Program teaches science through art
<p>Rose Ayers and Kate Crouch pose with second graders in Rachael Cremer's class at Plains Elementary School.</p>
PLAINS - Second graders at Plains Elementary School are learning about science in a unique way this fall, after their teachers were awarded a grant to bring integrated arts education to their classrooms.
Arts integration takes a lesson plan and presents it through the focus of performance and visual art; this can be applied to any subject, though it is most commonly used for math and science. In this case, the second grade classes are learning about the science of animal life cycles and habitats.
The Montana Arts Council and Sanders County Arts Council awarded the grant to Rachael Cremer and Nichole Cockrell, the second grade teachers at Plains, last spring. Two visiting teachers will be helping with the curriculum. Rose Ayers, a performance arts teacher, and Kate Crouch, a visual arts teacher, will be coming from Missoula each Friday to help teach the kids. They hope to work all styles of art, from theater to sculpture, into their lessons for the unit.
“We’re really trying to make sure that we hit both the performing arts and the visual arts,” said Ayers.
The program may have benefits to retaining the information as well. Ayers felt it was a good way to engage kids who learn in different ways, such as physical learners.
She said it allows them to process the information through their whole body; rather than just absorbing the information in their memory, the kids learn it through movement and sound similar to songs used to remember the alphabet or days of the week.
“The learning is more embedded and deeper both in their brains and their ability to teach,” Ayers said.
Arts integration is only being done for this year’s science unit. The program will end with the kids putting on a play for the community based on what they learned.
The performance is scheduled for November 20.
The production will be created entirely by the students. According to Ayers, everything from the script to the set pieces will be designed and built by the classes.
“They will be creating all the dialogue and helping us present the scientific facts of animal life cycles in our region,” she said.
During the first day of the unit, last Friday, the kids were introduced to the program and jumped right in, learning theater basics as well as creating a piece of visual art. The kids made chalk pictures representing butterfly habitats after reading “I wish I was a Butterfly.”
The lessons will be keeping everything fairly local with a focus on the animals living in the area around the Clark Fork River Valley.
The kids will also be playing a role in the lesson planning; Couch said they would base lessons off what the kids wanted to learn and bringing in local information based on those suggestions.
Cremer and Cockrell are looking forward to the unit and seeing how the program goes.
“We’re excited to bring this to the kids,” said Cremer. “We think this is a unique opportunity to be able to have a professional actress come in and help us [teach science].”
The teachers all hope the pilot is a success and they are able to bring the program back next year. They hope to eventually see it implemented across all grades of the Plains schools.
Cremer said their hope was for the kids to develop a deeper understanding of science while simultaneously building a love of theater and the arts.
The program could also act as an introduction to theater for later, when the kids reach middle and high school.