by Maura Selenak Harborview Elementary, Kindergarten I learned a routine called Pass the Portrait at a recent inservice with Melanie Rick, an instructor from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. To play Pass the Portrait, students are seated in a circle, facing a partner. Before beginning, students must show the place between them where they will be placing the piece of art (this is an important step because it helps avoid conflicts). In the game, students are taught how to “read” a portrait by discussing things like facial expression, gesture, and focal point. The teacher places a printed portrait in the predesignated spot between each pair of students. The students have one minute to discuss the picture before the teacher starts counting down aloud- “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, pass….the….portrait….!” The expectation is that students will wrap up their discussion by the time the teacher gets to 1, then will pass the portrait to the next pair by the time she finishes saying “pass the portrait”. The teacher moves amongst the students during the discussions, pulling out ideas and writing them on the board to reference later. This routine quickly gets students engaged- there is art in their hands!- and discussing with one another. I used Pass the Portrait to teach my kindergartners the routine and expectations for the game- they are seated, they are talking in quiet voices, they are expected to work with anyone in the class, they finish their conversation by the time I get to 1, and they pass the portrait clockwise. After teaching them this routine, I realized the sky was the limit! For example, we used the routine at the beginning of the Ray Troll art kit. I printed out 15 images of Ray Troll Fish. We began the lesson by looking at one piece of exemplar art on the board and identified colors, lines, patterns, and shapes. We were then ready to play “Pass the Artwork”. We used the exact same routine as Pass the Portrait, except students were looking at Ray Troll images, and they were picking out colors, lines, patterns, and shapes. The discussions were rich, and when it came time for students to create their own artwork, they were inspired and had concrete ideas of what kinds of lines, shapes, colors, and patterns they could use. In another instance, I used the Pass the Portrait routine at the beginning of the Rainbow Flower Garden Art Kit. The kit comes with many colorful artificial flowers. We used used exemplar art to identify flower parts before students played “Pass the Flower” with the artificial flowers. The objective for their discussions during Pass the Flower was to identify flower parts (stem, leaves, flower) and describe the flower (it has 5 petals, it is colorful, it has one long green leaf, etc.)
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by Joanna Hinderberger Gastineau School, 1st Grade Before going into one of my Artful Teaching lessons, I want to take a moment to admit how impressed I am with this new way of teaching. As I started integrating Artful Teaching into my practice, I realized how important, yet basic and easy it is to do. Honestly, I must admit that I am a little shocked that I have not always taught this way. I had completely overlooked the importance of explicitly teaching kids how to think. I expected this to be a skill that kids would just know what to do when I said, “think about it.” Now, I have learned that by giving my students the tools they need to “think,” they have become much more critical thinkers and incredibly curious about their world. My classroom culture is now built around student thinking. Students have learned to critically think about new topics when I introduce them by using the skills of:
Okay, enough chit chat, let’s get into one of the lessons. Sea Week was one specific area that I wanted to focus on, and I especially wanted to integrate art, science, and writing. I have found that for first grade students, it can be challenging to take another’s perspective. This is something that we work on for developing social skills. I first chose to conduct an informal assessment to gain some information on what the students already know about low tide beaches and creatures in Southeast. I also wanted to figure out what it was that they were interested in learning about. In order to do this, I gathered students on the carpet and explained that we would be starting a new science unit on sea creatures. I used the Artful Thinking Routine Step Inside as a way for the children to demonstrate what they already know about the beach. I had them close their eyes and imagine walking off the bus, arriving at the beach, and exploring the low tide. I had them imagine what the beach would sound like, look like, feel like, and smell like. After allowing students to use their imaginations, I had them go to their seats and draw and write about each of the senses that they think they would experience at the beach. I prepared student books using two pieces of paper that have lines on the bottom and blank space on the top for drawing. The papers were folded in half so that there were four spaces for four senses. I labeled each page for each sense (look, smell, feel, and sound) with an icon to help the students stay focused on the task. I have found that scaffolding thinking into a focused area can often encourage more writing than given a broad topic. I asked the students to write their thinking, meaning any thing that they think is true, as well as any questions or wonderings they might have. Students were given time to write and draw to express what they already think they know to be true and then ask questions that I could use as a way to plan. by Tracy Goldsmith Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School My 8th grade Language Arts class students studied the Holocaust. They were assigned different Holocaust novels to read and they participated in literature circles using those novels. We started the unit by using the Step Inside Artful Thinking Routine with this image; This is an image of Otto Frank, on the opening day of the Anne Frank House as a museum in Amsterdam. I asked students to stand up and quietly place themselves into the same position as the person in this portrait. While they quietly, stood in position looking at the image, I asked them to image what this person might be thinking or feeling. I wanted them to come up with a story about this picture and this man. They stood silently for one minute and then they had to write a journal entry answering the same questions. Some student responses are below:
The unit involved many different activities related to the Holocaust. One resource we used extensively was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website (www.ushmm.org). To extend the Artful Thinking routine of “Step Inside,” the students were assigned a portrait and first person narrative project. They started by finding one victim or survivor whose story they wanted to explore more on the USHMM website. There is a link on the website that shows ID cards with pictures and information about victims and survivors. After finding a person that they wanted to study more, students had to read the information about them and then turn that into a first person narrative. This first person narrative would be read out loud to the class later in the unit. The activity of writing in first person really stretched their understanding of what an individual was experiencing during the Holocaust. Being able to read it out loud to an audience, made that story come alive. Many students were emotionally touched by the narrative readings.
Engaging Learners in Reading Wonders using Arts Integration by Nancy Peel JSD Elementary Instructional Coach So, what is “Tableau” anyway? Tableau is short for the French term, “tableau vivant”, which means, “living picture”. It is a theatre technique that shows a “snapshot”, or a frozen moment in time. The Story: It was a dark and stormy night in February. A small group of intrepid JSD teachers, administrators, community members and fearless school board members got together to CREATE tableaus. Not the usual activity when these folks get together, but worth exploring and adding to our practice! Deborah Brzoska, a teaching artist associated with the Kennedy Center guided us through a “close reading” lesson from a 5th grade unit in Reading Wonders. After the first brief reading for general understanding, she showed us how to take the plunge and bring the text to life with our bodies! We were divided into five groups, each being given a short section of text about Rock Formations from the book. Our task was to cooperatively re-read the text section we were given and to use our “actor’s tools” (body, facial expression, imagination) to illustrate the rock formation process described. After a short period of time to prepare, we were charged with “performing” our tableau for the other groups to see. Our task was to create a tableau that clearly showed the process we were reading about. As is often the case, when we are introduced to a new idea that is outside our comfort zone, there is trepidation and subtle resistance. However, Deb demonstrated enthusiasm and support as she guided us through the process of using tableau as a way to help students practice newly learned comprehension strategies and develop understanding of complex text. By Kris Dorsey Gastineau Community School, 1st Grade Science – absolutely, Writing – of course, Reading – yep...I’ve challenged myself to integrate many different Artful Thinking routines with the instructional content in my first grade class this year. Well, all except math… I’ve avoided it long enough, I suppose. I turned my teacher’s guide to our newest chapter. Math In Focus, Chapter 15 – Calendar and Telling Time. How do we measure time?... Seconds, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades... How do we keep track of those units of measure?.. Timers, watches, phones, clocks, calendars… What do the kids really need to know and how will they learn it best?... They need to develop a sense of time – how many seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month, months in a season, months/seasons in a year - and be able to compare those units of time. But what parts have to be experienced? The passage of time, the development of what an hour feels like compared to five hours, how it feels to wait a year for your next birthday, what mom actually means when she says there are only 10 minutes before bedtime... these are not things we can tell them; these are things they have to experience and connect with...these ideas about time must be constructed within the learner. Sure, we need to help kids have access to the social knowledge pieces - like there are 60 seconds in a minute or that the third day of a week has a name and it's called Tuesday. These bits of information cannot be constructed within the learner alone through experiences. They have to be told from one person to another…because, in Japan, the third day of the week is called Kayobi...you wouldn't know that until somebody told you, no matter how many Tuesdays go by in Tokyo. These are the direct instruction pieces; the pieces I have to reveal to them. But what connections can we make about telling time with an Artful Thinking routine? How can we use Artful Thinking and art experiences to assess what children already know or have learned about reading clocks? How can we make the learning engaging and meaningful? Prior to introducing the new chapter, I told the kids we were going to do a "See, Think, Wonder" Thinking Routine for several pictures. First, I pulled out a photo of a sundial and didn't say anything while they looked carefully and thought about it. Then, I asked them to quietly turn and share with a partner the things that they saw and thought about. I asked a few volunteers to share out their ideas and anything they wondered. Here are a few quotes after looking at the sundial: "Maybe it's a time machine." "I noticed some letters on the circle part." "There's a shadow from the sun." "I wonder why there is a shark fin on it in the middle?" Next, I pulled out a photo of an ancient water clock (used to measure time at night) and repeated the "See, Think, Wonder" routine: "Maybe it's an ancient bowl." "I see Egypt writing on it – hiro, helo, hieroglyphs? I don't know what they're called, but it's Egypt picture writing." "It looks like a bowl with water in it and it has a hole in the bottom." "I wonder if it's for drinking water or taking a shower?" Then, I pulled out a photo of an hourglass and repeated the routine: "I have one of those at home" "I think it's a timer." "I have a small one in my game at home." "It has sand in it and when it runs out, you turn it over to start it." "I use one when I brush my teeth so I know how long I have to brush." "I wonder how long it takes for the sand to run out from the top?" The next photo to be revealed with the thinking routine was an analog clock: "That's a clock!" "We have those kinds in here – right over there (pointing to the classroom analog clocks)." "I don't know how much time is on it." "I think it shows ten-eight." The last photo I brought out was a digital clock (akin to the Velcro shoe – most kids can figure it out without any help!) "9:24!"
"It's 9:24." "I have that kind. It's an alarm clock." After they had discussed all the photos, I asked them, "Why do you think I put all these photos together?" Here are some things that they said, "They all have to do with time?" "Maybe it's about time machines." "Maybe we're doing it for math?" "We are going to learn about time." "We know that these things are time." "Because you want us to make connections about ways people tell time?" "It's our math for today." "Because we are going to be thinking about time and clocks." I literally got goosebumps. They got it. They understood that unless we know how to "read" the markings or how the device is used to measure time, it's useless to us. The sundial, the water clock and the hourglass were all cool ideas for telling time, but we couldn't read them...we hadn't been taught how to use them to measure the passage of time. That set the stage for our purpose - learning to read an analog clock to measure time. They noticed there are three analog clocks on the walls of our classroom already, but I was the only one in the room who knew how to read them. Wind, Fog, and Rain: Ms. Hinderberger's First Grade Class Thinks and Puzzles About the Weather1/11/2016 What do we think we know about the wind? "The wind is cold." "It's strong!" "It can blow things." What puzzles do we have about the wind? "Where does wind come from?" "What does it look like?" What do we think we know about fog? "The fog is quiet. But you can see it." "It touches the ground." There's no fog in Hawaii." What puzzles do we have about fog? "What does fog look like? Does it always look the same?" "What is fog made out of?" What do we think we know about rain? "Rain is wet." "Rain can be really hard or soft and be like slush." "Rain comes down." What puzzles do we have about the rain?
"When snowflakes melt, do they become rain?" "When puddles get made, they are different shapes, but when the sun comes out, do they evaporate?" |
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