Find Your Voice: A Methodology for Enhancing Literacy Through Re-Writing and Re-Acting

By Gail Noppe-Brandon

Every school in our country has identified literacy as its number one challenge; now Gail Noppe-Brandon offers a different way of looking at the subject. For the past twenty years she has successfully trained a broad range of teenagers, college students, and teachers of all subjects in her literacy-through-theatre methodology. In Find Your Voice , she clearly describes how everyone can be helped to communicate more effectively and better receive the communication of others. Find Your Voice demonstrates Noppe-Brandon's unique, relationship-based coaching style, an approach which has enabled even the shyest people to conquer their fear of written or oral public sharing. The book presents a specific sequence of exercises and activities that can improve anyone's reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. And with sample classroom applications for various age levels, Find Your Voice helps those who may never have considered re-acting or re-writing a play, and seasoned artists who have been practicing their craft for years.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0325007012
• ISBN13: 9780325007014
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Heinemann Drama
• Length: 157 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 14 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12

Customer Reviews

Supporting students to find their voice

A gifted, intuitive teacher with a deep understanding of human nature, Gail Noppe-Brandon recounts her own struggles as a learner and her evolution as a teacher and as an artist. The result is "Find Your Voice", a beautiful account of teaching and learning and the explication of a powerful set of activities designed to assist anyone in writing and speaking clearly. Noppe-Brandon began her journey as a teacher twenty years ago. In this book she recounts with clarity, humor and wisdom the steps in this journey and they ways she has found to support hundreds of young people to tell their stories through writing and acting. She has thought deeply about her approach and presents it in a straightforward, systematic, and engaging manner. The opening chapter recounts her first classes at New York University and her subsequent work with teenagers from all around New York City. In subsequent chapters she describes in detail the ways in which she creates a safe learning environment, motivates non-actors to begin to act; motivates non-writers to begin to write and creates opportunities for her students to perform their work for others. She also shares with us the struggles and triumphs of individual students and teachers. I had the opportunity to come to know Gail and her work well when I lived in New York City. Young people were profoundly changed in her workshops and performances and teachers found great value in the professional development workshops. Her commitment to her students and the masterful ways she supported them to find their voice were inspiring then. Many who watched Gail work and knew her students encouraged her to find a way to share the power of her educational process and insights. In this book, she does just that. The book is a remarkable combination of specific, clear directions for implementing a teaching methodology and compelling anecdotes that remind us of the power of the student-teacher and student-student relationship. The anecdotes show us the purpose and value of the teaching methodology the author has devised. The teaching methodology is presented with such clarity that the reader feels they could begin to use some of the strategies immediately. I particularly appreciated the way the detailed strategies for engaging reluctant students and motivating them to participate. The book also contains wonderful samples of student writing and writing by teachers who participated in training sessions. There is a terrific appendix which lists scenes and suggests particular kinds of students who might benefit from dealing with the material in a particular scene. No English or drama teacher should be without this book, but, in truth, it is such a compelling narrative of a teaching process that any one who cares about teaching and learning should not be without it.