Educational Components & Curriculum Connections
Approved & Recommended by:
- School District of Palm Beach County, Dept. of Multicultural Education, Holocaust Studies Program
- PBC Teachers Receive In-Service Credit for attending some Field Trips
- Sun-Sentinel NIE Character Education Link
- Broward County School District
- Broward County Schools' Character Education Initiative
- Aligned with Sunshine State Standards
- Broward Children's Services Council
- The Broward Children's Services Council / Broward Cultural Division Partnership
- C.S.C. MOST / Challenge Grants Artist
- Miami-Dade County School District
- The Miami-Dade Family Learning Partnership
- The Anti-Defamation League - Florida Region
- The Children's Forum
- Family Central / Early Learning Partnership of Broward County
Our shows highlight
educational concepts and align with curriculum!
Pretend-Along Series Shows
Age appropriate group audience participation through imagination exercises, music, and make-believe are major facets of all
Pretend-Along Series Shows. Each show begins with a live music sing-along with guitar and
tambourine. This serves as a lively ‘warm-up’, introducing the actors to the children in the audience and gently
encouraging their participation. The sing-along is followed by your choice of one of our four featured plays. While each
has a different theme, they all contain similar components designed to foster individual participation as well as group
interaction. The actors guide the audience through a series of exciting and imaginative scenes, all the while
reinforcing and utilizing a wide range of language, math, health and safety, proper behavior, and character
education/personal and interactive skills the children are being introduced to and learning in their classrooms.
For example, in one part of
“Paw Pals”, the students,
Safari Joe, and
Patty pretend to take a jungle boat ride to the
“Land- of- Not- So- Wild- Animals” where they meet
Grr, Patty’s animal friend, and they all play an abbreviated game of
hide and seek. The children remain attentive and excited, yet orderly and seated the entire time. This segment of the show highlights call and response, counting, following clues to find the hidden characters,
addresses proper behavior skills, listening skills, following verbal and visual instructions, and imaginative play.
At one point in the game, each child curls up and pretends to be a rock while
Patty looks for them. When this action
takes place, the children have already practiced listening for a pre-arranged verbal signal from
Grr (he tells them to
listen for when he says the word “pizza!”). At the signal, the children happily pop up to their seated positions and
shout ‘surprise!’, completing the lesson by following the direction on cue.
Similarly, every
Pretend-Along Series Show highlights and reinforces these and additional curriculum related skills,
all within the context of a delightfully engaging, age appropriate audience participation play. These shows can be
tailored to highlight a particular theme or special event or program.
- A Teachers' Guide is available for every Pretend-Along Series show.
The Character Education Series Shows
Laughter and learning go hand-in-hand in these three upbeat shows filled with age-appropriate group audience
participation. Each play clearly focuses on aspects of character education concepts and engages the students by having
them help the characters on stage learn to make positive choices.
The performance begins as the announcer welcomes the audience, sets the stage, explains proper theater
etiquette, and introduces the first of the three skits of which the play is comprised. Each play is purposefully formatted
into three 15 minute sections, allowing different aspects of a particular theme to be covered in a more complete and
focused way. An additional benefit of the ‘mini-play’ format is that it’s well suited toward this age group’s attention
span.
One of the many ways these shows stand out and excel is through their clever and catchy dialogue. The children
in the audience are excited to repeat and learn simple yet powerful jingles and phrases created and copyrighted by
Locomotion Theatre, that they will be able to incorporate and use as an additional resource in their daily lives.
For
example, in
The Character Construction Company, the second mini-play features
The CCC Television Network’s Chef Ray Sippi,
who invites school girl
Emma Real to be a guest on his cooking show and explain why his tried and true recipe for
responsibility didn’t work for her on a particular day. The
Chef displays a large sign stating the
Locomotion Theatre
Two Part Recipe for Responsibility: 1: Do right when you feel like doing wrong, and 2: Make no excuses for your
behavior.
Emma
recounts how she was torn between responsibly listening to the teacher in class and talking to her friend
Allie during the lesson, and therefore, was unable to decide what to do. At this point,
Chef Sippi and the children in the
audience help Emma mix up a
Special Recipe for Responsibility, to be used during those times that the temptation to not
misbehave looms large. They learn a
Four Step Process for Responsible Behavior developed and copyrighted by Locomotion Theatre:
Stop,
Breathe, Evaluate, and Act!
Within the context of the play, each of these steps is defined in a visual, funny, and easy
to understand way.
Emma navigates the steps along with the students, and they all learn the quick and simple call and
response ‘rap’ that reinforces the
Steps.
In the final act of the performance, there is a fun and silly audience participation game show called
“Check It Out!. Two pre-selected two-person teams of teachers and students are called on the stage to answer questions
based on the information presented in the previous two skits in the show. The audience is polled for their answers as
well, thereby involving everyone in the excitement of the game, and more importantly, reinforcing the lesson review.
Similarly, the other two shows in the series follow a format of laughter and learning, highlighting many
aspects of the character education curriculum.
- A Teachers' Guide is available for every Character Education Series show.
-
Palm Beach County public school teachers may receive 10 in-service credits for attending a Lunchbox Field Trip and completing follow-up paperwork.
Private school and out of district teachers may also be eligible to receive credit; consult your administrator.
- Mentor The Inventor has an anti-smoking message approved for Brown Ribbon Month.
Respectful Interventions™ Pre-teen & Teen Workshops
This exciting audience participation series was designed specifically for this age group . Upbeat and fun, Respectful Interventions™ Workshops for grades 5-12 are age-appropriate, effective, thought-provoking presentations. They open a forum for discussion about a full range of issues about
personal decisions and responsible behavior, relationships, family, classroom or workplace dynamics, and subjects of interest to your group.
Picture looking into
the family next door's living room or the classroom down the hall, and not only being
able to listen in on their conversation, but also being able to give them your opinion on the subject, share an insight,
agree or disagree with what's being said, and truly tell them just what you think about how they are handling the
situation! That’s exactly what Respectful Interventions™ presentations enable the audience to do! Following each five minute skit,
the presenters, one of whom is a licensed, experienced psychotherapist, will encourage the audience to respond to what they've just
seen and heard, and facilitate a brief discussion. What makes this distinctively appealing is that the players stay in
character and respond as though they were the people portrayed in the sketch! When appropriate, the psychotherapist provides professional insights into the situations presented.
These skits and open ended discussions encourage idea sharing in a non-judgmental arena, independent
thinking skills, and provide the opportunity for people to see and approach a situation from a different point of view,
all within the venue of a non-threatening group participation experience.
Workshop lengths may vary between 30-90 minutes
to fit school day, after-school, and camp schedules. We will work with you to select topics that will best fit the interests of your group and focus of your event.
Because of its versatility, these workshops can address a wide range of issues.
For example,
"It's Just a Joke...or is it?", original dialogue created and copyrighted by Locomotion Theatre, addresses bigotry and the role of personal responsibility in combating prejudice. The presenters portray two teenagers discussing a third student who consistently tells 'jokes' that demean a particular race, religion, or group. They don't like to hear the jokes and put-downs, but they're unsure if it's really a problem or just a joke...They're also not sure if they should ignore the behavior or confront the joke teller. At the end of the skit, the discussion is opened up to the student audience, and the actors stay in the character.
This skit can be adapted to family, school, and workplace presentations.
You’re Not the Boss Of Me!”-
original dialogue created and copyrighted by Locomotion Theatre, centers around parent/teenage relationships.
When crafting the scene for an audience
of high school students and their parents at an open school night special event, the action might start off with the
Daughter's announcing that she’s going out for the evening and will be returning home, in her words, ‘whenever! The
Father
might respond that she was going nowhere until he was sure she had picked up the clothes from the floor of her room and
that he knew with whom and where she was going, and if they were going to a friend’s house that there would be proper
adult supervision. At this point, the
Daughter might react, saying, “I’m 15 years old! I’m not a baby who has to report
to you! You’re Not the Boss of Me!” When the actors felt that the skit was interestingly and intriguingly layered with
information - finished but not resolved- they would end the dialogue and open the floor to a structured and time limited
discussion, where audience members would address the
'Daughter' and
'Father' .
Respectful Interventions™ Presentations allow many possibilities! New avenues of understanding may be forged, creating new patterns for relationships in families, and among classmates, friends, and colleagues. Please refer to our Teen Workshops page for more information, or call us for details.
- Anti-Bias/Holocaust/Multicultural Awareness Workshop PBC Schools Approved!
- A Teachers' Guide is available for Respectful Interventions™ Workshops
Sunshine State Standards
Pretend-Along Series Shows are aligned with the following Standards:
LA.C.1.1; 2.1; 3.1 LA.D.2.1 LA.E.1.1; 2.1 S.S.B.1.1 FL.B.1.1
FL.D.1.1; 2.1 DA.A.1.1; 2.1 MU.A.1.1 MU.D.1.1 MU.E.2.1
TH.A.1.1 TH.C.1.1 TH.D.1.1 HE.A.1.1; 2.1 HE.B.1.1; 3.1 HE.C.1.1; 2.1
Character Education Series Shows are aligned with the following Standards:
LA.C.1.1; 2.1; 3.1 LA.D.2.1 LA.E.1.1; 2.1 LA.A.1.2 LA.C
1.2; 2.2 LA.D.2.2 MU.D.1.1 MU.E.2.1; 2.2 TH.A.1.1; 3.2
TH.C.1.1 TH.D.1.1; 1.2 HE.A.1.1; 1.2; 2.1 HE.B.1.1;1.2;
3.1; 3.2 HE.C.1.1; 1.2; 2.1; 2.2
Teen Respectful Interventions Workshops are aligned with the following
Standards:
LA.C.1.3; 1.4; 2.3; 2.4; 3.3; 3.4 TH.B.1.4 TH.D.1.3 HE.A.1.3; 1.4; 2.3; 2.4;
HE.B.1.3; 1.4; 3.3; 3.4 HE.C. 1.3; 1.4; 2.3; 2.4 SS.7.C.2.3 SS7. C.2.5 SS7.C.2.1 SS7.C.2.13
