Portuguese Year 2: Pretend play: roles, gestures and a text that comes alive
Portuguese, Year 2 (Portugal): Play a role with voice and body, and recreate a short text as movement, music or a drawing.
Each one has a role
In pretend games, each person has a role: customer and seller, doctor and patient, narrator and character. For the role to work, you use your voice, face and body the way that character would, and you speak to the person in front of you. A short text can also be recreated in other ways: with gestures and movement, with music and sounds, or in a drawing.
Practising for real life, and understanding better
Pretending lets you practise what you would say in real life: how a customer asks, how a seller answers. And to recreate a text in another way, you have to understand it well: you only show the fright if you understood where it is in the text.
The cat that wakes up
You recreate the text: «O gato dorme ao sol. De repente, ouve um barulho e salta!» (The cat sleeps in the sun. Suddenly, it hears a noise and jumps!) Step 1 (roles): one classmate is the narrator, another is the cat. Step 2 (voice): the narrator reads slowly and, at «De repente» (Suddenly), pauses and raises the voice. Step 3 (body): the cat sleeps, soft body, eyes closed, and jumps at the noise. Step 4 (music): soft, slow sounds, then one strong beat at the noise. Step 5 (drawing): you draw the cat in the sun.
Pretending is not messing about
In a dramatisation, the mistake is thinking anything goes: talking over the others, overacting until nobody understands, or laughing at a classmate. Each one has a role and waits for their turn. Recreating is not copying either: you show what the text means in another way, without repeating the same words.
Where you give life to words
You use this in the school play, when you play at market or hospital, when you make a puppet, when you mime a word in a guessing game, when you set a poem to music or draw a story. All of them give life to words.
Test what you learned
In a shop game, Leo is the seller and Mia is the customer. What should Leo do?
- a) Speak like a customer and ask for things
- b) Ignore Mia and say only what he wants
- c) Speak like a seller, listen to Mia and answer what she asks
Correct answer: c) Speak like a seller, listen to Mia and answer what she asks — Yes: he plays his role, listens and answers, just as a real seller would.
Which of these recreates the text «O vento sopra e as folhas dançam.» (The wind blows and the leaves dance.) with the body?
- a) Swing your arms like the wind and spin like leaves
- b) Copy the sentence into your notebook
- c) Read the sentence three times in a row
Correct answer: a) Swing your arms like the wind and spin like leaves — Yes: the movement shows what the words say. That is recreating with the body.
In the class play, Luís talks over his classmates and makes silly noises. What is the mistake?
- a) None: it is just for fun
- b) Each one plays their role and waits for their turn; he is stopping the game
- c) He should speak even louder
Correct answer: b) Each one plays their role and waits for their turn; he is stopping the game — Yes: in a dramatisation each person has a role and a turn, and everybody has to be heard.
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