Exposition of Student Learning, Winter 2017

ASCEND is an Expeditionary Learning school, which means our students take on an inquiry with guiding questions to study a topic deeply over many months. This content is integrated across subjects within their classrooms, and integrated with our Visual, Media, and Performing Arts programs. At the end of their learning expedition, student celebrate at our biannual Exposition of Learning.

Traditionally, arts integration takes place as a teaching collaboration between classroom and arts educators. Collaborative planning time is provided and lessons are "partner" taught, with teachers making connections between academic content and the arts disciplines. As the performing arts program is new to the school, music and dance are taught as a weekly special class (without the classroom teacher present). Despite this limitation, I was able to meet with the 2nd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers to begin a modest level of collaboration, without the "integration" class time.

In one of our 4/5 labs, students studied native and invasive species of Sausal Creek, a major part of our local watershed. We first studied the ways in which native plants moved and used the collected vocabulary to inspire movement creation. Students wrote cinquain poems and composed short dances to accompany them. Students also looked at change and power dynamics as a part of our unit on exploring weight, making connections between types of species and how they experienced invasion.

In second grade, students studied the life cycles of plants and insects. For performing arts integration, students learned two poems by Carol Gerber: "Seedlings," a poem about germinating seeds; and "New Baby," a poem about a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. Our lessons began by reading the poem and identifying movement vocabulary that could guide creative exploration. We then looked at percussion instruments to investigate which sounds best matched the story and movements. Finally, students learned microphone technique and some elected to memorize and audition for the role of "poet" in our performance. See the final product in the video below:

Beginning Weight Explorations

Our 4th grade students have spent several weeks exploring the weight of their bodies in movement. We started with feeling our own weight lifting and falling back into the floor using various parts of the body.

As students became more comfortable with the weight of their own bodies, we explored sharing weight with a partner, creating shapes that would take us off balance, were it not for the return weight of our partner. Obviously, this kind of work requires a lot of trust, and our dancers quickly learned that they must be there for each other in order to be safe!



Next, we added a power dynamic between partners, where one student would be a "leader," and the other would have to follow. We varied the levels of resistance and speed and students reflected upon their emotions during the activity as both a leader and follower. In the closing circle, nearly all students said they would prefer to be the leader in the activity, if they had a choice. We talked about the implications of that preference in movement, and also in the world.



At the end of the unit, we added a prop to our weight explorations: a chair. For students, the chair is a daily tool that can have connotations of rigidity and boredom. It was so liberating to bring this piece of furniture into a movement context. It gave students a chance to reimagine its purpose and experiment with how to use it within their movement improvisations. Gratitude to Nia Womack-Freeman for her support in designing this unit.



Enjoy more of our weight explorations in the video below: