The Mouse's Tail

Last Fall semester I was reading from a children's book of short stories which contained a play with a small group of my ESOL students. The play, "The Mouse's Tail" is a short story about how a mouse loses his tail and what he needs to do in order to get it back. The play consisted of about 5 or 6 other characters including farm animals such as a cow, a hen, a cat, and a farmer as well. At first my vision of the final outcome of the play would be along the lines of a "reader's theater" version of the play. That is, after parts were assigned we would just read it to ourselves (no memorization involved) and leave it at that. After awhile of hashing out who got which part and then running through it a couple of times (it was quite short) one of the children asked if they could make costumes for their character's part. All the others seemed quite excited by this idea too. As the children, and now cast, over the next couple of days worked on what really was just a mask, they became more excited and conscious of their role. I tried to give them some suggestions as to what type of voice to use as pertained to the character they portrayed. For example, the mouse to be a bit high pitched and squeaky, the cow a little deeper, and the cat to draw out and make his words a bit longer. Once masks were completed and with a couple more practice rehearsals the students were eager and excited to perform for the rest of the class. It was fun to observe how some of the actors would "remind" other characters to say their lines to try and sound like the animal of whose part they had. From doing this activity, with the added suggestion pretty much out of the blue to make masks is something I will always remember to include the next time around. Maybe for some of the children involved the love of the theater was created for them on that day (I doubt it), but having fun while learning were both certainly achieved, which is something I don't think any teacher could ask for more.