Inspires early childhood educators to use innovative practices through stories from real teachers who use emergent curriculum in their classrooms.

Inspires early childhood educators to use innovative practices through stories from real teachers who use emergent curriculum in their classrooms.

Improvisation is recognized internationally as an exciting tool to jumpstart learning. In this practical book, teachers will discover how to use improv throughout the K–8 curriculum to boost creativity and to develop a class into a finely tuned learning ensemble. Readers will learn how to use this revolutionary tool to teach literacy, math, social studies, and science...and have fun doing it! Taking group work in the classroom to the next level, this book features: Over 100 activities with step-by-step instructions appropriate for those with no prior experience as well as for seasoned performers. An index to help choose improv games according to age group, subject area, and level of difficulty. A framework for understanding the skills that are developed when children learn particular improv activities. Tips for how to extend the activities to acquire additional skills.

Nobody is a bigger fan of actor Thomas Cassidy than Libby. Nobody. That's why she's totally going to marry him. She’s going to write a novel, name the main character after Thom, and find a way to get it to him. Intrigued and flattered, he will read it, fall in love with her prose, and ask to turn it into a movie. She will pretend to think about it, then say, ‘Sure, but can I work on it with you?’ Their eyes will meet over the script... and fade to black. But with four interwoven lives in play, can anything be that simple? Thoughtful, quirky, and moving, Unscripted is a story of friendship and second chances, and asks the question: how far can you take your dream?

A funny and timely debut YA about the toxic masculinity at a famous improv comedy camp Seventeen-year-old Zelda Bailey-Cho has her future all planned out: improv camp, then Second City, and finally Saturday Night Live. She’s thrilled when she lands a spot on the coveted varsity team at a prestigious improv camp, which means she’ll get to perform for professional scouts—including her hero, Nina Knightley. But even though she’s hardworking and talented, Zelda’s also the only girl on Varsity, so she’s the target for humiliation from her teammates. And her 20-year-old coach, Ben, is cruel to her at practice and way too nice to her when they’re alone. Zelda wants to fight back, but is sacrificing her best shot at her dream too heavy a price to pay? Equal parts funny and righteous, Unscripted is a moving debut novel that Printz Award winner Nina LaCour calls “a truly special book, written at exactly the right time.”

Everyday conversations including gossip, boasting, flirting, teasing, and informative discussions are highly creative, improvised interactions. Children's play is also an important, often improvisational activity. One of the most improvisational games among 3- to 5-year-old children is social pretend play--also called fantasy play, sociodramatic play, or role play. Children's imaginations have free reign during pretend play. Conversations in these play episodes are far more improvisational than the average adult conversation. Because pretend play occurs in a dramatized, fantasy world, it is less constrained by social and physical reality. This book adds to our understanding of preschoolers' pretend play by examining it in the context of a theory of improvisational performance genres. This theory, derived from in-depth analyses of the implicit and explicit rules of theatrical improvisation, proves to generalize to pretend play as well. The two genres share several characteristics: * There is no script; they are created in the moment. * There are loose outlines of structure which guide the performance. * They are collective; no one person decides what will happen. Because group improvisational genres are collective and unscripted, improvisational creativity is a collective social process. The pretend play literature states that this improvisational behavior is most prevalent during the same years that many other social and cognitive skills are developing. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 begin to develop representations of their own and others' mental states as well as learn to represent and construct narratives. Freudian psychologists and other personality theorists have identified these years as critical in the development of the personality. The author believes that if we can demonstrate that children's improvisational abilities develop during these years--and that their fantasy improvisations become more complex and creative--it might suggest that these social skills are linked to the child's developing ability to improvise with other creative performers.

Teacher and author Vivian Paley is highly regarded by parents, educators, and other professionals for her original insights into such seemingly everyday issues as play, story, gender, and how young children think. In The Classrooms All Young Children Need, Patricia M. Cooper takes a synoptic view of Paley’s many books and articles, charting the evolution of Paley’s thinking while revealing the seminal characteristics of her teaching philosophy. This careful analysis leads Cooper to identify a pedagogical model organized around two complementary principles: a curriculum that promotes play and imagination, and the idea of classrooms as fair places where young children of every color, ability, and disposition are welcome. With timely attention paid to debates about the reduction in time for play in the early childhood classroom, the role of race in education, and No Child Left Behind, The Classrooms All Young Children Need will be embraced by anyone tasked with teaching our youngest pupils.