Rising Water

What happens when an adventurous teen gets stuck in the middle of a natural disaster? Ajax has a hard time fitting into a world of school and books. He wants to do the right thing, but his inability to sit still and pay attention keeps getting him in trouble. After a trip down town for a job interview turns into a battle against the forces of nature, Ajax has an opportunity to discover who he really is and what he has to contribute to society.

Rising Water is part of the Integrated Skills Through Drama series that teaches speaking and communication skills through the performance of a one-act play. This flexible curriculum is perfect for a class project, elective course, or drama club.

As students prepare to perform the play, they study intonation and pronunciation skills such as using word emphasis for meaning and showing emotion, as well as questioning intonation. They learn about body language and gesture as ways to communicate. They analyse the script as a work of literature and also mine it for language and rhetorical strategies to respond to criticism, offer to help, express distress or relief and more. And they learn to apply those strategies to their performance and to real-life situations. A variety of performance options are featured, including Reader’s Theater.

Background readings on risk-taking by teenagers and the way communities come together in times of natural disaster fill out the curriculum. And a number of creative writing projects to rewrite the script, adapt the play, or even write a sequel allow you to extend the learning further.

Get dramatic in the classroom with this original drama-based coursebook.

"What a pleasure it was to discover a series totally devoted to the EFL/ESL teacher who may already understand the value of teaching through Drama, or who would like to try this approach for the first time in the classroom"
—Charlyn Wessels Dyers, Author of Drama in the Oxford Resource Series for Teachers

"A wealth of preparatory activities, suggestions for varied ways of using the text and helpful suggestions for follow-up. What are we waiting for? The play’s the thing . . ."
—Alan Maley

" If you want one book to use your entire semester, this is the book to get. The writer, Alice Savage, obviously has had a lot of hands on teaching experience as proven by her multiple suggestions about how to capture the teenage and young adult imagination"
—Jennifer DeLapp

""Rising Water" is an incredibly useful tool for teachers and students alike to explore theater and build English language skills."
—Nicole O'Bryan