Puppets Teaching Morals

The Deuel Sophomores taking Comp./Speech with Mrs. Samantha Walder have a rather interesting project taking place in their classroom. They are creating their own shadow puppets to debut in their own play!

While in Turkey this summer, Mrs. Walder watched a shadow puppet play, which inspired her to have her students do this project. Shadow puppet plays are entertainment for people in Turkey. The students are doing their plays based on a traditional shadow puppet play but are making some updates to make it easier for students to perform and understand. The purpose of the puppets is to teach a moral and Mrs. Walder thought it would be a good way to address state standards in a new way. There are many important morals that the students will be teaching. Some include: not cheating, stealing, listening, bullying, lying, work hard and you will get rewarded, sharing, and teasing.

The students are creating their own scripts for their play and designing their own puppets. They are creating their puppets with tagboard, brass fasteners, and any other material, such as colored pencil or yarn, to create their puppets to play their part in the play.

You may wonder what this project has to with Comp./Speech? Well, it shows students how to write a script and creatively present them to an audience. The students will be presenting their plays to elementary classes. This will teach the students how to write for a specific age audience too. “This project should be exciting, and fun to perform for the elementary students!” Emily Smith, Deuel Sophomore participating in project, said.

The plays are debuting on February 1st and 2nd to the elementary classes attending. They will be performing in a little theatre that the Deuel Woods class built. The requirements for the plays are they have to have a four to six minute performance with at least three different scenes to get their moral across to the audience. “I look forward to seeing the students express themselves artistically and by performing as opposed to just writing.” Mrs. Walder said.