Examples of Arts Integration

Christine Bluett, pre-school teacher Columbia Elementary, worked with Metro Theater Company to develop movement, role-playing and creative drama exercises to help students learn to work together, talk through their feelings and get along. This addressed a need to increase socialization skills so students were better prepared to advance to Kindergarten.

Pre-school: Nursery Rhymes and Literacy
Susan Grigsby from The St. Louis Poetry Center and Julie Tubbs from The Magic House partnered with pre-school teacher Carol Petty at Jefferson Elementary on a four-month residency around nursery rhymes as a literacy tool. Ms. Petty wanted to use the rhythm and repetition of nursery rhymes to entice students to want to read. For this collaboration, Ms. Petty selected core themes from her monthly lesson plans. These themes included colors, love and snow. Ms. Grigsby shared nursery rhymes and poetry with the students and then worked with them to create their own original poems. Ms. Tubbs engaged students in hands-on activities around aspects of science (how colors and blended, how snow melts to water). At times the three team taught; at other times they worked individually with the students. Students' oral poetry chants were revised into poems with rhythm and rhyme patterns and printed into books with clip-art pictures used as visual prompts. With the aid of those prompts, students were able to read the group poems they had co-created.

Click here for a sample lesson plan. (DOC Format)
Click here for samples of three books created by the pre-school students. (Zipped File)
Click here for sample rhyming word cards. (Zipped File)

Emily Petkewich, Diane Davenport and Laurie Melnik from Metro Theater Company used drama, writing and song to engage Mrs. Sue Ellen Turner's fourth graders in learning about the Civil Rights era. Over four months, the students experienced history by re-enacting sit-ins, singing protest songs, and writing in journals. According to Jefferson Elementary Principal Roger Brock, during the four-month program, not one student missed a single day of school. The students created and presented a culminating performance for school students, teachers, parents and community members. Their work was recognized in a column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Poet Aaron Belz worked with Ms. Detra Thomas to use rap music as a way to help students better retain elements of the curriculum. Over six months, Mr. Belz met with students to teach them rhyme, meter and the basic elements of poetry by having them write about what they know –their lives and their neighborhoods. Ms. Thomas expanded their work in poetry by asking students to write short four-line rhymes after each lesson – about what they remembered and the most important points. Mr. Belz and Ms. Thomas worked together in the classroom developing the students' poetry skills. The culminating experience of this project was the development of a 22-minute video of the students' raps which was produced with help from KDHX. The video was sent to the class's pen pals in Liberia.

Springboard to Learning/Young Audiences of St. Louis led a collaborative effort with Blewett Middle School teachers to create a month-long, school-wide Passport to Africa program. The project came about because teachers at Blewett were concerned that students did not understand Africa as a continent comprised of distinct countries and cultures. To help the students delve into Africa and its nations, Springboard engaged educators and teaching artists from Better Family Life, Folktale Productions, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis Science Center, Computer Village, University of Missouri-St. Louis and Washington University. In each of their classes, every day for four weeks, Blewett students immersed themselves in African culture through dance, song, food, language, mask-making, and more. Seventh graders focused on African culture while eight graders studied regions in depth. The results of their studies were displayed in a school open house in which the students provided reports to parents, community members, and other students.