Addressing Literacy through Improvisation and Play in the Music Classroom

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Addressing Literacy through Improvisation and
Play in the Music Classroom

• Barb Creider
• Sunrise Elementary
• Las Cruces, New Mexico
• January 8th, 2009

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With thanks to the Center for Teaching
Excellence, Eastern New Mexico University

• Action Research Grant
• Year 3
• 2008-2009

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Why Address Literacy in the Music Classroom???

• Mandated Curriculum
• School or District invests in a commercial
  package
• Changes in curricular approaches from year to
  year
• Need to be flexible and support the overall
  education of the children

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How Can My Classroom Support The Children?

• Teach Music
• Engage Kids
• Address Literacy and Numeracy
• Scaffold Future Learning
• Experience the Creative Process
• Understand the Human Condition
• Build Confidence in Who They Are

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Why Improvisation and Play?

• Child-centered. The child does the thinking, the
  organizing, the planning.
• Highly pleasurable for children.
• Promotes brain development.
• Facilitates memory and learning.
• Arts centered, creative process.

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What is Creative Drama ?

• Improvisational
• Goal is not performance, but understanding
• Guided by a leader
• Children enact
• Children reflect upon human experience.

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Purpose of Creative Drama

• develop language and communication abilities,
• problem-solving skills
• creativity act out perceptions of the world in
  order to understand it.
• Facilitate learning

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Advantages of Creative Drama

• logical and intuitive thinking
• personalized knowledge
• yields aesthetic pleasure

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Literacy

• Fluency addresses how smoothly and accurately
  children read.
• Comprehension addresses both the literal and
  inferential understanding of what is read.

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Drama Comprehension Literacy

• Comprehension is defined as intentional thinking
  during which meaning is constructed through
  interactions between text and reader (Harris
  Hodges, 1995). Thus, readers derive meaning from
  text when they engage in intentional, problem
  solving thinking processes. The data suggest that
  text comprehension is enhanced when readers
  actively relate the ideas represented in print to
  their own knowledge and experiences and construct
  mental representations in memory.
• From National Reading Panel
• http//www.centeroninstruction.org/files/TeachingC
  hildrenToReadSummaryReport.pdf

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No Literacy Without Play

• As teachers, too often we try to jump to
  literacy without allowing students to explore and
  extend the material through imitation, action and
  play. The result? The child remains in the first
  step, imitation, and not attaining literacy.
• Grace Nash, Orff Teacher.

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Creative Drama is Literacy

• Schema (connections to what they already know)
• Describe the setting.
• Define the problem.
• How is the problem resolved?
• Analyze text into sequence of events.

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Creative Drama is also Interpretation and Higher
Level Thinking

• Analyze character and motivation. What can you
  infer about each character?
• What happens to each and what does it mean? How
  do they feel?
• How could you show that?

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From Theory to Practice

• Choosing a text
• Supporting Literacy
• Classroom management
• Assessment
• Stages of Development

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Choosing a Story or Text

• Not too busy with details
• Three or four big gestures suggesting activities
• Archetypes for characters or events
• Myths and folk stories a great source
• A manageable number of characters
• Have some curricular value outside of the play
  itself.

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Example of a story to act outThe Story of the
Roadrunner

• This story is about a time when birds were still
  like people. The birds got together to talk. "The
  different clans (animals) all have leaders, but
  we do not," they said. "We are good for nothing.
  It would be good for us to choose a leader also.
  He could then speak for us about our activities,"
  they said.

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• So the birds selected the oriole first. They
  said, "His feathers are very nice." Because of
  his feathers they thought they wanted him to be
  their leader. They discussed this for some time.
  "Well, never mind him after all," they said.
  "His long clothes are pretty, but he doesn't
  speak very much. If he becomes our leader he
  might not speak well for us in the future." They
  put him aside

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• Then they chose the mocking bird. But they
  immediately said, "He is too talkative. He always
  speaks bad and mocks things. It would not be good
  for him to become our leader. He might speak even
  worse for us in the future." They put him aside
  to choose again.

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• The next time they chose a blue jay. "What would
  it be like for us if we chose him to be the
  leader?" they asked. "He is also like the other
  one. He talks too much. It would not be good for
  him to speak for us. He's too stubborn, and he
  also brags about himself. There would be a lot of
  mocking." They also set him aside.

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• "In that case, should it be the roadrunner?" they
  said. "He's good for sure. He would be fast for
  us in running to meetings. And he also talks
  well. It would be good for us if he became our
  leader."

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• Therefore, the roadrunner became the leader.
  Nowadays, roadrunner is the leader of all the
  birds.
• http//www.turtletrack.org/Issues03/Co08092003/CO_
  08092003_Roadrunner.htm

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Supporting Literacy

• Practice the reading out loud.
• Practice the difficult names.
• Provide cultural contexts for the
  readingYoutube, other videos, texts,
  explanations.

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Classroom Management

• Ground Rules
• Situations that come up
• Copying each other
• Struggles with understanding boundaries

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Typical problems

• If I cant be the princess, Im not playing.
• Lets you and I go off in the corner and wrestle.
• Nah, lets go bang on the instruments.
• Nobody wants me in their group.
• I told them what to do but they wont listen.
• Teacher, I can be the dragon for that group,
  right?
• Hey, Ya wanna hear me play Mary Had A Little
  Lamb?
• Wait! The pink ones are all mine! I called
  dibs!

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Developing Creative Drama

• At first do a transformation exercise
• Act out all the parts of a story bit by bit
• Large group before small group
• Focus on individuals Show us what you were
  doing
• Go to pairs

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• Go to structured groups
• Unstructured groups

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• Modeling
• Watch videos
• Act for the kids
• Act with the kids
• Define and discuss copyingdeveloping ideas

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Assessment

• Plan Do Review
• Student Critiques
• Revisions of Skits
• Rubrics
• Stages of Development

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Rubrics

• Define what makes a good performance
• Is there action? Does the action support the
  story?
• Can you hear the reader?
• Does the music fit the story?

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Musical Development

• Role of music in these plays
• Sound effect
• Development of motives
• Observing musical play
• Affirming musical Play

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How to promote musical play

• Tell the story with sound effects
• Let kids model this
• Characters still need to be assigned or everyone
  will play all the time.

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Motives Support the Story

• Introduce and demonstrate the concept of motives.
• Tell the story with motives
• Let kids model this
• Development of a motive

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Honor Each Contribution

• Listen and compliment
• Write down what they bring you
• Motive presented by one child, then copied and
  developed by many children
• Evolving and transforming motives (examples)
• Matching the motives to the needs of the story.