After four years of development, Arizona’s College & Career Ready Standards are ready for full implementation throughout the state in the 2014-2015 school year. For educators, this shift offers a unique opportunity to reflect not only on what they teach, but also on how they teach.
Throughout the month of June, the Arizona Commission on the Arts will be presenting a pair of exclusive blog series designed to inspire the creativity of Arizona’s educators and to explore the potential for arts integration within these new standards. In previous entries, Lynn Tuttle, the Arizona Department of Education’s Director of Arts Education, discussed how the Arts Educator could support and enhance English Language Arts & Math curricula.
Today, Paul Fisher, Executive Director at Arts Integration Solutions, continues his five-part series on how English Language Arts and Math educators can strengthen their teaching through Arts Integration. New entries will be posted to the azarts417 blog every Tuesday and Thursday through July 1st.
PROLOGUE
This is the second of two blog-posts addressing the possibilities of integrating physical embodiment techniques with English Language Arts; showing how to use Arts Integration strategies as tools to mediate classroom instruction; merging with core content through coordinated instructional practice that engages students in learning. It is this process of using multi-faceted strategies (see AiS Portal or follow Education Closet on Facebook) that has been proven to engage a wide range of learners and advance mastery of curriculum content.
OVERVIEW: THE “SHOW ME” STATE
No, I am not talking about Missouri!
The very essence of Arts Integration is to use new tools to help your students show you what they know. With a little training in guided Arts practices, any teacher in any classroom can energize his/her students by challenging them not to write what they know, or say what they know, but to show what they know.
Children are fundamentally creative. They are active learners. They do well with challenge and risk. Arts Integration will empower you to assess and teach with engaging, enjoyable practices that will turn your classroom into a “show me” state!
It will augment classroom culture and help you produce an innovative teaching environment. When students reach through the Arts to explore academics, they learn and remember more. And their attitude towards school improves! Dale’s Cone of Experience shows how simulating or doing an action significantly improves a learner’s memory and comprehension.
Arts Integration aligns most naturally with the whole language theory approach to reading, a literacy philosophy which emphasizes that children should focus on meaning and strategy instruction (for more information, click here). Arts Integration strategies such as readers’ theater, repeated songs and constructing ostinato (repeated musical phrase or rhythm patterns) to syllables increases phonemic awareness and develops phonics skills in the context of the text. Many other Arts Integration strategies develop vocabulary, fluency and comprehension, as well as other habits of mind that make for good readers, such as a desire to express oneself, sustained focus, risk-taking, an aptitude of inquiry and more.
RESEARCH
Thinking of literacy as knowledge construction and meaning-making expands the definition of literacy beyond the printed text to include almost every symbolic form of representation (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, multi-modal). Arts Integration instruction works from this definition, which is a sign systems perspective. (Short, K. & Harste, J.,1996)
According to the National Educational Longitudinal Survey, among low socioeconomic students, reading proficiency was 20 percent higher among theater students because of their involvement in theater than their peers who were not involved in theater. (Fiske, 2001)
Dr. Robert Marzano and Professor Elliot Eisner advocate for the inclusion of the symbolic forms of representation or communication (music, visual arts, theater and dance) in schools, acknowledging that these “nonlinguistic representations” provide different potentials of meaning. (This argument is fully covered in Educational Connoisseurship, Criticism, and the Assessment of Integrative Studies by Gordon F. Vars, Kent State University, Professor Emeritus.)
PRACTICE
The following are two step-by-step examples of embodiment to show knowledge of verbs & nouns. These activities can be scaled up to Middle School or High School by extending the depth and the specificity of the vocabulary and the directions.
(Be assured these have been field tested in pre-k through 12th grade.)
WHAT AM I DOING? or WHAT IS MY VERB?
AzCCR Emphasis:
- Language Arts: Identifying, spelling and reading verbs or actions. Learning or identifying verbs. Learning synonyms.
- Social Studies: Group participation skills. Following instructions. Correct usage of items. Identification of actions as verbs. Listening, understanding and responding in a variety of contexts for a variety of purposes. Comprehending. Reading, writing and spelling of verbs. Naming and recognizing action words or verbs.
Theatre Skills: Beginning mime. Showing appropriate usage of objects. Establishing the artifice of theatre-creating realities. Thinking on your feet.
Sign Systems: Drama & Language.
Multiple Intelligences: Bodily kinesthetic – Spatial – Visual – Linguistic – Inter- and Intra-personal.
Space Requirements: Standard classroom.
Goals:
- To practice appropriate actions connected to the meaning of different verbs.
- To practice following instructions.
- To elicit expressions from a child’s known world.
- To exercise manual dexterity and coordination.
- To stimulate conversation and discussion.
- To identify and name action words or verbs.
Teacher Guidelines:
- Explain that the object of the game is to make it easy for people to guess what you are doing by showing how you would do something.
- Behavior parameters are essential. The students must enjoy the process but must be controlled. These are not silly games. They are simple exercises towards a sophisticated goal.
- The more emphasis placed on attention to detail now, the better the results later.
Keys:
- Clarity of knowledge is more important than physical ability.
- Once the activity has been identified, work on the mime.
Process: (Prior to 1st grade)
- Ask for suggestions of objects, tools and activities that people use or engage in. Encourage everyone to think and contribute. (Note: As an option you can spell the suggestions on the board or have the class make their own lists.)
- Pretend to use something. Have the group identify it. [Note: The attention to detail is most important in the holding and using of the object.]
- With young 1st graders and younger it is best to begin this game with one student naming an action and everyone showing it together. Have the students “freeze” in the action and look at everyone else.
- Once an action has been identified, take a volunteer for another silent demonstration of a new object, tool or activity. Make sure volunteers identify where they are, such as; “I am in the garden.” If they do not say, ask them. Continue until everyone has had an opportunity to participate.
- If you can think of an activity that would complement the one being demonstrated, ask for a volunteer who could “help with the activity.” Give an example yourself if you have to. (For example: If one child is digging, another could help by moving the dirt, another could help by planting something in the hole, and so on.)
Sidetrack: (Start here with students 1st grade and up)
What are you doing? One child stands in front and mimes an action. The next child approaches and asks, “What are you doing?” The child who is miming can answer with any action except the one that she or he is doing. Once the game has continued, no child can repeat an action. For example the first child is brushing her hair, but when asked replies, “I am swimming.” and leaves. The second child then mimes swimming, but when the third enters and asks, “What are you doing?”, the second child cannot say, “Brushing my hair.” or “Swimming.” She/He must come up with a new action.
At the end, ask the class how many of the action words/verbs they can remember. Ask each child to give you a number. Then ask one of the children who gave one of the higher numbers to prove it.
Integration: Find activities in all curricula and challenge the students to show what they are studying. For example: if you are studying the earth, challenge the class to show some of their knowledge, rather than tell you about it, or write about it. “What holds in the Inner Core?” “What does Metamorphic Rock look like?”
CHANGE THE OBJECT or NAME THIS NOUN
AzCCRS Emphasis:
- Language Arts: Listening, understanding, and responding in a variety of contexts for a variety of purposes. Comprehending. Reading, writing and spelling nouns from recent study. Naming nouns. Naming categories of nouns.
- Social Studies: Group participation skills. Following instructions. Showing comprehension of elements of recent study.
Theatre Skills: Beginning mime. Using the body to exhibit knowledge. Establishing the artifice of theatre-creating realities. Thinking on your feet.
Sign Systems: Drama & language.
Multiple Intelligences: Bodily kinesthetic – Spatial – Visual – Linguistic – Inter- and Intra-personal.
Space Requirements: Standard classroom.
Goals:
- To practice appropriate demonstration of recent study. (Integration)
- To practice following instruction.
- To elicit expressions from a child’s knowledge base.
- To exercise manual dexterity and coordination.
- To stimulate conversation and discussion.
- To begin assessment using the body as the student’s tool. (Integration)
- To encourage spontaneous thought and action
- Naming nouns.
Teacher Guidelines:
- Choose any common object. For example: a chair, a plastic bottle, a high-lighter, a coat hanger and so on.
- Point out that it is a thing. Every thing has its naming word which is also called a noun.
- If age appropriate ask, “What are the categories of nouns?”
- If age appropriate set a sequence of person, place, thing, common, proper and plural nouns one after the other.
- Explain that the idea of the game is to change the object into something different by using language and movement.
- Students should be encouraged to use language. For example: if a student has changed an object into a telephone, she can say, “Hello, who’s there?”
- Behavior parameters are essential. The students must enjoy the process, but must be controlled.
- These are not silly games. They are simple exercises towards a sophisticated goal.
- The more emphasis placed on attention to detail now, the better the results later.
- Tell the class that you are going to ask them how many of the nouns they can remember. Ask each child to give you a number. Then ask one of the children who gave one of the higher numbers to prove it.
Keys:
- Give some examples of nouns.
- Change the object a few times yourself.
- Clarity of knowledge is more important than physical ability.
- Remember to assess what a child knows about nouns during this activity.
- How well a student shows that knowledge will improve as the class practices the activities.
Process:
- Place “the object” at the front of the class
- Set an order through the class so that students know their turn.
- Ask the students to think of at least 3 nouns.
- Point out that the room is full of nouns.
- If a child freezes. Help by giving hints; such as, “What do you use to clean your teeth?” or “What is your favorite place to eat?”
- Don’t be distracted by physical details. Let the knowledge flow. Keep it moving.
- Make sure that there is always one child standing and waiting to go next.
EXTENSION
You can vary this activity by having two students stand in front of the class, one of them holding the object. These students must then pass the object back and forth, changing the object with each pass. If one student pauses for more than three seconds her/his turn is over and another student can take his/her place.
Paul Fisher is the Executive Director at Arts Integration Solutions. From the classroom to the board room, Mr. Fisher has a host of satisfied clients in many differing venues, throughout the US, in Europe, Russia and Africa. He has consulted for Raytheon, INTUIT, Canyon Ranch, Arts For “Border” Children and many other organizations. He teaches creative thinking and gives lectures on a variety of topics. Mr. Fisher has been recognized with two prestigious awards for his years of distinguished service in Arts and Education. Mr. Fisher is a graduate of the University of Birmingham, Great Britain. He has published a variety of books and articles. Mr. Fisher is a dynamic speaker, writer, director, actor, DJ and educator with more than 40 years of experience. Referred to as “the Robin Williams of education,” Fisher always provides a stimulating, hilarious and brain-blasting experience.
Arts Integration Solutions coaches schools to use the arts to teach and engage students and staff in core content learning: integrating the arts into the curriculum and life skills. We provide leadership to “install” a sustainable arts-integrated pedagogy through strategic planning, professional development, classroom modeling and technical support.
