Playing an Improv Game for Character Analysis

In teacher Katie Giordano’s classroom, fourth graders can’t wait to play Love It/Hate It, a popular improv game for character analysis that helps students practice perspective-taking and hone skills for persuasive writing. Giordano teaches at a public pre-K through 8 school called Arts & Letters 305 United in Brooklyn, where theater and improvisation activities have a role to play in every classroom. Through a collaboration with a local arts organization, Child’s Play NY, teachers there have learned to use these games to bring more joy, connection, and movement into their lessons, which serves to deepen the students’ understanding of core content—while they sharpen their executive function skills and build classroom community. 

When Love It/Hate It is an English language arts activity, one student is designated as the actor and stands in front of the room, ready to portray a literary character from a book that the class has been reading (in this case, Front Desk, by Kelly Yang). Another student, sitting in the audience, is the “emotion conductor.” Using hand signals, the emotion conductor leans toward “love it” or “hate it,” and the actor improvises a monologue, toggling between those two emotions—while in character. The actor must analyze the book’s main character, Mia, on the fly, by describing her challenges, triumphs, and problem-solving abilities—engaging in making inferences and recalling text details in the process.

Beyond English language arts, Giordano has also used the game in her science lessons. “We’ve been learning about our New York City watershed and the human impact. And so they can easily be an expert and go from what they love about how amazing our watershed is and how it all works, to what they hate about the human impact on it,” she says. By connecting Love It/Hate It to academic content, Giordano says, “I can assess what they have understood and taken away from different lessons.”

Giordano takes care to point to the importance of creating a supportive classroom environment where students feel comfortable and encouraged to participate, be vulnerable, and take risks. “I think kids are very compassionate to begin with, but they really need to have that cultivated in the classroom,” she says. “If someone’s feeling nervous, we send them some ‘shine’ to get up onstage. We always applaud someone, and I say, ‘Wow, that took a lot of courage and bravery. Let’s give them a celebration.’ And then the kids naturally start to do that on their own, and then I can take a step back and even have kids lead each other in these activities.”

For more theater games that support learning, check out the many articles that Child’s Play NY founder Jocelyn Greene has written for Edutopia. 

Editor’s note: This summary was written with support from Edutopia’s custom AI tool, which prioritizes information from our archive of educational content.