ATL Call

February 16, 2014

Participants: Tondra (presenter), Susan, Alicia, Kristen
Facilitator: H. Kehn
Artifact: Purposeful planning doc for arts integrated project
Tondras questions for feedback:
How can I structure the first week of this project so that it is efficient?

Action Step Brainstorming:
Before choosing illustrations, decide what elements of heroic adventures you want to focus on. Select
illustrations that reflect those elements. Select illustrations carefully- use Google images in addition to
storybook images. The more provocative the selections, the more vivid stories students will imagine.
Consider giving groups more than one illustration (connected with the same story), so that they have
more information to work from.
On your first day, have students do VTS in groups with one illustration from one of the 3 heroic
adventure tales. On this same day, introduce the roles students will have an opportunity to play once
they get into the skit work.
Assign roles to students in groups to play to student strengths and also to address multiple different
activities in a short period of time (examples of roles include: director, (skit) writer, actors, note-taker,
music selector, costume designer*).
Stay mindful of the purpose behind these first series of lessons. If the purpose is to engage students in
the content prior to reading texts, limit the skit-work to two days.
Instead of students performing their skits for the entire class (this would require an entire period), up
the rigor by having students share their skit with 1-3 other groups in order to get feedback (create
feedback sheets with drama and heroic element vocab). In this way, students will develop theatre skills,
learn about elements of the genre and practice giving meaningful feedback.
At the end of the process (After students have brainstormed a skit and read the actual texts) provide
students with an opportunity to compare and contrast the stories, noting the elements that stayed
consistent.
Make connection between elements of these heroic stories and heroes from Black History (in honor of
Black History month). See Kristen for more info- she suggested this after call.