CREATIVE LEAPS:
Journal for the Arts in Leadership and Interdisciplinary Learning

Spring 2004 Arts and Education Programming provided by The Learning Arts

The following is a sampling of Learning Arts programs currently in progress throughout New York and Connecticut. Don’t forget—The Learning Arts specializes in custom-designing programming to meet your curriculum, and your needs and interests!

See our website to learn more about how we work with you

Creating Freedom: The Performing and Creative Arts as Expression of Freedom and Democracy

Where: Peekskill Middle School

What: Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts

Curriculum: Eighth Grade English and Social Studies

With the help of The Learning Arts, eighth graders at Peekskill Middle School are engaging in the arts to spark dialogue and thinking around the issues of freedom, choice, and self-expression in America. Creating Freedom combines the core curriculum of eighth grade English and Social Studies with visual, musical, and theatrical arts to explore the question: What does it mean to be an American? And, more importantly, What does it mean to be free? Planned in full partnership with Peekskill’s classroom teachers and curriculum specialists, lead artists John Cimino (baritone) and Krista Apple (actor) have drawn on the interdisciplinary talents of The Learning Arts to develop a weekly workshop-style residency bringing professional performing and teaching artists into the classroom.

The residency is a carefully built combination of student-as-audience and student-as-artist experiences. In past weeks, each eighth grade class has witnessed—in their very own classroom—live performances of Civil War music (“Dixie,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic”), American spirituals (“Wade in the Water,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,”), songs from Porgy and Bess, South Pacific, and 1776. Simultaneously, each student has engaged in writing, theatre, and visual art projects focusing on the importance of freedom and expression, from dialogue about the fears of war to physical theatre explorations of power and oppression, to paintings, drawings, and collages about freedoms for the future.

A public presentation on May 24 will showcase the students’ experiences and creative projects developed over the course of the residency. The presentation will take place at Ford Auditorium in Peekskill, and is open to the public.

Creating Freedom was developed in support of the following curriculum:

English: The Diary of Anne Frank (Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett); Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution (Ji Li Jiang); and the poetry of Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni. Supports New York State Language Arts Standards 1, 2, and 4.

Social Studies: American Revolutionary and Civil Wars; World Wars I and II; the Great Depression, FDR and the New Deal; the American Civil Rights Movement; the United Nations; and International Human Rights.

Number Sense and Telling Time

Where: The Rowayton School, Norwalk, CT

What: Music, Theatre, and Movement

Curriculum: First Grade Math, Number Concepts, and Time Literacy

Through this custom-designed four day residency, first graders of the Rowayton School in Norwalk, Connecticut are deepening their understanding of basic concepts of numbers and time. Planned through close collaboration of first grade teachers and lead teaching artist, John Cimino, the residency uses music, theatre, and movement activities to enliven and physically realize students’ grasps of basic math and time-related concepts. How does counting help us understand our world? Where do we find numbers in nature, music and art? What’s the difference between telling time on the clock and feeling time in our bodies?

Each student session is full of hands-on activities for the students, including musical experiments exploring the feeling of elapsed time and how we remember rhythms and beats, movement games to explore the relative motion of the hands of the clock, and counting challenges based on the features of animal figures and geometric objects…Big ideas and fundamental skills brought to life through the imaginative energies and motivating power of the arts!

Number Sense and Telling Time supports the following curriculum:

Math: Mathematical symbols; counting as inquiry and description; rhythm; and visual recognition of quantities, object clusters and patterns.

Science: Time literacy; the clock as a calculator or ruler; numbers systems on the clock – 12, 24, 60; observing time in the body and in nature; time scales, sun and earth rotation.

The Solar System and Music of the Spheres

Where: The Rowayton School, Norwalk, CT

What: Visual arts, music, theatre, and movement

Curriculum: Third Grade Science, Mythology, and Writing

This four-day residency for third graders is all about the Solar System: planets, moons, orbits, the sun, the seasons and our place in the scheme of things here on planet Earth. Third grade teachers met with lead teaching artist, John Cimino, of The Learning Arts to brainstorm the third grade science curriculum and link it – interdisciplinary style – to music, theatre, the visual arts and, of course, movement. The result is a hugely imaginative set of workshops exploring not just the Solar System, but also the broader methods of scientific inquiry: how discoveries are made, how telescopic images are interpreted, and what it means and how it feels to be in relative motion within our Solar System.

In addition, students are exploring the links between art, literature and science as they uncover the connections between the planetary bodies and their mythological counterparts—the legendary personalities of Mars, Venus, Mercury, and more.

Each of the four one-hour sessions is a mix of discovery, performance, exploration, and invention linked to one or more art forms. Students begin with visual interpretations of fabulous NASA photographs of each of the planets, and overviews of planets in orbit around the sun. They build descriptive vocabularies for what they see as well as for the range of feelings that arise from each image. Students also explore Kepler’s famous Music of the Spheres – the irresistible link between the orderliness of the planetary orbits and the mathematical basis of music. Layered on the music, students also learn some ‘planetary choreography’: size, rotation, tilt, procession, speed and distance. Finally, students work artistically to craft a time capsule message to other possible life forms in the universe: a message from earth sharing our values, hopes and story.

The Solar System and Music of the Spheres supports the following curriculum:

Science: visualizing the solar system; physical characteristics of the sun and planets; conceptualizing orbits, rotation, revolution, earth seasons, and phases of the moon; planetary distances, speeds, and movements.

Mythology and Writing: Stories and myths of the planets and their characteristics; developing descriptive language and writing skills based on visual images and storytelling.