Play Analysis for Musical Theatre Model Cornerstone Assessment 
Title: Analyzing a Musical Through a Director’s Eye  
Grade Level:  High School Accomplished 
Authors:  Kristie Fuller & Brian Curl  
Artistic Processes:  Creating, Performing, Responding, Connecting

Task Description:    This musical theatre unit will focus on a student director’s ability to analyze and research a script, understand the importance of dialogue and song in a musical, notate effective blocking/movement in a script and floor plan and create a Director’s promptbook. 

Evidence of student learning: director's prompt book including:  root action statement, play analysis, scene analysis, design analysis, floor plan

"Analyzing a Musical Through a Director's Eye" demonstrates ways to measure student learning in theatre using the task of creating a director's prompt book for a musical with an emphasis on analysis of both song and text as a tool for instruction and assessment. This Model Cornerstone Assessment (MCA) is based on a unit which was piloted in the classroom by the authors. Although in an MCA the emphasis is on the evaluation tools, an MCA does offer enough information for any teacher to create a similar unit of their own. Click on "View the full MCA" below to see strategies for embedding in instruction as a guide for re-creating this unit and assessment customized for your classroom. 

MCAs model effective assessment practice and demonstrate that teaching theatre is specific, rigorous, and measurable by sharing a glimpse into one teacher's classroom. The MCAs on this website come packaged with a suggested strategy for assessing student learning, types of evidence to collect, model rubrics, and samples of student work demonstrating their process and learning. The samples of student work illustrate the unit in action by providing a snapshot of a moment in time showing student response to instruction.   

View the full MCA

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