Rather than using a science textbook to teach astronomy to second graders at Greenbelt Elementary School (GES), students became the Perseus constellation. For the past few weeks, local dancer Angella Foster and her alight dance theater led “movement labs” as part of the school’s commitment to arts integration, visiting each second grade classroom three times. Through dance, students learned academic vocabulary such as rotate, constellation and galaxy and the position of the stars in the Big and Little Dippers.
Lindsey Volk is the arts integration lead teacher at GES and a second grade teacher whose classroom was visited. She runs bi-weekly workshops for teachers after school to help them learn ideas for integrating visual arts, dance, puppetry, music and poetry into their lessons.
“The students’ comprehension of the narrative of Perseus was fully evident by the way they were able to dance out the full plot of the myth. The level of student engagement, their understanding of the characters, their ability to re-tell the content and use scientific vocabulary to talk about constellations, truly blew me away,” she said. “Angella’s program is a perfect example of the use of the arts as a teaching tool. I am a firm believer that art can be integrated into any concept that is taught. Doing so in my classroom has proved to increase student engagement and success in learning the standards. Providing these types of opportunities allows students with different backgrounds, talents, interests and learning styles to succeed. Art requires the kind of creative thinking that inevitably unlocks a deeper understanding, generates questions and creates new possibilities.”