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Arts Bridges: Building Literacy through an Integrated Arts
Collaborative Model - Year Two
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Arts Bridges Year Two began with an emphasis on professional development for cohort teams of classroom teachers, arts specialists, arts organization managers, and teaching artists. Fifth grade teachers were added this year and a new school, Solis-Cohen Elementary School, replaced Creighton Elementary School. PAEP reviewed the assessment data gathered throughout the pilot year of Arts Bridges. This data came from surveying all professional development workshops, from on-site observations by PAEP personnel, curriculum consultants, School District of Philadelphia evaluators, and from the end of year conference report-out by teachers, principals, teaching artists, and arts organization managers. We concluded that to produce the most effective method of using the arts to build literacy skills, we needed an approach that was specific and highly directed toward teacher identified literacy goals. Working with our consultants, we devised a model in which arts skill sets are aligned with literacy goals directly taken from the School District of Philadelphia literacy curriculum. This alignment provides the infrastructure from which arts projects are designed and implemented in Arts Bridges schools. Since matched skill sets drive the arts processes whether it is in the literacy residencies or the visual art or music residencies, connections between the specific art skills to their matched literacy skills are made apparent to the students. Classroom teachers, arts specialists, literacy artists, and the visual or music artists constantly reinforce this learning from multiple perspectives. We anticipate that the end products from each school will demonstrate students' mastery of both the arts skills and literacy learning. For more information on overall goals see Year One below.
Arts Bridges: Building Literacy Through an Integrated Arts Collaborative Model
is made possible by a grant of federal funds to The School District of Philadelphia by the
United Sates Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement, under the
Arts in Education Model Development & Dissemination Grant Program
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Arts Bridges Year One: |
The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) in partnership with the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership (PAEP) has received a substantive grant to implement a comprehensive arts-integrated program that will improve the literacy skills of the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade populations. Designed as a quasi-experimental research project, this four-year program will engage students at five schools in arts-based learning collaborations that will integrate the arts into the core literacy curriculum. Schools, arts organizations, and teaching artists participating this year:
Each grade level collaborative project includes two arts residencies that address critical grade level literacy goals as defined by the School District of Philadelphia Literacy Curriculum, establish a six-month arts integrated, thematic approach to address these goals, and develop scope and sequence curricula for classroom implementation. Ongoing professional development, mentoring, and program evaluation will build teacher capacity over time and insure the sustainability of the Arts Bridges model beyond the initial grant period. This program will document for national dissemination a model for arts-based learning collaborations integrating the arts into core literacy curriculum and will provide teachers, working with artists in their classroom, with a greater variety of teaching and learning strategies to enhance the learning of hard-to-reach students.
Both the SDP and PAEP proposed project and attendant professional development activities are designed to accomplish the following outcome objectives:
1) Improve students’ academic performance in reading.
2) Improve students’ attitudes towards self and school, fostering pro-social behavior.
3) Prepare classroom teachers to use an arts integrated approach to building literacy skill.
4) Develop teacher capacity to design and implement arts integrated instructional strategies.
5) Improve teachers’ understanding and use of core curriculum over time.
The scope of this project over four years is as follows: Grades 4, 5, and 6 are targeted to receive arts integrated interventions.
- Year one of the project will engage grade 4 classrooms in five schools. The fourth grade Arts Bridges cohort teams will participate in this project over four years.
- Year two of the project will engage grade 4 and grade 5 classrooms in the five schools. The fifth grade Arts Bridges cohort teams will participate in this project over three years.
- Years three and four of the project will engage grade 4, 5, and 6 classrooms in the five schools. The sixth grade Arts Bridges cohorts will participate in this project over the last two years of the program.
Resources provided to the school through the Arts Bridges project:
- One literacy based teaching artist will work in up to three grade level classrooms for 12 sessions, one hour each classroom, for a maximum of 36 hours.
- Mentorship through leading arts organizations such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia Young Playwrights, Philadelphia Theatre Company, and Cosa Cosa, art at large. These arts organizations are assigned one-on-one to work closely with teachers and teaching artists to oversee the arts collaborative project.
- A second teaching artist in another art form such as visual arts, dance, or music will be provided by the mentoring arts organizations. That artist will work with up to three grade level classrooms for 12 sessions, one hour each classroom, for a maximum of 36 hours.
PAEP will provide professional development on building literacy skills using the arts, arts integration, project management, and tools to assess student learning in these arts-based collaborative projects for the cohort teams consisting of classroom teachers, arts specialists, and teaching artists.
Schools were selected by a matched randomization process through matching on the following criteria: a) neighborhood elementary schools in the School District of Philadelphia with at least two grades 4, grade 5, and grade 6 classrooms (teachers), b) employ art and music specialists, and c) are low achieving, defined as not meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress in 2004-05. Schools meeting these criteria were informed of the Arts Bridges program opportunity and prompted to apply to participate. Twelve schools were selected by random lottery into the intervention group (n=5) and the control group (n=7) by the SDP program director and evaluation team. PAEP matched schools with arts institutions and teaching artists as described in the preceding section to begin the formation of the project cohorts.
Students in these classrooms will be engaged in arts-integrated activities to promote art making skills and develop literacy skills. These projects will span a six month period in each school year of the four project years. To ensure quality in the design and delivery of these projects, ongoing professional development, mentoring, and teaching cohort planning sessions are included as integral components of the Arts Bridges’ model. To build capacity within these arts-based project cohorts, one six-hour and two three-hour intensive professional development sessions will be held throughout the year during the first three years of the project. In the fourth year the 6th grade cohorts will receive the two three-hour intensive sessions. Content for these intensives will be designed by the Program Director from SDP, PAEP, the Curriculum Design and Development Consultant/Instructor, and the Assessment and Evaluation Consultant/Instructor in a structured, sequential format focusing on the development of arts-integrated project teams’ skill sets. Master teachers and teaching artists identified by SDP, PAEP, and cohort arts institutions will facilitate professional development sessions.
Professional Development
To ensure program sustainability, professional development workshops will be layered to include sessions on building project infrastructure as well as building project content design. Infrastructure sessions will focus on creating effective collaborations and will include but are not limited to: 1) Project Management; 2) Project Leadership Roles and Responsibilities; 3) Design of Output and Outcome Assessment Plans; 4) Project Contracting and Collaboration; and 5) Project Problem-Solving.
Project Content Design sessions will target the creation of authentic arts-integrated learning projects that will increase literacy goals for each grade level. The content of these sessions will include but is not limited to: 1) Project Curriculum Design; 2) Sequential Lesson Planning; and 3) Student Assessment Strategies.
The purpose of this rich and ongoing professional development is to enable cohort teams to acquire new techniques for classroom use, to develop strategies for reaching and engaging at-risk students in the learning process, to increase student pro-social behavior, to enhance teachers’ skills, and to build confidence in their ability to apply arts-integrated learning methods in other classroom learning situations. Most importantly, during these professional development sessions and in the after-school meetings described below, the cohort teaching teams will design the actual content of the arts-integrated literacy curriculum and lesson plans for classroom implementation for each program year.
Arts Bridges Year I Catalogue of Student Achievement
Click here to see the 2007 catalogue
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