Using the Arts to Teach Reading Comprehension

I love it when things work out!  I love it even more when I can make meaning out of something I'm struggling with and working so hard to find natural connections.  I have a new favorite book, it's called Weaving Through Words, by Roberta Mantione and Sabine Smead.  A little background info....Jean did a LOT of research last summer and convinced me we needed to completely change our teaching styles.  I mean COMPLETELY uproot our classrooms and get rid of name tags on desks. Get rid of a lot of desks....get rid of the idea that students 'own' a space all to themselves....GASP!  Oh yeah, and have nothing but community supplies...oh, and do less paper & pencil work since we'll be using most of the room for Arts Integration on a daily basis---that I could handle without issues....All the other stuff? Hard to get a grip on that...Well here it is March already and WE LOVE IT.  She got me hooked on the Daily Five routine, and infusing the Reading Workshp model.  So while we have changed so much of our traditional daily teaching, the best part of our teaching styles has remained, and we have so much more freedom to infuse all kinds of Arts Integration strategies. Anyway, this book takes specific reading comprehension strategies and demonstrates through anecdotal lessons how a specific arts strategy can be used to directly teach it--by way of multiple modalities.  Once the children have a well developed concept of the strategy, THEN they can transfer it to text.  What an ah-ha moment for me!  Can't wait to mush this with our new CC Framework!  Yippee!

"It's only an inch!"

Wowie! Jean and I had so much fun last week with our classes!  We have been working on reading and comparing two different articles from two different perspectives.  How do we, as readers, comprehend information from mutliple sources, draw conclusions after summarizing, and communicate the most important ideas both verbally and in writing??? YIKES!  that's a lot to do if you're only 9!  Well, we chose a wonderful topic we've seen in the media lately---Subway's Footlong sandwiches.  Several consumers worldwide have measured and found that their subs have been coming up short!  Since our kids know this advertising jingle and have been to a Subway restaurant before, they were hooked on the idea.  Not only that, but since we're making connnections in math with measurment, this was a perfect fit! We also hit upon point of view, figuartive language, and persuasive writing with powerful words! WHEW! Here are some snapshots of our learning--they are messy, but were created in the moment of teaching.   Here is a link to one of the articles we used:


http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2013/01/nj_men_sue_subway_claim_theyve.html