Imaginative Actuality Learning in the Arts During the Nonschool Hours

Practise in Action

Expressing Yourself Through the Arts involves arts-based activities that authentically address the interests of students, their culture, and their customs. Activities can take many forms, including a drawing or collage, a personal essay or poem, dancing, the spoken word, or singing.

Begin by thinking virtually your students—what interests them and how exercise they like to express themselves? Students may wish to limited themselves or their environs, their unique cultural traditions, or how it feels to be role of the families or communities they live in. For instance, the civilization of a specific customs might lend itself to certain dance forms. Working with self-portraits might permit students to reverberate on who they are and what is important to them as individuals. Consider what art resource are available in your community to provide teaching or part models. For instance, explore a visiting artist program, collaborate with a community arts organization to create a mural, or produce a community history through images, stories, dance, or theater.

Afterschool programs provide opportunities for students to explore and limited themselves in a safe, fun environment. The arts lend themselves to self-expression, and when projects are driven by students' interests, ideas, and emotions, students are more likely to be engaged and to notice significant in what they are doing. Research suggests that when students have opportunities to explore and express who they are, they gain confidence that translates into success, both in afterschool and during the schoolhouse twenty-four hour period.

Planning Your Lesson

Not bad afterschool lessons get-go with having a clear intention about who your students are, what they are learning or demand to work on, and crafting activities that engage students while supporting their bookish growth. Peachy afterschool lessons also require planning and training, as there is a lot of work involved in successfully managing kids, materials, and time.

Below are suggested questions to consider while preparing your afterschool lessons. The questions are grouped into topics that correspond to the Lesson Planning Template. You tin can print out the template and utilise it equally a worksheet to plan and refine your afterschool lessons, to share lesson ideas with colleagues, or to help in professional development sessions with staff.

Lesson Planning Template (PDF)

Lesson Planning Template (Give-and-take document)

Class Level
What grade level(s) is this lesson geared to?

Duration
How long will it take to complete the lesson? 1 60 minutes? One and a one-half hours? Volition information technology exist divided into ii or more parts, over a week, or over several weeks?

Learning Goals
What do y'all want students to learn or be able to exercise after completing this activeness? What skills practise y'all desire students to develop or hone? What tasks do they need to accomplish?

Materials Needed
List all of the materials needed that will be needed to complete the activity. Include materials that each student will need, as well as materials that students may demand to share (such every bit books or a figurer). Likewise include any materials that students or instructors will demand for record keeping or evaluation. Will you need to store materials for future sessions? If then, how will yous do this?

Preparation
What do you need to do to prepare for this activeness? Will you lot demand to assemble materials? Will the materials need to exist sorted for students or will you assign students to be "materials managers"? Are there any books or instructions that you demand to read in order to prepare? Do y'all need a refresher in a content expanse? Are at that place questions y'all demand to develop to assistance students explore or discuss the activity? Are there props that you need to have assembled in advance of the activity? Do y'all need to enlist another adult to help run the action?

Call back nigh how you might split up groups―who works well together? Which students could help other peers? What roles will you lot assign to dissimilar members of the group so that each student participates?

Now, think about the Practice that you are basing your lesson on. Reread the Practice. Are there means in which you need to improve your lesson plan to better address the central goal(south) of the Practice? If this is your first time doing the activity, consider doing a "run through" with friends or colleagues to meet what works and what you may need to change. Alternatively, you could ask a colleague to read over your lesson plan and give you feedback and suggestions for revisions.

What to Practise
Think about the progression of the activeness from start to finish. Ane model that might be useful—and which was originally developed for science education—is the 5E'south instructional model. Each phrase of the learning sequence can be described using five words that begin with "E": engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. For more information, see the 5E's Instructional Model.

Outcomes to Look For
How will yous know that students learned what you lot intended them to learn through this activity? What volition be your signs or benchmarks of learning? What questions might y'all ask to assess their understanding? What, if any, product will they produce?

Self-Evaluation
After y'all conduct the activity, take a few minutes to reflect on what took identify. How do y'all call back the lesson went? Are at that place things that you wish you had done differently? What will you change next time? Would you do this activeness again?

Sample Lessons

Symbols That Represent You! (3-12)

Students explore the world of symbols (what they mean and how they piece of work) through developing a symbol that will stand up for who they are.

2 or three 45-minute sessions

• Empathise the nature of symbols and how they piece of work
• Be able to communicate circuitous ideas through the visual art medium
• Take a better understanding of self

• Examples of symbols
• Sheets of white paper (i per student)
• Pencils
• Markers or colored pencils
• Collage materials, magazines, colored newspaper, mucilage (optional)
• Sample personal symbol that you have created to show students

• Construct your own set of meaningful symbols to show the form. These should be symbols that you see equally important to you lot as an private. Exist able to discuss and explicate why they are important. They may also include other symbols as examples.
• Here's something to consider every bit you create your own personal symbols: This action can help you deepen your relationship with your students and also serve equally an example to help them empathise the project. When y'all create your own personal symbol to show them, think about the values yous cherish (backbone, loyalty, honesty, etc.), the characteristics that define you, and important events. You can explain why y'all chose the images y'all did when y'all show your personal symbol to your students.
• See as reference Signs, Symbols, and Ciphers past Georges Jean (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999); also the Dictionary of Symbols past J. Eastward. Cirlot (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002).

Session 1: Understanding and Finding Symbols

1. Introduce the concept of symbols and how they function.
2. Have students collect or make a listing of symbols they run into in everyday life.
3. Tell students that they are going to have an opportunity to brand symbols to represent themselves, merely starting time they are going to learn more about symbols and what they represent.
4. Display examples that students take listed and talk about what they are used to represent.

Session two: Developing Personal Symbols

1. Bear witness students the personal symbol you created and explain its significance.
2. Have students begin ideas for a unique symbol to represent their individual identities. Their symbol might correspond:
   • something that makes them happy or is a favorite item;
   • hobbies and other images that match their personality; and
   • an prototype that represents their values.
3. Remind students that this prototype or artifact must remind other people of "who they are" each fourth dimension they see it.
4. Have students sketch their ideas, refining them as they go.
5. One time a final symbol pattern is developed, students tin can colour the symbol to heighten its item qualities.
6. Share personal symbols with the group or, for more fun, invite other participants to look at each symbol and try to guess who it represents.

• Student engagement in examining a wide variety of complex images and artifacts and demonstrating an understanding of the process of selection based on what makes pregnant
• Students analyze and depict how an prototype or artifact functions to bring up certain ideas or connotations
• Students create new combinations of images and artifacts that result in a deeper representation of meaning

Personal Soundtracks (4-12)

Students use music to limited their personal histories, and create a soundtrack that reflects their individual identities.

3 45-minute sessions

• Develop a timeline of fundamental life events
• Understand how music can convey ideas and emotions
• Identify music that represents and reflects one's life story

• Writing materials (paper, pens, pencils)
• ten to 12 portable CD players, headphones, and CDs

• Review the bones elements of music that touch on emotional quality, such as tempo (speed) and key (major vs. pocket-size).
• Create a personal timeline to use as an example for the class (optional).
• Compile CDs to show dissimilar kinds of music and the emotions they evoke. For example:
  • Happy: "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (Mozart), "Stars and Stripes Forever" (Sousa)
  • Sad: "Moonlight Sonata" (Beethoven)
  • Aroused: "Ride of the Valkyries" (Wagner), "Toccata and Fugue in D Small-scale" (Bach)
  • Excited: "Flight of the Bumblebees" (Rimsky-Korsakov), "Toreador March" from Carmen (Bizet)
• Try to obtain a wide multifariousness of musical styles, such equally classical, jazz, rock, popular, hip-hop, musical theatre, and country.
• Compile CDs of music that demonstrates the personal experiences of composers. For case:
  • "The Star-Spangled Imprint" by Francis Scott Key describes his pride every bit he witnesses a British assault on Baltimore and watches the Americans emerge victorious.
  • "A Strenuous Life" by Scott Joplin commemorates Booker T. Washington's 1901 visit and dinner at the White Firm.
  • "Cry Me a River" by Justin Timberlake describes his feelings most a famous ex-girlfriend.

Session 1

• Begin with a discussion of how music tin convey emotions. You lot may want to play a fast piece and a dull slice and ask students to describe what they hear (fast music tin can be happy or excited, slow music can be sad). Give examples and play excerpts, if bachelor.
• Discuss how composers and songwriters frequently utilise their life experiences to guide their music. Give examples and play excerpts, if bachelor.
• Explain that students will use composers' music to tell the stories of students' own lives. Explain that they will utilize this session to create a timeline of pregnant events in their lives, and the next session to select songs that best represent each outcome and the accompanying emotion. Keep in mind that this may be difficult for students who take experienced significant loss or stress in their lives. Allow them to choose the events that they desire to share.
• Discuss the concept of a timeline. Share examples, including your personal timeline if applicative. Inquire students to reflect on their lives, and consider important and memorable events.
• Allow students to use the residue of the session to create their own personal timelines. Students may wish to first create a list of events, and so transfer the events to the timeline.
• Yous may want to ask students to bring CDs or personal CD players for the next session.

Session 2

• Remind students of your earlier give-and-take about the use of music to convey emotions and commemorate events.
• Distribute educatee timelines. Inquire students to consider the events on the timelines. Inquire them to call back most non just the events themselves, but the experiences that are attached to them (sights, sounds, emotions).
• Give students time to explore dissimilar kinds of music, and to select a variety of songs that represent various events on their timelines. They may employ their ain CDs or those that y'all or other classmates share.
• Ask students to write downward the songs they have included on their personal soundtracks, including a cursory caption of the significance of each song. Students can utilize their own CDs, and they should bring them to the next session when they volition share their work.

Session 3

• Enquire students to share ii to iii songs from their personal soundtracks, explaining why they chose item songs and what each one represents.

• Student participation and engagement
• An understanding of how music can exist used to represent emotions and events
• Personal soundtracks that reverberate students' feelings and emotions about events in their lives

3-D Self-Sculpture (5-12)

Students explore and limited their identities through reading, journaling, and other activities, and create their own self-portraits through clay sculpture.

Three to 4 45-minute sessions

• Larn self-reflection through journaling and give-and-take
• Empathize how the visual arts can be used to limited the self and communicate pregnant
• Learn how to create a self-sculpture from dirt

• Copy of Happy to Be Me! by Christine Adams and Robert Butch
• Writing and cartoon materials (paper, pens, pencils, markers, crayons, etc.)
• Examples of self-portraits (see the Resources page for suggested Web sites)
• Newspaper (to line tables and flooring)
• Tempera paints and paintbrushes
• Materials to brand clay (flour, h2o, and salt)

• Read Happy to Be Me!
• Prepare cocky-hardening dirt:
  • Combine 4 cups of flour and ane cup of salt in a large bowl.
  • Slowly add most 1 loving cup of h2o and combine to course a large ball.
  • Knead the brawl until information technology is smooth and no longer falls apart, adding water as needed.
  • Go along preparing batches until there is enough for each student to take approximately one cup of dirt.
• Conform desks or tables into a workspace and line with paper.
• Review the use of color and palettes in visual arts (for instance, reds and oranges are warm; blues and greens are cool).

Session 1

• Read aloud Happy to Be Me! Begin a give-and-take near what makes each educatee special and unique.
• Ask students to pair up. Give students 5 to ten minutes to brand a list of things (characteristics, interests, aspirations) that make them unique. Then give students 5 to 10 minutes to list things that they detect unique and interesting about their partner. Accept students share their list with their partner.
• Inquire students to journal for xv to 20 minutes, using words, pictures, symbols, and colors to answer the question: Who am I? Enquire students to consider ambitions, talents, interests, and relationships in answering the question.

Session ii

• Tell students they will build on their periodical work from the previous session to create a sculpture that represents their cocky-portrait. Share examples of self-portraits, both abstract and representational, if desired.
• Accept students work with clay to create a iii-D "self-sculpture." Tell students they may create a representational sculpture, or they may employ different aspects of their self-concept to create an abstruse sculpture.
• Let the dirt figures harden overnight or longer.

Session 3

• Briefly talk over the use of color in visual fine art. Talk over the representational every bit well as symbolic use of color and palette.
• Allow students to paint their self-sculptures, using an additional session if necessary.
• As an extension, create an exhibit of students' work to share with other classes. Have each pupil create a gallery-style information bill of fare to accompany their work.

• Pupil participation and appointment
• An understanding of the utilise of art to express the self
• Sculptures that reverberate individual students' view of cocky

Meaningful Monologues (6-12)

Inspired past the memories associated with an object of personal significant, students write and perform a dramatic monologue, explore improvisation, and participate in a peer review/feedback process.

Two 45-minute sessions

• Understand the concept and purpose of a monologue
• Write and perform a monologue based on a personal object
• Provide and receive effective feedback

• Writing materials
• Personal object

• Enquire students to bring an object to form that has personal significance.
• Identify different kinds of theatrical monologues that involve personal objects (for example, Laura's monologue from The Drinking glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams). Exist prepared to read ane aloud, or have students read aloud.

Session ane

• Read and analyze several monologues that involve personal objects. Model performing a dialogue by reading one aloud. Ask students to read a monologue aloud for practise.
• Enquire students guiding questions to assistance them uncover the significant of the monologue:
  • How does the author use direct and indirect references to the object to create drama?
  • What do you lot call up the object represents? Could it be a metaphor for something else in life?
• Allow students to split up into pairs. Take student A tell the story of his or her object'due south significance, while pupil B takes notes of meaningful images, ideas, or phrases.
• Ask Student B to retell Educatee A's story, while Student A takes notes.
• Repeat the process so that all students have an opportunity to tell their stories and accept their stories retold by their partners.
• Ask students to formalize their improvisations into a written monologue. Students should consider metaphor, descriptive images, language, and dramatic pacing in their work. Encourage students to expand the monologue to include the memories that will provide a context for the object, rather than focusing on the object itself.

Session 2

• Allow students to perform their monologues. Ask the audience to provide constructive feedback, commencement with positive comments.
• Inquire students to revise the monologues based on performance feedback.

• Educatee date and participation
• Monologues that reference the object in direct and indirect means
• References to personal experiences and memories
• Expression of feelings and emotions through memories almost the object

Using basic concepts of dance, students create dance phrases that describe diverse emotions.

45-threescore minutes

• Acquire and demonstrate diverse bones elements of dance
• Understand that dance and motility can be used to depict meaning
• Use dance elements to create a dance phrase

• A copy of Ballerina! past Peter Sis
• Open infinite for dancing
• Masking record to designate a stage (optional)
• CD actor, record histrion, or record deck for music (optional)

1. Review some basic elements of dance then that yous feel familiar enough to demonstrate them to your students:
   • Level: high, medium, and low
   • Management: frontwards, backward, left, right, diagonally, turning
   • Speed: fast, slow
   • Locomotor: walk, run, hop, jump, leap, gallop, slide, skip
   • Centric: bend, twist, stretch, swing
2. Y'all may want to practice some additional research on traditional folk dances and their meanings to share with your students.

• Begin past reading aloud Ballerina! by Peter Sister with your students. Discuss how Terry, the main character, changes her movements and costumes for each dance. (Compare, for case, her "Nutcracker trip the light fantastic" with her "fire dance.") Talk almost why Terry might make these changes.
• Discuss how dances oftentimes tell a story. Examples include traditional folk dances from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, too equally ballets such every bit The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. If y'all have time, yous may want to show your students clips from various folk dances or from a famous ballet.
• Ask students to make upward short dances to depict a thought. Brainstorm with an emotion, such as anger, happiness, fear, surprise, annoyance, etc. Once students have identified the emotion they want to limited, ask them to create 3 to five tableaus to demonstrate that emotion. (A tableau is a "freeze frame"—a end-activity combination of facial expression and gesture.)
• Hash out the basic elements of trip the light fantastic with your students, demonstrating how they can move through these elements:
  • Level: high, medium, and low
  • Direction: forward, backward, left, right, diagonally, turning
  • Speed: fast, slow
  • Locomotor: walk, run, hop, jump, leap, gallop, slide, skip
  • Axial: bend, twist, stretch, swing
• Instruct students to utilise these elements to connect their tableaus. Students will start with i tableau, and then create a movement to get from the starting time tableau to the second. They will create a new movement to connect the second to the third, and then on. Enquire students to go on in mind the "integrity" of the emotion as they create their connecting movements. (A "sad" move would probably be tedious instead of fast, etc.)
• Permit students to perform their dances before the class. Run into if the audience tin can gauge the emotion that each pupil is expressing through dance. Permit students to ask questions and provide feedback.

• Student engagement and participation
• Students demonstrate basic trip the light fantastic toe elements
• Dances and tableaus that depict emotions clearly
• An appreciation for dance equally a way to communicate meaning

Resources

Most afterschool programs accept access to digital cameras, but if your program doesn't, bank check out the depression prices and wait into purchasing one. Your students might desire to tell the story of their community and/or culture through digital photography, then add their own audio voice-overs.

Final productions could be shared with the customs through CDs, DVDs, or a Web site for your afterschool program. Kid Pix, Sony Vegas Pic Studio+DVD, and iMovie are software programs that volition enable your students to produce high-quality multi-media programs that include digital photography and video.

Child Pix

Sony Vegas Movie Studio+DVD

iMovie

National Gallery of Art
http://world wide web.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/instruction/teachers/lessons-activities/self-portraits.html

Collaborative Arts Resources for Didactics
http://www.carearts.org/teachers/lesson-plans.html

A Guide to the Jembe
http://echarry.web.wesleyan.edu/jembearticle/article.html

Wikipedia's Page on Djembe Drumming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djembe

Creative Drama and Theater Education
www.creativedrama.com

Andean Nation: Music and Instruments from the Andes
http://www.andeannation.com

Andean Links
http://www.andes.org/bookmark.html

Print resources for this practice
Braman, A. (2004). The Inca: Activities and crafts from a mysterious land. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Corrick, J. (2002). Lost civilizations: The Inca. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books.
Lewin, T. (2003). Lost urban center: The discovery of Machu Picchu. New York, NY: Philomel Books.
Takacs, Southward. (2004). The Inca. Danbury, CT: Scholastic.

Research Summary: Numerous studies of afterschool setting and the arts discuss the value of providing a method and context for self expression, including Heath and Roach (1999), Burton et al. (1999), Oreck et al (1999), YouthARTS (2003), Wolf, Keens and Company et al (2006), Arts Corp (2005): "Yous can see the way I await in my drawing. Being happy makes me feel like I am made up of all different kinds of colors on the within": pupil comment, Dallas ArtsPartners, (2003).

• Heath, Shirley B. and A. Roach (1999). Imaginative Actuality: Learning the arts during the nonschool hours. In Champions of Change: the Impact of the Arts on Learning: Lessons from Schoolhouse districts that value Arts Education. E,B, Fiske, Ed. GE Fund/MacArthur Foundation: The Arts and Didactics Partnership and the President'southward Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
• Burton, Judith, Robert Horowitz and Hal Abeles (1999). Learning In and Through the Arts: Curriculum Implications. In Champions of Modify, Due east. B. Fiske, Editor. Arts Education Partnership and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
• Oreck, Barry, Susan Baum and Heather McCartney (1999). Artistic Talent Evolution for Urban Youth: the Promise and the Challenge. In Champions of Change: the Impact of the Arts on Learning: Lessons from School districts that value Arts Education. E,B, Fiske, Ed. GE Fund/MacArthur Foundation: The Arts and Education Partnership and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
• YouthARTS (2003). Arts Programs for Youth At Risk: The Handbook. Retrieved from the spider web: Americans for the Arts.
• Wolf, Keens and Company, Alan S. Brown and Associates, Annenberg Instititute for School Reform, and BigThought (2006). Arts Learning in Dallas: a Report on Research for the Dallas Arts Learning Innitiative. BigThought: Dallas
• Arts Corps (2005). Building on our success: 2004-2005 Annual Report. Seattle, WA: Arts Corps.
• Dallas Arts Partners (2003). Arts and Cultural Learning: Changing Achievement and Expectation. Acting report of three year longitudinal study. Dallas, TX: BigThought.

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Source: https://sedl.org/afterschool/toolkits/arts/pr_expressing.html?tab=sample%20lessons

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