Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program

Tag: biomes

  • Infuse Art – Change Our World

    The University of Utah, College of Fine Arts, presented their ArtsLink 2019 conference on Saturday, March 2nd. ArtsLink is free to students and is a daylong introduction into the wonderful world of arts integration. Plus breakfast, lunch, swag bags, and lesson plans for all!

    It was a fun day filled with art making and educational conversation. Breakout sessions, integrating the beautiful book, Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, by Oliver Jeffers, were held in the four art forms of Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts.

    Dance with Jana Shumway: “Here We Are” on the LAND THAT WE LOVE!

    Curriculum Connections: At the end of this workshop, students understood more about our earth’s land. They danced the different biomes (desert, plain, tropic, tundra, grassland, mountain, forest, wetland.) They choreographed movement about the levels in the soil (topsoil, subsoil, bedrock;) and created shapes of many land forms, then moved like the forces (water, wind, gravity, ice) that case weathering and erosion. Quite a workout!

    Drama with Penny Caywood: Notes for Living on Planet Earth

    Curriculum Connections: Students in the Drama workshop connected the Drama standards of Creating, Performing and Responding with Literacy standards (Connect.) Students read, listened to and told stories from a variety of cultures, genres and styles. They identified characters, setting, plot, theme and conflict in the stories. They also identified historical, global, and social issues connecting them through drama/theater work. Sounds heavy duty but it was SO MUCH FUN!

    Music with Susan Swidnicki: Come Dance and Sing Around the Ring

    Curriculum Connections: The geography of a community influences the cultural development of the humans who inhabit the community. There are relationships between climate, natural resources and other geographic characteristics and a community’s cultural development.

    Students explored the idea of interrelationships between community and environment. Susan explained ways people respect and pass on their traditions and customs. Students then identified physical features of a community and could explain how they affect people’s activities in that area – All Through Music!

    Visual Arts with Jen Terry: Animal Maps

    Curriculum Connections: Mapping builds higher order thinking skills and brings meaning-making to place, thing, concept and idea. This sense of scale, perspective, representation, symbol and observation connects deeper understandings to the experience and helps break apart place, thing, concept or idea into meaningful chunks of information to form an understanding of the whole

    Students created a variety of maps – animals maps out of shapes, map of a fish, character maps and scientific drawings. So many ideas. So little time!

  • There’s So Much “Drama” at Suncrest Elementary

    Guest Blogger: Rachel Zumaya

    Drama Specialist at Suncrest Elementary School, Alpine School District

    Pantomime /ˈpan(t)əˌmīm/ noun
    a dramatic entertainment, originating in Roman mime, in which performers express meaning through gestures accompanied by music.

    In the Drama space at Suncrest Elementary School, students have been learning about pantomime and how tableaus can tell stories. 2nd graders learned to do “the rope” and had a pantomime Tug-O-War that they acted our for their class.

    The 5th grade also did a Tug-O-War activity integrating the Underground Railroad and the Salem Witch Trials with drama skills.

    3rd graders worked on a collaborative project where they performed a “Biomes” poem. They each took turns doing moving tableaus that portrayed the various biomes of the earth. They then performed that for their teachers and classmates.

    Tableau /ˌtaˈblō/ noun
    a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant.

    The 4th graders were given a project where they researched Utah Native American legends. Groups planned 3 tableaus to narrate the beginning, middle, and end of their stories. These were performed for teachers and classmates.

    6th graders did a similar project, using Greek mythology as their point of study. They told their story through 3 tableaus, narrating and performing it for their class.

    We certainly had a lot of fun workshopping the tableau and pantomime projects together as a school. Student learned concepts of Science and Social Studies in a deeper way.