This Tuesday we had another successful rehearsal at Higher Achievement. While our numbers keep dwindling slightly, we still have a pretty good amount of students. There are some different kids there each week because they often get rotated based on their behavior (if they’ve been good- they come with us, and vice-versa), but we usually have pretty much the same children each week. It has been really fun getting to know the kids a little bit more and to see them come out of there shell. I’ve spent a lot of time with one girl in specific while we are in our small groups. She was very shy at first but now she just wants to rehearse her lines and participate a lot more, especially in our small groups.

This week we started off rehearsal by playing the mirror theater game (they love the theater games). We had two children come up at a time and one was assigned to be the mirror and the other was the mirror-er. The kids could not talk and we encouraged them to focus on mimicking exaggerated actions and facial expressions. The kids really got into it because they became super competitive, seeing who could do the best facial expressions. This escalated into the children doing dance moves, which made it even more fun because it was kind of like a dance off. I think they liked this game a lot and it helped them with their self-expression and performance confidence. We played this game for about 20 minutes and then broke up into our same small groups to practice their lines. This was beneficial because we read the lines closely and I was able to help the kids with any mispronunciations or questions they had. With about 10 minutes left in rehearsal, we had some of the kids come up to the front of the room and recite their lines in front of the whole class. While they still did pretty good, it’s clear were going to have to work on certain things like vocalization and not holding the script in front of their face. We definitely still have a way to go but the rehearsals have been going well and the children seem to be really enjoying it.