On Wednesday, January 19th, The Otters, the Clouds, and the Battleships all went to the Peoples Improv Theater, also known as the PIT. The PIT is an award-winning training center and comedy theater owned by one of our GBS families. The students were ushered into a small theater and greeted by three actors, who introduced them to the concept of improvisation through a few short improvised scenes and a movie. The students then broke up into three groups by class and were off to learning the art of improv. The Otters started in the green room, where they learned about the importance of eye contact and accepting mistakes through improv games like "Zip Zap Zop" and "Get the Ice Cream Like a....". The students especially enjoyed "Get the Ice Cream Like a...." because they got to pretend to be various types of characters, human and non-human, picking up ice cream from a table. In the next room, the Otters played the games Sound and Motion Telephone and One Word Story. They completed their training in the main theater, where they worked on creativity and quick thinking through games like Kitty Cat Career and Poetry and a Pose. The field trip ended with them eating their lunch in the PIT café. This unique field trip was a fun, exciting learning experience for all!
After many weeks of hard work, the Otters class finally published the first edition of their class newspaper, "The Otter Prophet!" Since October, the Otters have been studying the history of newspapers and the components that make up a typical newspaper. They quickly got to work, choosing topics of interest and deciding how they would gather information. Students conducted interviews, distributed surveys, and searched the internet to gather information. Then, they worked tirelessly constructing lead sentences, writing details, copying quotes, and editing paragraphs. In the end, Mary, their Editor-in-Chief, collected their articles, formatted them into a newspaper template, and added some pictures to make it pop. The students had an official launch celebration on Friday, January 6, where they had the opportunity to answer questions about their articles posed by school administrators, therapists, and peers. Click on the button below to see the newspaper.
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