As everyone knows, I've been skipping out of PLC for an hour each Tuesday to go down to Sarah and Martha's class to teach drama with Miss Lily. The focus of our arts integration partnership are the concepts of inclusion and exclusion, and empathy for outcasts. It was inspired by our daily experience at the park, where we ignore, somewhat awkwardly, the other users of the park, due to our discomfort with them and their differences. It is always a challenge to know what is an "appropriate" way of talking about homelessness and its attendant issues of economic inequality, drug addiction, and mental illness. But Lily and I thought we'd give it a try. By using the story, Crow Boy, by Taro Yashima, we're trying to put the kids in the shoes of an outcast, and empathize with the boy's uniqueness and talents, irregardless of his apparent "strangeness."
We may not solve homelessness in our six-week partnership, but we think we'll give the kids a good foundation to start problem-solving the issue themselves. If they can solve homelessness in Hawai'i in their lifetime, I'll be content. :)
Evidence of Learning: Three students, Three ways, Three times
In order to document the progress of the students in both the content area (social studies) and the art form (drama), we are collecting evidence of learning from three students of differing abilities, in three ways--what the students DO, what they SAY, and what they WRITE (or, in the case of some 5-year olds, at least what they DRAW). We collect this evidence at least three times over the course of the project, and then summarize the progress that each of the three students have demonstrated. We're using iPhones at cameras and audio recorders, and plan to use video for the next session, which focuses on movement.
Above are a few photos from one of our first sessions. I'll be working them into an iMovie with the students' audio overdubbed.
Here's the "Mr. Cake" example of a students' learning conversation that we're modeling our work after.
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