At Novalearn, we’re constantly bringing in subject experts to design a class or mock-up lesson plans. My job is to take these educational assets and convert them into whatever medium our program designer needs.
A big part of this output is scripted Story Courses. (Think Sesame Street, with a cast of alien puppet characters learning about the world through a child’s eye.)
When I first came on board, I was only writing scripts with two characters (one puppet and one teacher). But as our operations grew, our puppet cast also grew, and our creative director wanted more and more of them appearing on camera together.
The Performing Arts course represents the apex of that demand: five characters (plus a teacher) bundled together in a three-minute scene format.
Such scenes can easily devolve into an overcrowded mess, so I took a turn-taking strategy. The story’s arc: there’s an audition coming up, and each character needs to learn a performance art in order to participate.
This idea allowed me to focus on one teacher, one puppet, and one learning point per lesson. Thus, the learning points could be clearly explained without the narrative elements overwhelming them.
The nature of the topic really fired up our puppeteers and got them performing at their talent-show best, so it was a good thing I structured the course this way. It turned out to be one of our most entertaining, while also staying on point educationally.
Lesson 1
The gang is auditioning for a talent show! Which performance art will Tubi choose? What about Yara? Hopefully they can all agree…