Year End Talent Show!

Some of the most memorable end-of-the-year events has been our school Talent Show. It's amazing how the exceptional abilities come out in these kids when they are brave enough to step onto the stage. A Talent show is great for getting in your extra-curricular, students demonstrating citizenship, personal development and character and great break from the classroom for all classes at the end of the year.

There are steps to a Talent Show! Plan well enough ahead and you'll be golden...

1. Set the date for the Talent Show - we do ours the same day as Sports Day.
2. Get a committee or fly solo - the more helping hands the better!
3. Advertise the upcoming Talent Show to the school - make announcements, show info on your blog, etc.
4. Create an informative letter to go home to parents - this is to notify parents that preparation for acts must been done on the students' own time (please let me know if you want a copy of this letter)
5. Hold a brief meeting with students interested - answer immediate questions, brainstorm ideas together, stress the need for practice and preparedness and distribute parent letter to go home
6. Display student ideas for other kids to see and set dates for prescreening
7. Run Prescreening Auditions - at my past schools, every student always "gets in" to the Talent Show, but it is important to prescreen their act to make sure they prepared. They can sign up for a time outside the Music room. Complete a pre-screening form to help you later with a ton of stuff! (please let me know if you want this form)
8. Complete Call Backs for students that needed to perform a more prepared act
9. Review pre-screen forms. Note what extra background music, equipment, props and interesting info they gave you to help with the big day
10. Put acts in order. This can be whatever order you want, but we like to spread out the piano and singing acts, and save some really good acts for the end
11. Complete a script that introduces acts 3 or 4 at a time. (please let me know if you'd like to see a copy of a script)
12. Run through the script and equipment needed for each act with the Tech Crew. (we have a Tech Crew of trained grade 5s and 6s that love to run the sound equipment and stage)
13. Do a dress rehearsal. This is a very quick run through during a lunch hour for students to see what order they are in and for the Tech Crew and MCs to get a first hand eexperience of what the day will look like
14. Put on the Talent Show! Shake a leg!! And make sure the kids cheer loud for all of them, 'cause boy it takes a lot of courage to get up on that stage :)