A New Twist on the Ol' Photo Tableaux Idea
Ian, one of our Writing Team writers, wrote a new take on the popular old "freeze photo" tableaux technique and turned it into "Ruth's Instagram Photo Drama" lesson. While the story retelling in the lesson has prompts for where/when to take what kind of photos, this "photo drama" is essentially scriptless from the kids' point of view.
Here's the basic idea:
- You take a refrigerator box and turn it into a very large "cellphone" with a simple Instagram-looking interface painted onto it.
- Then you cut out the center of the "screen" so your kids can go INSIDE the box and pose key scenes and reactions to things happening during the reading of the story.
- Before posing a scene or reaction, the students write a "caption" or "comment" that tells what's going on in the photo -- and hang that page on the front of the "screen" so that the content become part of the photo itself.
The Team created its own brief storybook covering all four chapters of Ruth's story but you could use any Ruth storybook as long as it had most of the key scenes you needed to teach.
For example, if you're just teaching about the Chapter 2 Gleaning episode, you could shoot some photos from all the different characters' points of view, show the other workers reacting, caption what Ruth was thinking, a post by Boaz wondering who the foreigner is, Ruth sharing what it feels like to have to glean (depend on others), etc.
Ian's lesson plan has an outline of the story with "photo points" to take. Then you review the photos after the reading and share final insights.
Supporting Members can download the complete lesson plan here: Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz: Ruth's Instagram ~ A Photo Drama Workshop Lesson
