Expressing Your Voice Through Poetry & Rhythm

Educator: Kate Finnick- District Mindfulness Director/SEL Liaison

Other Participating Staff: Sarah Bedell - English

Teaching Artists: Adriana Devers - Poet/Author and Thomas McKenna - Musician/Drummer

School: Robert Moses Middle School, Grade 8

District: North Babylon UFSD: https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000037838

Summary

This partnership combined poetry, dance, drumming, and language arts in a dimensional collaboration with 8th grade students. Students deeply analyzed ways that language in reading and writing can reveal layers of personal, cultural, and literary meaning by identifying parallels in the “voice” of a drum, a poem, and their own body movement.

Rationale

Why did you work with this specific group of students? What issues were addressed during this project? 

Students were exploring the theme of voice and self identity in their reading of The Outsiders and wanted to help go deeper into those themes through artistic expression.

What learning goals/standards did this meet?

Arts

Literary arts, performance, visual arts, movement

• Creating - Conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work
• Performing - Realizing artistic ideas and work through exploration, interpretation and presentation
• Responding - Understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning that transcend the classroom
• Connecting - Relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context

Respond: Interpret, analyze and evaluate meaning in artistic work through applied criteria and personal perception.

CCCR

Exploratory enrichment and arts in ed: What is the intention behind art pieces, literary works, song lyrics? Where does an artist’s intention come from? Where do our intentions come from? What is a personal “intention” you’d like to pursue this year? What role do words play in being true to your intentions?

Civic identity: How can the arts (visual arts, poetry, dance) assist in our personal growth? How can the arts assist in keeping true to our intentions? How can we explore personality traits and identities through the arts?

College & Career Readiness: communication, decision making, social skills, understanding personal strengths vs. challenges, written expression, context, as it relates to interpersonal communication and self-exploration. 

CR-S 

Project addressed the four principles of CR-S

• Welcoming and affirming environment
• High expectations and rigorous instruction 
• Inclusive curriculum and assessment
• Ongoing professional learning

Outcomes

We will know that student learning is expanded when they demonstrate that they…

KNOW… the value of sharing our individual voices to learn how we are different and unique and yet similar at the same time.

UNDERSTAND… that sharing can take place in creative ways that are a powerful and meaningful way to understand each other. 

ARE ABLE TO…  explore their own personal creative process to finding and sharing their voice.