We had our last visit with our Higher Achievement students before the performance. For this visit we were hoping to clean up the act and have the kids prepared for the final presentation on Friday. However, we had some difficulties but were able to be somewhat successful.

In order to ensure we are the best prepared we can we reviewed with the students their parts and were finally able to find out who would or would not be there this Friday. This caused some stress since we then had to change around some students and who their characters would be, but the students handled this well and we will be prepared to make last minute changes if need be. One of us may need to step in for one or two lines but it will not be for a major part.

We had them run through the entire act and they seem to understand the lines but will most likely not do much moving around but maybe the atmosphere will encourage them to show some more energy on stage. They are excited about their outfits and being able to dress up.

Come Friday we will see how they have progressed throughout the semester and if they feel they did a good job.

Since this past week was Thanksgiving and the students did not have Higher Achievement, we were not able to work with our students. However, this gave us time to think of what we need to do for our final visit.

The kids are young so they don’t have long attention span but this coming visit we will have to have them run through the entire act so they understand what the day of will be like. We will have to cut some of the lines even now knowing how hard the lines can be for them to read through. They are prepared to read the lines but we need to put a lot of emphasis on the acting aspect. We need to figure ways or activities that allow them to practice acting and not just reading in place.

We also need to run through having the characters with multiple actors practice switching out during the act. They understand when their lines are switched but we need to run through the art of the students replacing each other on stage. I don’t think they will struggle with this because when we have their attention they process what they should be doing quickly.

Although we have some major points to focus on this week, we expect the visit to go well. The kids have been very excited for the performance to be finally here and we hope that carries over into them putting enthusiasm into the practice run through. We will also have to convince some students to make sure to get rides and that this performance will be worth it since they have difficult home situations.