Addressing Literacy through Improvisation and Play in the Music Classroom

1. Addressing Literacy through Improvisation and Play in the Music Classroom Barb Creider Sunrise Elementary Las Cruces, New Mexico January 8th, 2009

2. With thanks to the Center for Teaching Excellence, Eastern New Mexico University Action Research Grant Year 3 2008-2009

3. Why Address Literacy in the Music Classroom??? • Mandated Curriculum • School or District invests in a commercial package • Changes in curricular approaches from year to year • Need to be flexible and support the overall education of the children

4. How Can My Classroom Support The Children? • Teach Music • Engage Kids • Address Literacy and Numeracy • Scaffold Future Learning • Experience the Creative Process • Understand the Human Condition • Build Confidence in Who They Are

5. Why Improvisation and Play? • Child-centered. The child does the thinking, the organizing, the planning. • Highly pleasurable for children. • Promotes brain development. • Facilitates memory and learning. • Arts centered, creative process.

6. What is Creative Drama ? • Improvisational • Goal is not performance, but understanding • Guided by a leader • Children enact • Children reflect upon human experience.

7. Purpose of Creative Drama • develop language and communication abilities, • problem-solving skills • creativity; act out perceptions of the world in order to understand it. • Facilitate learning

8. Advantages of Creative Drama • logical and intuitive thinking • personalized knowledge • yields aesthetic pleasure

9. Literacy • Fluency addresses how smoothly and accurately children read. • Comprehension addresses both the literal and inferential understanding of what is read.

10. Drama = Comprehension = Literacy • Comprehension is defined as “intentional thinking during which meaning is constructed through interactions between text and reader” (Harris & Hodges, 1995). Thus, readers derive meaning from text when they engage in intentional, problem solving thinking processes. The data suggest that text comprehension is enhanced when readers actively relate the ideas represented in print to their own knowledge and experiences and construct mental representations in memory. • From National Reading Panel • http://www.centeroninstruction.org/files/TeachingChildrenToReadSummaryReport.pdf

11. No Literacy Without Play “As teachers, too often we try to jump to literacy without allowing students to explore and extend the material through imitation, action and play. The result? The child remains in the first step, imitation, and not attaining literacy.” Grace Nash, Orff Teacher.

12. Creative Drama is Literacy • Schema (connections to what they already know) • Describe the setting. • Define the problem. • How is the problem resolved? • Analyze text into sequence of events.

13. Creative Drama is also Interpretation and Higher Level Thinking • Analyze character and motivation. What can you infer about each character? • What happens to each and what does it mean? How do they feel? • How could you show that?

14. From Theory to Practice • Choosing a text • Supporting Literacy • Classroom management • Assessment • Stages of Development

15. Choosing a Story or Text • Not too busy with details • Three or four big gestures suggesting activities • Archetypes for characters or events • Myths and folk stories a great source • A manageable number of characters • Have some curricular value outside of the play itself.

16. Example of a story to act out:The Story of the Roadrunner • This story is about a time when birds were still like people. The birds got together to talk. "The different clans (animals) all have leaders, but we do not," they said. "We are good for nothing. It would be good for us to choose a leader also. He could then speak for us about our activities," they said.

17. So the birds selected the oriole first. They said, "His feathers are very nice." Because of his feathers they thought they wanted him to be their leader. They discussed this for some time. "Well, never mind him after all," they said. "His long clothes are pretty, but he doesn't speak very much. If he becomes our leader he might not speak well for us in the future." They put him aside

18. Then they chose the mocking bird. But they immediately said, "He is too talkative. He always speaks bad and mocks things. It would not be good for him to become our leader. He might speak even worse for us in the future." They put him aside to choose again.

19. The next time they chose a blue jay. "What would it be like for us if we chose him to be the leader?" they asked. "He is also like the other one. He talks too much. It would not be good for him to speak for us. He's too stubborn, and he also brags about himself. There would be a lot of mocking." They also set him aside.

20. "In that case, should it be the roadrunner?" they said. "He's good for sure. He would be fast for us in running to meetings. And he also talks well. It would be good for us if he became our leader."

21. Therefore, the roadrunner became the leader. Nowadays, roadrunner is the leader of all the birds. • http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues03/Co08092003/CO_08092003_Roadrunner.htm

22. Supporting Literacy • Practice the reading out loud. • Practice the difficult names. • Provide cultural contexts for the reading—Youtube, other videos, texts, explanations.

23. Classroom Management • Ground Rules • Situations that come up • Copying each other • Struggles with understanding boundaries

24. Typical problems: • If I can’t be the princess, I’m not playing. • Let’s you and I go off in the corner and wrestle. • Nah, let’s go bang on the instruments. • Nobody wants me in their group. • I told them what to do but they won’t listen. • Teacher, I can be the dragon for that group, right? • Hey, Ya wanna hear me play “Mary Had A Little Lamb?” • Wait! The pink ones are all mine! I called dibs!

25. Developing Creative Drama • At first do a transformation exercise • Act out all the parts of a story bit by bit • Large group before small group • Focus on individuals: Show us what you were doing • Go to pairs

26. Go to structured groups • Unstructured groups

27. Modeling: • Watch videos • Act for the kids • Act with the kids • Define and discuss copying—developing ideas

28. Assessment • Plan Do Review • Student Critiques • Revisions of Skits • Rubrics • Stages of Development

29. Rubrics • Define what makes a good performance: • Is there action? Does the action support the story? • Can you hear the reader? • Does the music fit the story?

30. Musical Development • Role of music in these plays • Sound effect • Development of motives • Observing musical play • Affirming musical Play

31. How to promote musical play • Tell the story with sound effects • Let kids model this • Characters still need to be assigned or everyone will play all the time.

32. Motives Support the Story • Introduce and demonstrate the concept of motives. • Tell the story with motives • Let kids model this • Development of a motive

33. Honor Each Contribution • Listen and compliment • Write down what they bring you • Motive presented by one child, then copied and developed by many children • Evolving and transforming motives (examples) • Matching the motives to the needs of the story.