Michael Orlinsky - COT Teaching Artist
We have been having a wonderful time at Sabin this
semester. I started the semester in Mrs.
Loerzel’s class assisting Bryna Berezowska.
The students were very energetic and excited. We had been putting together some music to be
performed with Chicago Opera Playhouse’s production of Hansel and Gretel and for our Winter Showcase. There are many standouts in this class with
good voices and an interest in performing.
Before I transferred to another class I had a conversation with one of
the students about magic tricks. He
showed me some of the tricks that he could do, and I came back for the last
class to show him some of the card tricks that I had learned when I was
younger.
The
field trip was a ton of fun as well! We
started the trip with a visit to the park, and we spent some time playing at
the Lincoln Statue behind the museum while another school was finishing their
introduction to the museum. We received
our introduction from the director of the tour.
I ended up leading the classes, and organizing the field trip so we
could efficiently fulfill our goals for the day. Much thanks to our parents and chaperones
that lead some of the groups that day.
Once the day was organized we split up in to small groups and toured the
museum. We had lots of fun in the Jazz
and Blues section, and especially so pretending to be a hot dog in the kids
section of the museum. We had also spent
a good portion of time enjoying the train and the Chicago Fire exhibit.
After
the museum trip I moved over to Mr. Cerda’s class. We started right in to our projects for the
Winter Showcase. There were a couple of
different exercises we started for our Winter Showcase including the
“Tableau”. This was a series of
physicalizations of a storyline in which we froze and formed a stage picture
together of the moment. We came up with
a scenario together in which we fled the Chicago Fire. We stopped for Chicago Dogs, but they were so
hot we kept dropping them! Then we all
got on a boat and successfully fled from the Chicago Fire! It was a very energetic portrayal of this
story done at the Winter Showcase.
Following
our tableau game we read the lyrics that we had come up with together that we
will be using in our opera next semester.
Some of the students read the lyrics out loud for the showcase, and some
of the kids even shared some of the character bios that they came up with for
their roles in the opera. After these
exercises we sang through our Jazz song that we have been practicing in our
classrooms “I Got Rhythm”. In preparation
for the holidays we had a sing-a-long of “Jingle Bells” as well.
Our
last class of the semester I came in and took over the classes for the students
to do Evaluations. We got through our
evaluations, and moved on to some games.
I showed the kids some magic tricks and we played some games
incorporating the cards. We all seemed
to be enjoying ourselves very much. I’m
very much looking forward to next semester when we start seriously delving in
to the creation of this opera!
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