How to Incorporate Puppets Into Education
Incorporating puppets into education can engage students' minds, help them understand difficult ideas and even help them to learn new languages. In addition, educational environments that foster the use of puppets can encourage students to become invested in their learning. By following the steps below you can incorporate puppets into the classroom and into the entire school culture.
Instructions
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Purchase puppets for the classroom and create identities for them. Ask the students to create the names. This will help them to become comfortable with the puppets.
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Ask students to design clothing for the puppets and create stages for them. Giving students a say in developing the puppets' identities will make them excited to work with the puppets. Clothing and stages can be created with materials such as cardboard, crayons and construction paper.
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Determine the skills that you would like students to learn through using the puppets. Portray appropriate behaviors for students with puppets. Have puppets demonstrate disagreements about theories in science. Ask students to pretend to be the puppet when speaking in a foreign language. Using puppets to learn languages can help students to feel less nervous about taking risks with new words and phrases since it seems as if the puppets are taking the risks for them.
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Invite a puppet theater company to come visit the school, or take a field trip to see a puppet performance. There are many options for such activities and the shows are both entertaining and educational. The Dallas Puppet Theater has been running for 25 years, and creates puppet performances for Pre-K through the sixth Grade. The Shadowbox Theatre is based out of New York City and features story-telling puppets. The Abbe Museum creates puppet shows based on the history of Maine.
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