Learning Styles and Arts Integration

In the photos above, Mr. Howell discusses the instant bar charts that were created from inventory results of workshop participants using different colored sticky notes.

On Tuesday, April 7th, John Howell and Ann Jones from Casey Elementary, Susan Womack of Parents for Public Schools of Greater Jackson, and I as a graduate of the Parent Leadership Institute facilitated a workshop for district Ask4MoreArts teachers about Learning Styles and Arts Integration. Two sessions were offered-- one for lower elementary teachers and one for upper elementary teachers. The workshop used arts integration techniques to explore learning styles. Teachers who attended the workshop may, in turn, share this information, lessons, and techniques with colleagues, students, and parents in their schools.

The learning styles workshop is based upon a session in the curriculum for the Parent Leadership Institute. After completing the Institute in 2007, I co-facilitated a workshop for parents at Casey and at Oak Forest Elementary with Venetia Miller, another PLI graduate and Oak Forest parent. We thought this information was extremely relevant to our children's elementary schools because of their participation in the Ask4MoreArts program.

Howard Gardner's work on learning styles or multiple intelligences is a theory of education that can be used to explain why arts integrated learning works. Children learn through dancing, singing, playing, painting, creating, movement, pretending, writing, growing plants in gardens, and a host of other ways. The theory of learning styles submits that everyone has unique ways in which they learn best and in which they may be challenged to grow. A school that uses the arts to teach core academic subjects such as reading, writing, math, social studies, and science will reach more children to help them succeed because more styles of learning are nurtured and encouraged.

Under the leadership of Leslie Coleman, principal of Casey Elementary, all teachers and students at Casey took a learning styles inventory based on the work of Howard Gardner at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year. Every classroom created visual displays of their learning styles, shared this information with parents, and used this information to group students in different ways for learning.

In the photos below, teachers shared representations of their personal learning styles profiles with each other. With art supplies available in the meeting room and an encouragement to let each representation emanate from their dominant learning style, teachers let their creative juices flow! Some teachers wrote poems or made creative bar charts, picture displays, or 3-dimensional objects. One teacher who scored highest as a musical learner sang her results using the notes on a scale to represent her highest to lowest scores.

Throughout the workshop, teachers asked probing questions and discussed real-life, classroom situations in which students learn differently. With video footage of Mrs. Kimble's class using movement, rap, poetry, and dance to represent ocean creatures, Mr. Howell and Ms. Jones shared how the second grade teachers at Casey used learning styles to group students during their rich study of the ocean that also resulted in the 2nd grade PTA performance.

During the workshop, I loved watching the faces of teachers light up as they shared their stories with each other. Learning about learning styles is empowering for everyone-- students, parents, administrators, and teachers!

If you would like to take an online multiple intelligences inventory, please see this site from BGFL.

If you are interested in learning more about Parents for Public Schools, Ask4MoreArts, or the Parent Leadership Institute, please call the PPS office at 601-969-6015.

Gallery Experience

Several Casey families gathered at The Mississippi Museum of Art for LifeShard's "First Saturday" on April 4, 2009. Led by Amanda Cashman, students and parents learned about Raoul Dufy's art and practiced gesture, contour, and line drawings. We learned that Dufy liked drawing and painting animals, flowers, boats and the ocean, and horses. More about the exhibit and Raoul Dufy can be found here. The exhibition is called Raoul Dufy: A Celebration of Beauty, but I was not prepared for how much beauty I would see.

After practicing drawing in the style of Dufy, students could choose to complete a scavenger hunt in the gallery, write a poem based upon one of Dufy's paintings or textiles, or play in the interactive corner with textiles. As you can see from the photos above, the girls were drawn to experimenting with fashion design!

Thank you to the museum staff for offering this wonderful gallery experience to us! I learned so much that I did not know before Saturday morning. And, as always, I enjoyed taking photographs of students engaged in learning and creating.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

It Grows! Can you identify the plants? There are herbs, potatoes, cabbages, radishes, chard, lettuces, and onions all growing in the garden.

Mary, Mary,
Quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells,
And cockleshells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

The third annual Rhymes on Rhymes Place is coming up during the last week in April. This event was created by Casey parents and is organized and led each year by the new first grade class of parents for first grade students. April is National Poetry Month. Let's get ready to celebrate!

Farish Street Finale

Thursday, March 26, 2009, was a day rich with music, drama, art, and celebration at Casey Elementary. The JumpstART project was featured during the annual Casey Arts Festival and at the PTA meeting later that night.

Jesse Robinson, local blues musician, visited the school in the morning and had children, teachers, and guests clapping and swaying to his music. On their field trip to Farish Street in February, third grade students had met Mr. Robinson and invited him to visit Casey.

At the PTA meeting later that night, third grade students presented their original plays about living in Jackson. Each student wrote short descriptions or stories about their favorite places in Jackson. Mr. Howell took these vignettes and pieced them together into three plays. The plays were dramatic collages of what our children love about our community. During the performance, the actors led the audience through Starbucks, the library, Casey Elementary and a magic show, New Stage Theatre, the YMCA, malls, The Planetarium, churches, movie theaters, The Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, the zoo, parks, Gattitown, and their homes.

After viewing a slide show put together by Mr. Miles about the JumpstART project, the multimedia panels depicting the past, present, and future of Jackson's Farish Street were displayed for everyone to see. Each class worked on one canvass or panel. Mrs. Wilson's class made the blue panel about the past. Ms. Gee's class collaged the yellow panel of the present. Mrs. Pepper's class pieced together the red panel of the future.

The slide show below is the Farish Street Finale and features photos from March 26, 2009, of student art related to JumpstART, Mr. Robinson's visit, student performances about Jackson, and the multimedia panels made by Mr. Miles, Mr. Jones, and third grade students.

As a parent of a third grader, I am grateful to the artists, the teachers, and the community members who made JumpstART possible. Thank you to Ask4More Arts and Parents for Public Schools of Jackson for funding and coordinating this project. Throughout the last two months, I witnessed joyful teaching and learning about Farish Street, Jackson, and "community." Artists learned how to work with teachers and students. Teachers learned how to work with artists, and students learned from real artists and about a real street with a past, present, and future. They photographed, drew, acted, wrote, thought, painted, cut, glued, and created.

I can't wait to learn more about other JumpstART projects across the district. I would love to hear from other parents and students about their thoughts regarding the JumpstART project. Please comment below.

Garden Surprise!

When students and staff return to Casey after spring break, they will find a surprise in one of the courtyards. A small group of parents and students gathered to remove dead plants from last summer's planting, pull weeds, work the beds, and replant some of the beds with herbs, flowers, and spring vegetables. Green Oak Gardening Center generously donated the herb plants, marigolds, and some vegetables. Melanie Allen, Casey parent, also brought some radish and spinach seedlings that she had started at home. Mrs. Allen is working hard to secure grant money and find donations for the gardening project. Because of her work, we also have some plant donations on the way from Burpee Seed Company!

Last summer, Serenity Luckett (another Casey parent) organized the creation of the garden through a partnership with Rainbow Whole Foods Co-Operative Grocery. Carl Allen built the garden boxes one very hot day in May. Many Casey families, staff from Rainbow, and a few Casey teachers gathered in June to haul dirt and plant vegetable seeds. The Allens, the Lucketts, and several other Casey families met each week during the summer to work in the garden, record observations, and do art activities related to the garden.

The entire gardening project has been coordinated and managed by Casey parents. We hope Casey teachers will be able to do some gardening activities this spring, and we hope to offer another gardening experience this summer. If you are interested in getting your hands a little dirty, please comment below!

All photos from last summer's gardening project may be viewed here:

Thank you to everyone who is making this gardening experience possible for Casey students and families!

JumpstART at Casey is. . .

Writing and imagining our futures. . .

Teachers working with artists, artists working with teachers. . .

Listening to music. . .

Researching the past. . .

Creating together. . .

Reflecting alone. . .

Interacting with artists, albums, magazines, books, canvasses, paints, glue, brushes, thoughts, paper, instruments, cameras, mosaic tiles and mirrors, pencils, scissors, photos, dreams, history, and each other. . .

Concentrating. . .

Artists learning with students, students learning with artists. . .

Making community and having some fun along the way.

The following slide-show includes every photo (330!) that I took during JumpstART and photos taken by Bonnie Bowley and my daughter on the field trip to Farish Street and downtown Jackson. There is also a short video at the beginning of the slide show. During the video, you can hear music in the background from Mrs. Wilson's room. The photos are in reverse order from latest taken to oldest.

Friday, March 13, 2009, was the last day that Mr. Miles and Mr. Jones worked with third grade students and teachers at Casey. Their JumpstART Project will be presented at the March 26th PTA meeting. A special meeting for third grade parents will start at 5:30 pm. The PTA program about JumpstART and dramatic interpretations about the city of Jackson directed by Mr. Howell will begin at 6:30 pm. Will you join us?

Celebrate Arts Education Month!

After-school ballet class with
Ballet Mississippi instructor, Julie Moran

March is National Arts Education Month!

Top 10 Suggestions for Celebrating Arts Education Month

1) Ask your child every day about what arts activities he/she did in school.

2) Observe your child's classroom during an arts integrated lesson.

3) Visit a music, drama, art, or library class at Casey.

4) Write a letter to our school board, a newspaper editor, or the state legislature in support of arts integration.

5) Thank our Casey teachers and administration for their creative ideas.

6) Support your child in their creative pursuits.

7) Tour a local museum or attend a cultural or arts event in Jackson.

8) Offer to help a classroom teacher with an arts project or arts integrated lesson.

9) Help your child learn about a new author, artist, musician, poet, actor, or dancer.

10) Save the date for the Casey Family Arts Festival on May 2, 2009!

What other ideas would you like to share? Please comment below.