Integrating the arts and literacy turned out to be a blast!
First, educators created "complementary puppets," using pairs of complementary colors. Complementary colors are the two hues directly across from one another on the color wheel. The complement of each primary is the secondary created by mixing the other two primaries.
Next, they joined in groups and collaboratively wrote "complimentary" dialogues for their puppets to enact, using vocabulary like "lissome" and "redolent."
Finally, they performed their plays, which touched on themes like "non-attachment," "feather land," and "resurrection."
We revisited some of the challenges we'd listed at the previous session and did a "carousel," in which educators spent five minutes adding solutions to each challenge. Brainstorms addressed how to work with prescriptive teachers, unsupportive institutional cultures, and how to find the time and resources necessary to successfully integrate the arts.
Finally, the rest of the session was spent swapping some excellent resources.
Websites:
Visual Thinking Strategies -- A research-based teaching method that improves critical thinking and language skills through discussions of visual images.
Stanza Break-- Poetry in Education
Stanza Break-- Poetry in Education
Newspaper Blackout-- An example of the subtractive writing process you could share with students.
Reader's Theater -- Turning books into scripts, engages kids in literature! Check out the following sites for script ideas:
Reader's Theater Script Ideas
Reader's Theater Edition
Teaching Heart Scripts and Plays
Stories to Grow By
The Best Class
Reading Lady
Reader's Theater Links
Reader's Theater Edition
Teaching Heart Scripts and Plays
Stories to Grow By
The Best Class
Reading Lady
Reader's Theater Links
Videos:
If I Should Have a Daughter V.O.I.C.E. founder Sarah Kay's TED Talk about Spoken Word Poetry
Books:
If I Should Have a Daughter V.O.I.C.E. founder Sarah Kay's TED Talk about Spoken Word Poetry
Books:
Integrating Art in Language Arts through Children's Literature by Debi Englebaugh
Ideas:
Alphabet books--Looking at a variety of alphabet books in several languages and then making an alphabet book of your own, could use a Fonts Generator
Shape/Picture Poetry--Creating images composed of words.
ASCII Text The American Standard Code for Information Interchange, numerically represents symbols.
Using Movies as a starting point for discussion, asking students to discuss why certain choices were made, ie colors or music
Combining videos to further understanding of quotes.
Akanska teaching modules-- Such as making origami cranes and then tackling your attitude towards those instructions--self-reflection
Start with a book, ie Miss Muggle Goes to Mumbai, and base projects off of book. ie "friendly monster sculptures" or t-shirt decorating, stained glass painting. Or Very Hungry Caterpillar and create your own creatures!
Hi all
ReplyDeleteLearners, the classroom, arts integration and Sesame Street!
On an unrelated note (!) I was looking over the UCDS site Ellie mentioned in the earlier lecture and some of the resources available there, which I thought were very interesting. I happened to be reading Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi last week, and by some odd twist of fate he and Ellen Winner were being interviewed in a 2008 issue of the Spark magazine. I say its an odd twist, but its also a really rewarding one :)
That issue was particularly interesting to me, since the Head of School (is it? she writes the first page of every issue) was talking about 'sticky' curriculum, and their approach to curriculum design. She mentioned the features of their approach -
Light the fire rather than fill the bucket
Active not passive
Less is More
Use it or Lose it
Map not a Script
Process not Product
This is really interesting to me, since it goes to the heart of the matter of theories of learning and theories of how children learn. In India we have many variations on the 'fill the bucket' paradigm; for example the child is seen as an empty vessel/blank slate, jug (into which water must be poured) - and other metaphors that I'm sure all of us have heard that reflect a position on how children learn! This is also one of the reasons institutional cultures seem so opposed to activities like art integration and play, because the child is not really seen as capable of generating thought, only receiving it. Perhaps the philosophy/pedagogy at Akanksha is different because it accounts for the learner's participation in the process of her/his learning, and it would be really interesting to see children's responses to that model of teaching. The inclusion of art practices can also enhance a child's satisfaction and motivation in participating in an activity.
One of the areas I enjoy learning about is literacy, and the processes of acquiring literacy-related skills. In India literacy is a stumbling block for a majority of kids from low socio-economic backgrounds, and is often a reason for their dropping out of school in standard 3 and 4. English has preference the medium of instruction even when the community does not speak English, acquiring English literacy becomes a skill learnt exclusively in school, and often involves the learner being characterized as dumb, incapable of being taught, a blank slate or empty vessel or so on. While children have acquired strong language capabilities in their native or local languages (they often speak three or four languages fluently!), English presents a special challenge, and often the pedagogy does not address the root of the problem or engage with the learner differently. I would love to learn more from Himani on this
One of the ex-students of the course I am studying in did a field study of print literacy practices in a low socio-economic group classroom, and found that "teacher who said that taught as “ (sic) she was taught in her childhood…she believed that children in primary are very efficient in memorizing and need some “input” (teacher’s writing letters on the blackboard) before they can give some output[1]”. Her approach led to children doing a lot of ‘drills’ of writing the alphabets and reading them out in the class.
Other reports also documented the difficulties children had in acquiring print literacy skills, particularly when they are absent from the home and social environment from which they come. Some of the reports had these comments -
ReplyDelete"“Some students had managed to decode the system of shapes by memorizing the sounds assigned to shape, but when they read a word it was only in terms of producing a sound in absence of assigning a meaning. Same held true even of writing. The children could very well copy….did not go beyond the shapes they had produced on the paper.[1]”
“One of the reasons children disliked reading stories was that even after having read the complete story themselves, they did not know what was there.”
Arshad’s story
“He breaks the words into sounds to read them. Ends up producing a lot of non-words. Reads without understanding. Minute he is able to understand the intonation of his voice changes and he sounds confident. His posture also becomes upright.[2]”
This is apparently a feature of the language pedagogy model that is dominant in India.In the Indian context, Krishna Kumar and Maxine Berntsen (among others) have pointed to reading pedagogy in primary schools as being insufficient to teach children how to read meaningfully or help children move from stage to stage. Reading pedagogy is not just about the way reading skills are taught but the way these are related to the child’s developing reading and ability. Krishna Kumar points out that “What is on the agenda … is to learn the shapes of letters that form the syllabary, and to know the names by which they are called. The child is required to master the syllabary by sounding out the names of the letters…. the approach is characterized by the treatment of script as a complex package of informations to be learnt for their own sake. Children must learn the names of different letters, and they must develop the ability to recognize them separately and as part of the word.[1]” Krishna Kumar points out that this approach does not encourage the learning cycle of the child and enable her to read independently of the text or to use her own language.
A couple of the researches above tried other activities like getting children to write their own stories and use those as reading material, which helped the children build some context for acquiring literacy skills. Other activities involved word games and puzzles which managed to introduce English words and their rules. The activities were similar to the things we looked at as resources as in the literacy session. The main difference seemed to be that they engaged with the idea of the learner differently than traditional models of learning and schooling and were perhaps able to achieve more positive results for learners.
I was just reading something on Sesame Street and Blues Clues (in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point), and turns out Sesame Street was designed to teach children the alphabet using TV as a medium. Blues Clues used a similar medium and added storytelling to the mix, designing their show as a puzzle-solving game where kids had to guess correct answers to questions. It's interesting that both use puppets (or Muppets!) and some level of animation to teach kids. In a way they're kind of an interactive play with puppets and drawings, though less hands on than some of the stuff we looked at in class.
[1] Kumar, Krishna, (1992), Reading in Primary School, What is Worth Teaching, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, Pg 62-63
[1] Fernandes, Fiona, (2008), Language and Literacy, Cracking the Code: Struggling to Understand, Pg 22
[2] Kaur, Harpreet, (2007), Sharing Stories, Reading: Problems and Possibilities, Pg 41"
[1] Abrol, Bobby, Communication in the Classroom, A Language Study in the Municipal Corporation School Class 2, Pg 23"
Handmade letters - This is so cool, this guy has painted lines and dots on his hands with ink and makes lower case and upper case characters. It looks like a great game for younger kids to play with letters and maybe remember the alphabet
ReplyDeletehttp://www.behance.net/gallery/Handmade-Type/3235741
via
http://exp.lore.com/post/19587992148/handmade-type-a-brilliant-self-initiated