"Muncie Strong" Playbill, Pledge, and Autobiographies
School: Inspire Academy
City/State: Muncie, IN
Grade(s): 2
Format(s): Program: Playbill
Subject(s): Performing Arts
Project Overview
Second-graders at Inspire Academy studied Schools and Community for an expedition. Their guided questions included:
- What is a community?
- What roles do people play in a community?
- What makes a community stronger?
Students gathered background information about their community and the ways its different pieces work together through field studies and expert visits. Field work was conducted at city hall, public libraries, local non-profits, and a food and wellness museum exhibit. Experts included a professional writer, pastor, wealth manager, mayor, city officials, docents, and librarians.
The final product was composed of a few different layers. They commissioned a local writer to create a play about the history of the town and its influential citizens.The play was performed at an Exhibition Night. The students wrote paragraph autobiographies and drafted self-portraits for the playbill. Studying logo design, all students drafted a crew logo and voted on which design(s) would comprise the final logo. Lastly, as a crew, they formulated and wrote a community pledge that was endorsed by the mayor of the city and hung in City Hall.
How This Project Can Be Useful
- Highlights a product with a real audience—an audience that has an interest (and time) in reading the details shared
- Shows a clever format that allows students to not only introduce their performance, but also to demonstrate their content knowledge
- Excellent example of portrait work by younger students