with differentiated lesson plans for each of our partnering schools.
Multilingual Learners
We offer language supports for multilingual students, honoring the home language they speak. The program is designed to foster knowledge and competence with speaking and listening to English. Our Teaching Artists identify students’ language proficiency levels and develop developmentally appropriate lesson plans with tools that support language acquisition, including scaffolding input (comprehension) and output (production).
Academic Goals
- Reinforce students’ language and literacy skills through theatre and songwriting
- Expand students’ writing abilities with an emphasis on strengthening literary elements, dialogue, expressive or descriptive language
- Increase reading comprehension skills, such as sequencing, making predictions and text-to-self connections
Artistic Goals
- Write a play with a clear beginning, middle and end
- Understand the elements of a well-written play (i.e. inciting incident, conflict, resolution, action, high stakes, low stakes)
- Understand characters’ motivations and express dialogue with corresponding emotion
- Speak/sing in front of a group, demonstrated through greater risk-taking, projection and articulation
Cost
Price varies depending on length of session.
Literature at Play in Action
A few photos from our in-class and virtual Literature at Play sessions
