Narrative Sample

Introduction:
Ironton Elementary School, part of the Parkland School District, is comprised of approximately 460 students in 23 classrooms in grades Kindergarten through five. The District serves a suburban-rural residential area with a wide socio-economic range. The District has the unique distinction of having a fulltime Visual and Performing Arts Director on staff.

Core Groups:
Participating in the residency will be three core groups, totaling approximately 90 students from the school's 3rd grade. This residency was created because the teachers expressed a need to improve their students' writing for the standardized tests and also to help teach students the difficult ideas of organization, style, and voice. This residency will support the school's Language Arts Curriculum while introducing students to the elements and principles of dance. The PA Academic Standards for the Arts and Humanities and Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening will be addressed in the residency.

Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of the residency, students will demonstrate achievement of the following objectives:

1. Use and understanding of the basic elements of dance: energy, space, time, to express feelings and ideas through the performance of original movement compositions.
2. Successful participation in the creative process in both dance and writing: writing with controlled and/or subtle organization including a recognizable beginning, middle and end; finding and expressing their own original voice and style through dance.
3. Recognition and use of appropriate dance vocabulary.
4. Use and understanding of writing skills, such as writing narrative pieces and showing awareness of stylistic aspects of composition, required by the PA Academic Standards and third grade PSSAs.

Sequence of Activities:
The thirteen-day residency will take place over a five-week period of two days per week in January and February 2006. The core groups will each meet the artist during two 50-minute periods per week. The residency will culminate in a performance of movement to poetry that will be presented two times, once during the day for other students in the school and once in the evening for the parents and community.

The focus of the residency will be the integration of dance and Language Arts. Dance and movement serve as a springboard for creating more original and vivid writing. Students will write their own original poetry and choreograph movement pieces. The classroom teachers will conduct the writing assignments during regular class time.

Day One: "Movement in the Curriculum" — A workshop for teachers
Teachers of Ironton Elementary will participate in a workshop to learn techniques of integrating movement into the curriculum. Third grade teachers will prepare to participate in the residency.

Day Two: Planning with the teachers
Using poet Georgia Heard's book Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School, teachers will plan with the artists how to organize their classrooms and assignments to facilitate the writing of poetry to go along with the dance experience.

Day Three: Field trip to dance performance of "The Little Match Girl" and introduction to artist Barbara Pearson
Artist will introduce herself and some of the basic vocabulary associated with dance. Students will attend a local live dance production of "The Little Match Girl." Writing assignment: Students will discuss the performance using dance vocabulary.

Day Four: Vivid action words
Students will: explore axial and locomotor movements; be introduced to the concepts of energy, space and time; brainstorm a list of vivid verbs corresponding to the movements. Writing Assignment: Students will prepare a narrative writing piece using vivid action words.

Day Five and Six: — Using the 5 senses for movement and writing
Students will; observe things in their environment and brainstorm a list of words that describe sensory memories of what they have seen; create moves and gestures that clearly express the meaning of these words. Writing Assignment: Using one sense, students will write a paragraph with a specific beginning, middle and end.

Day Seven: Metaphors
Students will brainstorm a list of metaphors on a topic. In groups students will create a movement piece based on one metaphor. Writing Assignment: Students will write a poem or paragraph based on their metaphor.

Day Eight: Rhythm
Students will read poetry and reproduce the rhythm in movement. Writing Assignment: Students will create a poem that features a rhythm.

Day Nine and Ten: Choreography — Creating and rehearsing original movement pieces
In groups, students will; create original movement pieces to selected original poetry; perform their choreography for the class; give and receive critiques using dance vocabulary; revise and refine their dances. Writing Assignment: Students write a reflection on the stages of the creative process.

Day Eleven and Twelve — Performance
Students will do two performances of their works. Performance will be videotaped. Writing Assignment: Students will write reflections of performance experience.

Day Thirteen — Evaluation and Reflection
Students will watch the video and self-critique. Artist will lead a discussion with students using dance vocabulary. Writing Assignment: Students will do a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the process of writing with the process of choreography.

Evidence of Student Involvement in the Creative Process:
Students will be involved in every aspect of the creative process with each visit of the artist and with writing assignments as follow-ups. Students will learn to express their own ideas and feelings in both dance and poetry. Students will perform their own poetry and dance compositions.

Interaction between Teacher and Artist:
This residency was planned as a collaboration between the teachers and the artist. They expressed the difficulty of getting the students to generate their own ideas and to write anything from scratch. The residency will be a partnership between artist and teachers to get the students composing poems and dances at the same time as the residency progresses.

Plans to Extend Impact of Residency:
The artist will offer an all-school professional development workshop to give teachers ways to incorporate movement into the curriculum. Teachers, to motivate their students to write, will use the activities and techniques created during the residency in following years. Teachers will keep journals documenting the residency and keep samples of student writing to see results. Artist and teachers will break down and discuss their process and evaluate what works.

Evaluation/Assessment:
A pre- and post-test will be given to measure students' understanding of basic dance vocabulary and concepts. A skills rubric will be used to assess students' mastery of dance skills during performance. Portfolios will be kept of students' writing samples and a rubric will be used for assessment of use of composition, organization, style and voice. Observation and notation of the progress of the residency and of group interaction and individual participation, recorded by both the artist and the teachers, will be used to evaluate residency effectiveness in achieving learning objectives.