Partnership Model for Student Success Through Literacy & The Arts

A4L LESSONS PROGRAM & GLEN HAVEN ES PARTNER for STUDENT SUCCESS

A4L Presenters: Barbara O'Brien, Vera McKenzie, Francine Goodman, Kimberli Maxwell

The good news came in November, 2010. The conference proposal to tell other educators about the partnership between Young Audiences, Woodruff Arts Center's Arts for Learning (A4L) Lessons and DeKalb County's Glen Haven Elementary School had been accepted! More importantly, we could now share the success students achieved by working with dedicated teachers in a curriculum based program grounded in literacy and the arts. February, 2011 was circled on the calendar as the date to give two presentations at the  Beyond School Hours XIV national conference in Atlanta, GA.

Inspired by the students' work in the A4L Lessons unit on Everyday Heroes, we designed a workshop that would allow participants to explore strategies for reflective thinking, creative problem solving, and critical thinking through literacy and the arts.

We used a team approach to talk about the partnership between the A4L Lessons program and Glen Haven Elementary School, the professional learning for the teachers, resources and instruction, assessment, and documented success for the students.

 

Participants working on Everyday Heroes Collage

For the participants, having the opportunity to experience the dynamic hands-on aspect of the literacy and arts activities was the highlight of the workshop. They heard an excerpt from the book, Roberto Clemente, Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The next task was to work in small groups (collage communities) just as the A4L students do to determine the important facts in what they heard then represent those facts in a group collage. The sharing at the end of the workshop again supported what we see in students who participate in the A4L Lessons program: the high level of engagement, processing information, decision making and unique responses from each group. 

Sharing Accomplishments