Activating Purple Words

Students select and then activate the dramatic words in a primary document, making the document more real to them. This technique was developed by the theatrical geniuses Jane Jones and Myra Platt at Book-It Repertory Theatre, in Seattle, WA.

The entire class.

How it works:

• Read the document to the class or have the kids read it aloud serially, moving from kid to kid at each punctuation mark.
• Model choosing a “purple” word – a strong, dramatic word that gives a sentence its power.  The word can be any part of speech as long as it has some resonance in the passage.  Then, the students select other purple words as you underline the words they choose. 
• Model activating one purple word, using both voice and body to transmit the word’s meaning and power.  If possible, it’s good to pick a word that has more than one meaning so you can make it clear that the student should always activate the appropriate meaning.
• Now, have the class all standing, and everyone facing you so they don’t feel as if they are in the spotlight.  Solicit volunteers to activate the rest of the purple words in the passage, one by one.  After each activation, the entire class mimics that student’s voice and body movements, as well as the others that have gone before.  (So, by the end, you will be activating 10-20 words from a single passage, in order, almost like a poem of the passage.

Doing More With Purple Words:

• You can finish by reading the whole thing as a group, activating only the purple words as you read. 
• You can split the class into characters, who say the words differently.
• You can split the class into characters who alternate sentences, activating the words the way their character would.