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**Teaching Earth Science Through Arts Integration** **//Merry Ostheimer//** //How Much Do We Remember?// • //10% of what we read;// • //20% of what we hear;// • //30% of what we see;// • //50% of what we hear and see at the same time;// • //70% of what we hear, see, and say;// • //90% of what we hear, see, say, and do.[i]// **Objective** How do I teach a child who is antsy and can’t sit still? How do I teach a quiet girl satisfied to be unnoticed? How do I teach a child with special needs? How do I close the achievement gap between ESL learners and non-ESL? How do I close the gap between Special Ed and regular education students? How do I catch up students who come from other schools, districts, or states? How can I convey knowledge to a girl who just entered the country two weeks before school starts? Maybe the answer lies in creating an interdisciplinary approach to teaching.
 * Can You Feel the Earth Move Under Your Feet?**

Third grade is a magical time for children. They have just learned to read and now they can read to learn. The possibilities are endless! If only learning could be meaningful and fulfilling to them. There have been so many changes in curriculum passed down from our district and state, that it is overwhelming to consider one more change. When I consider how to address Common Core State Standards, my first wish is that I could give all my students an equal footing. If I could build a skills set that will stay with a child all his life, he may be able to confront problems that arise, whether they are social, academic, or physical difficulties. Integrating arts into my curriculum might fulfill my hope.

I see this unit as an opportunity to integrate dance, music, theater, and visual arts into the Common Core State Standards. Integrating arts is a way to express knowledge with out words so my ESL and Special education student are in the same boat as my English-speaking, regular education learners. Leveling the playing field gives all students a chance to discover their own talents and achieve more.

How do I justify using arts in the classroom? I teach third grade in a regular classroom. I am not an artist, musician, actress, or dancer. Arts integration may improve long-term retention of content.[ii] There is empirical research from neuroscience and cognitive science that supports arts integration. When children enact or perform actions, they are improving their memory recall. During drama activities, there are retention benefits when students act out dialogue instead of just reading or listening. When students are emotionally aroused, there is activity in the amaydala, a part of the brain that is associated with emotion. Emotional arousal can strongly affect recall of information and leads to focusing attention better.[iii] **Introduction**

I teach third grade at West Park Place Elementary School (WPP), a diverse school uniquely located by the University of Delaware. With an enrollment of about 390 students, West Park Place is one of several suburban host sites for students in the English as a Second Language program, Delaware Autistic Program, and REACH (Realistic Educational Alternatives for Children with Disabilities). West Park Place, in partnership with the University of Delaware, provides English language instruction and support to students representing over 25 countries and languages around the world.

I have taught in Christina School District since 1987 in both Special Education and Elementary Education and I earned a Masters Degree in Elementary and Secondary School Counseling in 1995. I teach 24 students, eight of whom are ESL (their languages include Arabic, Gujarati, Chinese, French, and Spanish) and four students who are Autistic.

My district has formally adopted the Common Core State Standards. Through our Response to Intervention system, ESL and Special Education students are pulled out for math, writing, and reading instructional groups. Because of this, I chose to focus on integrating arts into my daily block of Science and Social Studies when I have all of my students including my autistic students in class with me, sharing the same experience.

**Rationale and Concepts** At West Park Place, our school-wide goal is to increase reading achievement for ESL and Special Education learners by developing strong vocabulary knowledge and effective comprehension skills. My goal is to use activities from an array of disciplines such as dance, theater, visual arts, and music to reinforce concepts within the Science and Social Studies areas. As I researched ideas for content areas, I realized that if I start with a solid pre-existing curriculum, I could enhance lessons with arts integration ideas. For example, I used the Core Knowledge curriculum for World Rivers to integrate arts into the lessons. Just as rivers are vital to societies, the Moldau is vital to delivering lessons on rivers, geography, music, and poetry: Smetana’s symphony and symphonic poem called the Moldau, conveys beauty and substance as it follows the travels of the Moldau River through Czechoslovakia.

One book I found helpful was __Lively Learning—Using the Arts to Teach the K-8 Curriculum__ by Linda Crawford[iv]. I was very inspired by how Crawford used the idea of “spark” to feature an arts element. Here is one example of how I would use her planning to fit with my school district’s lesson plan:

2. Using a template, trace and label a drawing showing the origin and end of a river. ||
 * || Day 1 ||
 * Goal/I can… statement || I can tell you what a river is. ||
 * Spark (5 min.) || Movement: Use the Brain Dance to motivate students and help them brainstorm ideas about what rivers are. ||
 * Lesson (10 min.) || Read and discuss the book, __Living Near a River__ by Allan Fowler ||
 * Choices (5 min.) || 1. Create a comic strip about why people settle near rivers.
 * Planning (Teacher checks in with each student) || Students will explain that a river is a continuously-moving body of water that is larger than a stream. ||
 * Work (20 min.) || Students work on their activity choice. ||
 * Reflection and Sharing (5 min.) || Teach about Rivers using the comic strip or drawing. Students ask questions or give feedback. ||
 * Vocabulary || river, mouth, origin ||
 * Resources || __Living Near a River__, by Fowler ||

Bedazzling units with “sparks” seems like a fun and creative way to achieve learning goals. According to Linda Crawford[v] there are six powerful reasons for integrating the arts into the daily curriculum:


 * 1) The arts make content more accessible.
 * 2) The arts encourage joyful, active learning.
 * 3) The arts help students make and express personal connections to content.
 * 4) The arts help children understand and express abstract concepts.
 * 5) The arts stimulate higher-level thinking.
 * 6) The arts build community and help children develop collaborative work skill

Integrating Arts into the Curriculum engages my students learning through visual, auditory, tactual, and kinesthetic avenues. When students can act out, dramatize, dance, paint, draw, and construct, they are using higher order thinking skills and may retain more content over the long-term.[vi]

**The Arts as Sparks** Movement and Dance

How can you move your body at a certain speed, through a given space, with a distinct energy. Creative dance provides all participants with the opportunity to enhance their abilities to think and move in new and satisfying ways.[vii] Dance supports conceptual learning when a child moves with meaning and purpose such as when he represents the water molecules in the water cycle. The students start low as a water drop in a stream, then __evaporates__ from low to high. The water drop collects and condenses with other drops to form clouds in different shapes. After a while, the molecule precipitation and fall down to the ground.

move as a water molecule as it precipitates from high to low,

For kinesthetic learners, getting up and moving can be liberating. I started teaching introduction to movement so my students would know movement concepts from the first day of school. I taught my students how to move their bodies with certain speed, control, and energy. I showed them how to move through space without touching others, furniture, and walls. I transitioned to pantomiming activities where students made gestures through movement to act out words and phrases. Movement made learning vocabulary fun and creative. By the fifth day of school, my students had figured out a way to show landforms:


 * Landform  ||   Movement   ||
 * mountain || snap arms together over head ||
 * valley || move pointer finger down and up to form a “v” ||
 * plains || stretch both arms out wide ||
 * plateau || bend arms at elbows, then drop hands to form a shelf ||
 * island || hold up rounded arms and touch finger tips, and curve your middle in ||
 * river || hold hands together and move them like a zigzag ||
 * ocean || hold one palm up, then crash the other palm against it, then receding it back ||

Linking words with gestures seemed to help learning so I began teaching the Brain Dance[viii]. Anne Green Gilbert developed the Brain Dance to help students develop strong and healthy bodies, cooperate with others, become increasingly self-aware by expressing feelings through movement, and developing problem-solving skills through the experience of solving movement problems.[ix] My students understand the eight steps (breath, tactile, core-distal, head-tail, upper-lower, body-slide, cross-lateral, and vestibular) and frequently use them to follow directions, take mini-movement breaks, and build their imagination[x]. I notice that when my class does the Brain Dance, they launch into their task with a sharper focus.

and up and down left arm. Then spread the lotion up and down right leg. and up and down left leg. || || Vestibular || Spin clockwise slowly. Then stop and change your direction and spin counterclockwise. ||
 * Let’s Do The Brain Dance! ||
 * Step || What? || How? ||
 * 1.  || Breath || Breathe in through nose. Hold your breath. Relax and b reathe out through mouth. ||
 * 2.  || Tactile || Spread sun screen up and down your right arm.
 * 3.  || Core-Distal || Kneel down to the ground and plant some seeds. Water the seeds. Then watch your seeds sprout and grow tall. Reach your arms to the sky! ||
 * 4.  || Head-Tail || Now put your hands on your hips. Tip your head to the right and at the same time, move your hip to the right. Both your head and hip are moved to the right. Now switch and move both your head and hips to the left. ||
 * 5.  || Upper Lower || Uh, oh! You just got stuck in quicksand—your feet are stuck and you need to wave wildly to get someone’s attention. Don’t move your feet while you wave your hands! ||
 * 6.  || Body-Slide || You’ve been rescued! Put your hands on your hips and do a jig! ||
 * 7.  || Cross-Lateral || Keep your left side still and wiggle your right side. Now point your right up and do the disco! Cross your right foot to the left so that both your right arm and leg cross the center of ||
 * 8.

Writing

How can you become a more creative thinker? Seeing, Writing, Observing is an activity where students are given a photograph. After the students consider what the subject is, where the setting is, what will happen next in the photograph, and so on, they write about their responses down. Then the students are encouraged to write a story about the subject. After further reflection, students may write haiku poems about the photographs. In order to get a different perspective of the subject in the photograph, students may exercise movements to represent what they see. For example, the photograph shows a walrus sunning himself on an ice chunk.

Movement and Tempo

Tempo Tag is a game designed to develop listening skills; students get into a circle and the teacher starts a drum beat. The class moves clockwise around the circle and step to the beat of the drum. The teacher speeds up and slows down the tempo and the class keeps up without running.

Theater

Kinesthetic learners will love this strategy too: when in doubt, act it out! Whether we are solving a math problem or reading a new story, act-it-out is an effective strategy that the whole class can dive into. For example, one of my students said he just didn’t “get” our story, __Harvest Birds__. So, the class ran through the list of characters and selected roles. When there weren’t enough human parts to go around, the remaining students were happy to be a crow. The crows were crucial to the story and would get to fly around Juan, the main character. Next, I narrated the story while the class acted it out. After the class acted out the story, Paul told me that he understood the story better. Maybe instead of just reading or listening to the story, saying dialogue and doing the movements helped him learn. Another way to improve comprehension is by having the children pick out story elements and write their own synopsis of the story. Auditory learners may especially enjoy storytelling and they can practice by pantomiming with a narrator who adds dialogue or have characters improvise dialogue.

Improvisation builds imagination by allowing children to create a scene from nothing, work as a team to listen to each other, and to respond naturally to what has been said.[xi] By thinking on their feet, students learn how to adapt to evolving circumstances. Other types of improvisation involve simple improvisations based on situations.[xii] giving a team of students a situation. Each team has a different situation. Time is given for the team to read the situation, assign roles, and plan how to act it out before the team performs the situation for the class. The class tries to guess what the situation is and gives feedback to the team, which then goes back to revise its solution. Then all teams share their situations again.

Music

“Oh, your room is the one with the pretty music.” I get that a lot from students and parents. When I play classical, soundtracks, jazz, dance, and motivational music everyday for my class, it not only enhances our learning environment, but also gives opportunities for the class to listen to a variety of genres.

In my seminar, I learned that music can be logical because it can be understood through patterns that exist in beat and sound[xiii]. Music can be functional because it serves a purpose. For example, a supermarket may play music so that its customers would want to stay longer to shop[xiv]. Music can be emotional because it may evoke and provoke human emotions through the different tonalities, voices, instruments, and dynamics[xv]. Finally, music can be abstract as it has the ability to paint a picture and tell stories that are not tangible[xvi].

Integrating sound to storytelling build imagination. In seminar, we listened to the soundtrack of __300__ first and then developed a story[xvii]. I paid attention to tempo first and noticed that the first part of the music started slow, then quickened as it became louder, and lastly dropped off. There was a distorted sound that gradually clarified and then the music resumed with a quick crescendo. Tracking the rhythm and dynamics of this music was sort of like feeling a pulse and I could picture a story. As the music begins, I picture two teens are trying to get to the border undetected by the authorities. During the distortion, I imagine there are a multitude of blue lasers scanning the perimeter of the grounds. The teens need to freeze and hide behind trees or rocks to avoid detection. They wait for their chance to run again when the lasers scan another area of the yard. After a final wave of lasers pass, the two determined youths run to the border and try to catch up with their fellow faction.

[i] Fauth, B. (1990). Linking the visual arts with drama, movement, and dance for the young child. [ii] why arts integration improves long-term retention of content [iii] why arts integration improves long-term retention of content [iv] Linda Crawford, //Lively Learning—Using the Arts to Teach the K-8 Curriculum// [v] Linda Crawford, //Lively Learning—Using the Arts to Teach the K-8 Curriculum// [vi] //Why Arts Integration Improves Long-Term Retention of Content// [vii] Interdisciplinary Learning Through Dance 101 MOVEntures [viii] Brain Dance [ix] Brain Dance [x] Brain Dance [xi] 101 Improv [xii] Creative Drama in the classroom Nellie McCaslin 1990 [xiii] seminar 10/15/13 [xiv] seminar 10/15/13 [xv] seminar 10/15/13 [xvi] seminar 10/15/13 [xvii] seminar 10/22/13