Radio Play

The essential question in the Edge B book for Unit 5 was "What Frightens you?"  In this unit we learned about our own fears as well as how an an author crafts fear into his or her stories. Some of the lessons the students learned were:

• plot structure
• mood and tone
• repetition and word choice
• suspense

To conclude this unit, we decided to record a radio play.  The story they performed was "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street."  This story was originally an episode on the Twilight Zone.  It was meant to be acted out, but was satisfactory for our needs.  It dealt with people's fears and how they can affect a person.  It also is a great example to see how mood, tone and building suspense works in a story.  

This was one of the hardest projects, because proper execution of the story depended on the student's ability to perform.  I made the mistake of not letting students watch/listen to it done by others and not practicing with the students.  Furthermore the editting process was tedious and difficult. Despite all this, I think it turned out decently.