Elaine Walker, Carmine Tabone, and Gustave Weltsek: "When Achievement Data Meet Drama and Arts Integration"

Educational Arts Team (EAT) logo

In a study reported in the May 2011 edition of Language Arts, Volume 88, No. 5,  Walker, Tabone, and Weltsek examined the effects of a theatre strategies project on both mathematical and language arts performance.  Researchers wanted to know the following:

• To what extent was student achievement in mathematics and language arts positively impacted by theatre-strategies integration with language arts curriculum?
• To what degree were students able to sustain gains, once they returned to traditional instruction?

Subjects, Grade 6 and 7 Language Arts students, were drawn from eight New Jersey urban public schools.  All eight schools had a multiracial and multiethnic setting: 39% Latino, 36% African descent, 14% Asian, 10% Caucasian, and 1% other.  Approximately 80% of the students received free/reduced lunch, indicating low socioeconomic/disadvantaged backgrounds.  Four of the eight schools received drama training; the other four served as a control.

In 2008, EAT (Educational Arts Team) received a grant from the New Jersey Department of Education to develop a series of forty multimodal drama lessons, collaboratively created by teaching artists and teachers.  The lessons spanned the course of a year, addressing district-mandated novels for Gr. 6 and 7; in-service professional development workshops and teacher-training were also provided. Previously, EAT had enjoyed successful results from their first grant, where students' standardized test scores had risen as a result of drama integration into Grades 4 and 5 social studies and language arts curriculum.  Students employed voice, body, and visual representations to intepret stories. Lesson plans examined textual sections of novels via various theatre strategies, such as drama games, scenery design activities, process drama, improvisation, script writing, and enactment, and also incorporated state standards for reading and literary interpretation.  The drama-infused curriculum deliberately built upon students' experiences, scaffolding public meaning-making into deeper understanding of literature,  and aimed to support students in re: confident and clear written expression of ideas.

Through collaboration, artists and teachers discovered four natural points of intersection between literary and dramatic arts standards:

• scenery design and setting
• acting and understanding the characters
• directing and understanding theme, plot, and relationships between characters
• script-writing and dialogue

These four points served as scaffolds for language arts standards for the middle grades, namely

• visualizing and establishing the setting of the text
• becoming skilled at observing, describing, analyzing, and inferring
• understanding how characters experience situations from different perspectives
• understanding characters' relationships to one another
• predicting what could come next in a story
• developing the ability to write from the perspectives of different characters in the text
• relating the material to personal experiences

Walker et al also provided some examples of how drama strategies were integrated into language arts curriculum.  The models reflect a deliberate sequencing of activities: oral interpretation, embodied meaning making, performance, then traditional writing.

• Descriptive writing: EAT adapted a theatre exercise for beginning actors to develop sense memory for use with props on stage.  Students were asked to observe a small personal object, then describe it to a partner.  The class then created a classification grid with various descriptive categories, e.g. shape, texture, color, emotional attachment, place, people, in order to create linkages between personal and public, academic literacy practices and to see connections between the imagined, the spoken, and the written.  The grid became the starting trigger for written reflections on the object.  The class then moved from descriptions of concrete objects to considering crucial objects described in the novels they were reading, imagining them, describing them orally to a partner, then writing about them and explaining their significance.
• Exploring themes in a novel: To explore possible themes in a novel, the teacher asked the class to respond to a statement capturing the dilemma presented by a theme, e.g. "Everyone should always follow the rules".  First, students responded physically via body language, using the "Vote From Your Seat" strategy, where sitting down=disagree, sitting w/ hands raised=unsure, stand up=agree, stand up, with hands in air= strongly agree, with the teacher eliciting oral responses from a range of students as to why they responded as they did.  Next, a theme from the novel was introduced with a statement, and again, students were invited to respond to the statement and explain their position.  Then the teacher read a section of the novel related to that theme.  The section was then dramatized, initially using drama strategies such as tableau or living sculpture, with volunteers playing characters; gradually, dialogue was added, both from the text, as well as improvised lines.  Students were then asked to write a persuasive letter to the novel's protagonist, from their characters' points of view

Researchers measured student achievement via New Jersey's 2009 and 2010 achievement data, in the form of scale scores and achievement bands.  School engagement was measured using attendance data.  Approximately 56% of those in the experimental drama group passed the language arts proficiency exam, compared to 43% in the control group.  In math, 47% were successful on the state assessments, versus 39%.  Even controlling for gender and socioeconomic status, being in an arts-integrated classroom increased the odds of passing the state language arts assessment by 77%, and the math assessment by 42%.  The experimental group students also were slightly less likely to miss school.  In regard to sustained gains, the researchers tracked 338 seventh graders into eighth grade: of those, 215 had received arts-integrated language arts, and 123 traditional pedagogy.  On the eighth grade assessment, 78% of those who had received arts-integrated language arts were proficient, versus 69% of those who'd received traditional instruction: a statistically-significant figure.   While there were no discernable differences in regard to students' reading and interpreting text, the arts-integrated students outperformed the control group in regard to persuasive and speculative writing.

The findings of this study are promising, especially in regard to how arts-integration can improve academic outcomes, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.  Teachers from schools who'd received arts integration also had positive reviews of the program in regard to their own professional development and ability to incorporate arts in their curriculum.  Walker et al conclude by stating that "the systematic infusion of drama strategies enables students to physically, orally, and visually generate ideas for writing; develop the voice of a particular piece; clarify the intended audience; and create a rehearsal for the intended genre of writing."  In an era of diminished support for the arts and program cuts, the authors underscore that serious investments ought to be made for further research into effective literacy strategies, such as drama-integration.

Aysel Akyol and Zeynep Hamamci, The Effect of Drama Education on the Empathetic Skills of University Students

Image courtesy http://www.thebrainandthemind.co.uk/The_Talks/Talk3/

In a 2007 study published in Bulgarian Journal of Science and Education Policy, Volume 1, Number 1,  Akyol and Hamamci (2007) report the results of an experiment investigating the effect of drama education on the empathetic skills of 73 students.  All subjects--36 in the experimental group and 37 in the control group--were undergraduates at Gazi University in Turkey.

In order to contextualize their own experiment, the researchers provided a decent literature review on empathy and drama.  While they noted a paucity in actual research concerning the effect of drama on empathy skills, they also mentioned the following benefits of drama, articulated in psychological and educational literature:

• Drama animates and communicates ideas through collaborative groupwork and creates an environment that fosters ongoing discovery and creativity.
• Through enacting different social problems, participants develop deeper understanding of social roles and social problems.  Actors use real-life experience and knowledge to create an imaginary world where they can investigate relationships and events, even as they're involved in the process of defining situations and characters.
• Drama necessitates that participants put themselves in the place of others, and thus are able to develop understanding of others' feelings and perspectives, building empathetic skills.

All subjects were administered a pre- and post-test, the Empathetic Skills Scale, Form B, to ascertain empathetic skills.  The experimental group received drama education in a weekly four-hour session  for 14 weeks, and there was a statistically significant increase in that group's empathetic skills.  Akyol and Hamamci postulate that the increase may have been due to the intensive role-playing pairwork and peer feedback built into the experimental design.

The Biology of Music

Image courtesy of neurowiki2012.wikispaces.com

"The Biology of Music", an article from the February 12th - 18th, 2000 issue of The Economist, provides a useful summary of key findings in regard to neuroscience and music.  While language is thought to be an acquisition that is uniquely human, arguably, humans' capacity for music-making, both vocally and instrumentally, is unsurpassed in the animal kingdom.

While some linguistic and musical areas overlap in the brain, evidence suggests that musical and linguistic processing, are to some degree, independent.  People with damaged language-processing centres do not automatically lose their musical abilities. Vissarion Shebalin, a Russian composer who suffered a stroke to the left hemisphere of his brain in 1953, was able neither to understand speech nor speak after his illness—yet retained his ability to compose music until his death ten years later. Conversely, some people's musical abilities have been destroyed without detriment to their speech.

Musical processing encompasses a number of separate tasks, all handled by different parts of the brain. As early as 1905, for example, the neurologist Bonvicini discovered a brain-damaged individual who could recognize the sounds of different musical instruments, and also detect wrong notes, but not identify well-known tunes, such as his own national anthem.

In the late 1990s, Dr Liégeois-Chauvel and Dr Peretz examined 65 patients who had undergone a surgical procedure for epilepsy, involving the removal of part of one temporal lobe. This enabled researchers to investigate whether music, like language, is processed predominantly on only one side of the brain, but also permitted them to investigate which bits of the temporal lobe are doing what.
Liégeois-Chauvel and Dr Peretz asked each of their subjects to listen to a series of short melodies written especially for the project in order to study individual components of melody: pitches, musical intervals between the notes, key, contour (how the melody rises or falls), rhythm and tempo.
 
Liégeois-Chauvel and Peretz's results showed that people with right-temporal-lobe damage had difficulty processing both the key and the contour of a melody, while those with left-temporal-lobe damage suffered problems only with the key. This suggests that, like language, music is processed asymmetrically in the brain (although not to quite the same degree). It also suggests that if one hemisphere of the brain deserves to be called dominant for music, it is the right-hand one—the opposite of the case for language in most people.  The part of the lobe involved in the case of contour is known as the first temporal gyrus, though the site of the key-processor was not identified. In addition, those subjects who had had another part of the lobe, Heschl’s gyrus, removed, had difficulty—regardless of whether it was the left or the right Heschl’s gyrus that was missing—in identifying variations in pitch.

Liégeois-Chauvel’s and Dr Peretz’s second set of experiments looked at the perception of rhythm. This time, the possible distinction between the presentations of a melody was that one might be in “marching” time (2/4, to music aficionados) while the other was in “waltz” time (3/4). Again, subjects were asked whether the two presentations differed. In this case, however, there was no effect on the perception of rhythm in any subject, suggesting that rhythm isn't analyzed in the temporal lobe.

Evers and Dannert (1999) used “functional transcranial Doppler sonography”, a technique measuring blood-flow rate in a particular artery or vein, to study the response of blood-flow to music. Their subjects were a mixture of musicians: people who knew how to play at least two musical instruments, and non-musicians: people who had never played an instrument, and did not listen regularly to music. Subjects listened to a 16th-century madrigal whose lyrics were in Latin, a language chosen because it was not spoken by any of the participants, and so would not activate speech processing.    In non-musicians, blood flow to the right hemisphere increased on exposure to music with a lot of harmonic intervals. In musicians, however, the reverse was true; blood-flow increased to their left hemispheres, suggesting that musical training was affecting the way they perceived harmony.  When the participants were exposed to strongly rhythmical modern rock, rather than harmonic music, responses changed. Rock music produced an equal increase of blood flow in both hemispheres in both groups of subjects, confirming Dr Liégeois-Chauvel’s and Dr Peretez’s observation that pitch and rhythm are processed independently.

Platel, Baron, et al, utilized a non-invasive technique, positron-emission tomography, or PET, to investigate which bits of the brain activate when someone listens to a melody. They studied healthy  musical illiterates: people who cannot read musical notation.  One of their most intriguing results came when they changed the pitch of one or more of the notes in a melody. When they did this, they found that in addition to activity in the temporal lobes, parts of the visual cortex at the back of the brain lit up.  These areas--Brodmann’s area 18 and 19--are the location of the “mind’s eye”—the place where images are conjured up via imagination alone. Using PET technology, researcher Justine Sergent also found Brodmann's area 18 and 19 lit up in pianists playing their instruments. Baron theorizes that when the pitches of a sequence of notes are being analysed, the brain uses some sort of “symbolic” image to assist in deciphering each pitch, in similar manner to an orchestra conductor lifting his arm for “high” pitches and lowering it for “low” pitches.  Baron's theory might help explain how and why people perceive notes as high and low in the first place.

Krumhansl, a psychologist at Cornell University, examined the physiological changes in blood circulation, respiration, skin conductivity and body temperature that occurred in volunteer subjects while listening to different pieces of music. Music with a rapid tempo, and written in a major key, correlated precisely with the induction of happiness. A slow tempo and a minor key induced sadness, and a rapid tempo combined with dissonance--the sort of harsh musical effect favored by composer Arnold Schoenberg--induced fear.

Zatorre and Blood used PET scans to study the emotional effects of music.  When test subjects heard dissonance, areas of their limbic systems known to be responsible for unpleasant emotion lit up and, moreover, volunteers used negative adjectives to describe their feelings. Consonant music, by contrast, stimulated parts of the limbic system associated with pleasure, and the subjects’ feelings were incontestably positive.

Music’s emotional and conscious effects are completely separate. Peretz did a study on Ms. R, who'd sustained damage to both of her temporal lobes as a result of surgery undertaken to repair some of the blood vessels supplying her brain.  While her speech and intellect remained unchanged after the accident, Ms. R's ability to sing and identify once-familiar melodies disappeared. Remarkably, though, she claimed she could still enjoy music. For comparison, subjects with healthy, intact temporal lobes were also tested. While Ms R failed to identify any melodies played to her, no matter many times they were repeated, and couldn't consciously detect pitch changes, she could still feel emotion—a result confirmed by manipulating the pitch, the tempo and the major or minor nature of the key of the various pieces of music being played, and comparing her reactions to the altered tunes with those of the control group.

Finally, Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at University College, examined the linkage between music and love. He postulated that because music demands skill, it is a way of manifesting fitness to be someone’s mate. Singing, or playing a musical instrument, requires fine muscular control. Remembering the notes demands a good memory. Getting those notes right once they'r remembered suggests hearing is in top condition. And the fact that much music is sung as part of courtship, suggests that it is, indeed, a way of showing off.

Midsummer Night's Dream Scenes: English I Poetry/Drama, 2013

"Find you out a bed, for I upon this bank will rest my head." The exhausted Hermia spurns Lysander's amorous advances.

All three sections of freshman English I Poetry/Drama had their first A Midsummer Night's Dream performance today, one of three public performances.  Shakespeare poses a multitude of challenges for freshmen readers, on several fronts.  Although 16th and 17th century English is technically considered "Early Modern English", the diction and syntax make the language complex and challenging for contemporary readers--in essence, a foreign language.

Helena begs Demetrius to stay

"O, will thou darkling leave me? Do not so..."

I've been enamored of the Bard, ever since I was five and saw the Honolulu Theatre for Youth perform Hamlet.  Shakespeare is my go-to author: inventive, thought-provoking, his plays always yield something new and fresh, even after myriad readings and re-readings, and the language is gorgeous: a delight to speak and hear.  When I was a student at Punahou in the mid-Eighties, Shakespeare was a prominent part of the school's English curricula.  From seventh grade on, students studied a different play every year.  And every April, in celebration of Shakespeare's birthday on April 23, a replica of the Globe was erected on the Quad.  For a week, students and faculty would don Renaissance clothing and enjoy faculty and student performances, while strolling musicians would sing Thomas Morley madrigals, and gluttons feasted on roasted capon legs and bread and spiced cider.  Alas, students are no longer required to read Shakespeare beyond eighth grade's Romeo and Juliet, freshman year's A Midsummer Night's Dream and sophomore year's The Merchant of Venice.  Yet I hope that their brief experience with Shakespeare's work inspires them to delve more into the delights afforded by this inventive playwright, and also, more importantly, take away vital lessons which transcend literature.

"O that a lady of one man refused, should of another therefore be abused!" Helena tells the love-addled Lysander off.

"I have a device to make all well."  Bottom lets Quince know who's in control.

Puck gives Bottom a donkey head.

Why perform Shakespeare?  Let me count the ways, enumerated by my students:

• It improves reading comprehension: in order to bring scenes to life, students develop awareness of the embedded cues within the text and need to imagine the setting, and understand both their character and the relationships that person has with others.  As part of their homework, students are responsible for looking up and defining all unfamiliar words in their script.  They also write character profiles in order to reflect on their character's personality, motivation, and objectives.
• It builds individual confidence in public speaking, performing before an audience, and taking risks.  It's okay--and easier--to be silly, if the whole group is doing it.
• It bonds the class: a group that plays together, learns together, risks together.  There's safety in the ensemble.
• It's okay and natural to make mistakes: keep calm, carry on, don't draw attention to mistakes, and learn from errors.
• It calls upon students to creatively figure out how to "show" what's happening with their character through visual, not just linguistic means--and there's a lot of latitude for individual interpretation, provided it's grounded in the text.
• Literature helps us understand the human condition and develop empathy--as an actor, you need to imagine fully being, listening, and thinking as one's character, understanding the world from his/her perspective.

"I'll follow thee, I'll lead thee 'bout a round." Puck scares the Mechanicals.

"And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are content to whisper."  Thisbe and Pyramus converse through the Wall.

One performance down, two remaining!  11:30 takes a bow.

Charles Anzalone, "Study Finds Link Between Music and Preschoolers' Reading Readiness

Photo courtesy cambodia4kids.org

Anzalone's article reports on a two-year University of Buffalo Graduate School of Education study examining the effect of impact of "musically trained" early childhood teachers on the music and emergent reading and writing achievements of preschool children.  165 preschoolers participated in music activities taught by 11 teachers--generalists, as opposed to musical specialists--who had received intensive training in musicianship skill and teaching strategies for guiding young children's music development. Results showed that music instruction significantly increased children's oral vocabulary and grammatic understanding, after controlling for students’ age and prior knowledge, and was especially effective for children who began with lower literacy skills. Researchers also found statistically significant links with two tests of early literacy development: oral vocabulary and grammatical understanding.”  Results, however, were mixed for music achievement, however.   Students’ median scores were similar for the experimental and control groups on use of singing voice, and while students' tonal pattern achievement in the experimental group was significantly higher, no significant differences were found in children's rhythm-pattern achievement.

Stacy Kennelly, "Does Playing Music Boost Kids' Empathy?"

Stacy Kennelly's article, "Does Playing Music Boost Kids' Empathy?" posted in UC Berkeley's Greater Good website, reviews a 2012 quasi-experimental study by Rabinowitch et al, published online in Psychology of Music.  University of Cambridge researchers observed 28 girls and 24 boys, all between the ages of 8 and 11, from four different schools in the United Kingdom with a similar socioeconomic makeup. The researchers designed a year-long Musical Group Interaction (MGI) program incorporating various music games with in-built empathy-promoting musical components (EPMCs). 

All children were administered a variety of pre- and post- tests to gauge their emotional empathy.
Approximately 50% were randomly assigned to the experimental group, which participated in a researcher-designed MGI program.  The experimental group met once a week in small groups for an entire school year to play games that encouraged interaction, imitation, and “mindreading” through music. For example, in the “Mirror Match” game, children had to repeat or match a short piece of music played by another student. In the “Improvising Rhythm” game, the children had to coordinate their playing, even as the rhythm was being constantly changed.  The other 50% also participated in weekly games that encouraged interaction and imitation, but their games were without music, using techniques like storytelling and drama instead.

The study's results: empathy increased significantly among children in the music group.   Researchers postulate that by engaging with musical activities, the experimental group was ‘shared intentionality’: an understanding of each other’s intentions through a common aim or object of attention - creating emotional affinity among the children. The group that had drama and storytelling activities, however, showed no discernable increase in empathy.  Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, a doctoral student at Cambridge’s Center for Music and Science and the lead author of the study, found that result surprising.  She commented, “...we expected the children who participated in the control games group interaction program to also show an enhanced capacity for empathy following the program,” she says.  The increased empathy among children in the music group suggests that interacting through music may hone our general ability to share the psychological states of others.

While the sample size of the University of Cambridge study was small, and therefore no definitive conclusions should be drawn from this single study, the experiment does suggest the empathy-enhancing potential of collaborative music making. More research, involving larger groups of students, is needed to strengthen the link between music and empathy, and to explore the staying power of group music training in regard to empathy.  The researchers also underscored the importance of seeing music--and by extension, the arts as a whole--not simply as skill- or craft-based, but simultaneously providing a vehicle for teaching social interaction.  And of course, it would be important to examine the drama/storytelling curriculum, seeing whether the materials used in the games incorporated comparable empathy-producing elements to those in the music-based curriculum.

5-13-13 Visit to Pete Barazza's "American Literature: The Jazz Age and the Lost Generation" class

Image courtesy http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs26/f/2008/128/9/0/jack_kerouac___on_the_road_3_by_nicadom.jpg Today, I visited "American Literature: The Jazz Age and the Lost Generation: 1920s America", one of several American Literature menu options offered by Punahou's Academy English Department.  The course lends itself to interdisciplinary studies, as students examine 1920s literature in historical and cultural context; readings are accompanied by a study of jazz music, modern art, and clips from period cinema. "Jazz Age" also studies the enduring influence of the Twenties and its cultural hallmarks in American culture today, hence forays into jazz literature of the Fifties and Sixties. Since I'd been interested in observing the class for a while and have personal interests in Beat literature and jazz, when my colleague Pete Barazza mentioned he'd be doing something experimental in class involving student-generated music, recitations, and a guest poet, I jumped at the opportunity. Currently, Pete's students have just started Jack Kerouac's  On the Road, a Beat Generation memoir influenced by the jazz scene.  Kerouac, of French-Canadian origin, made his home in Lowell, Massachusetts.  The guest speaker for the class, George  Wallace, author of Poppin' Johnny and Pace University performance poet and professor, gave a short talk to contextualize Kerouac's work.  Wallace noted that the Beat Generation emerged from the 1950s Jazz Scene, and Beat Poetry featured bop prosody and an emphasis on spontaneous, improvisational writing.  Wallace traced the genesis of Jazz to the folk music of New Orleans, Louisiana.  New Orleans' Afro-French-Creole dominant culture migrated north, beginning at the time of the Spanish-American War, and flourished in Kansas City, Missouri.  Kansas City, a "furnace of creative energy in collaborative activity," was the home of famed saxophonist Charlie Parker, a.k.a. "Bird", who heard jazz in clubs as kid, and subsequently became bebop jazz master.  Music and literature cross-pollinated, giving rise to "bop prosody",  a poetic formcharacterized by collaborative, improvisational, transcendental gymnastics and guided by the philosophy "let it roll.  In visual art, jazz influenced the work of painter Jackson Pollock, an abstract expressionist and disciple of Kansas City native son and famed muralist, Thomas Hart Benton, who painted raw, realistic representations of American life. Though master and student had vastly different artistic styles, noted Wallace, both artists' work exhibits strong rhythm and energy. Student performances comprised a major component of this particular class, though the presenters were all guests, as opposed to "Jazz Age" students--was delighted to see several familiar faces.  Travis '13, alto saxophonist, did a performance poetry piece with Wallace;  reminiscent of a 1960s Happening, George read poetry to the background of Travis' improvisational riffs, words mingling with music.   Then Emma '16, shared a Allen Ginsberg poem--Ginsberg being, of course, a friend of Jack Kerouac.  Emma '16, reading Ginsberg She was followed by singers Josh '13, covering "Strange Fruit", the song re: lynching made famous by jazz chanteuse Billie "Lady Day" Holliday, and Sam '13, with "I'm in the Mood for Love." Wallace then did a poetry reading, sharing the work of various American writers and artists: Walt Whitman's poem "Miracles", the "Skid Row" section of musician and social activist,Woody Guthrie, a memoir excerpt written by jazz musician, Count Basie, which shared parallels to the next excerpt, from Kerouac's On the Road.  Then, Wallace read Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra", a poem documenting a epiphanal moment shared with Kerouac in San Francisco.  Finally, Wallace closed with three of his own works, which reflected jazz and musical elements: "A Bass Player", "Subway", and "Belt Buckles and Bibles."   A question-answer session with Wallace concluded the class.  Wallace advised t aspiring poets to "start with the music and the energy--this is what drives the poem.  Gotta have rhythm and music to communicate--a poem is mediation with music."  Someone wondered if poetry deliberately created for presentation with music changed the poem any.  Wallace responded, "If you know you're solo, then music needs to be in your poem.  But if it's an actual collaboration with a musician, you gotta know where you're going w/ it." My favorite moment, however, was Wallace's response as to whether he deliberately incorporates music in his compositional process or just in the spoken delivery.  Wallace cited a Washington poet who suggested that writing a poem is like leading a fish upstream--you don't know where it'll take ya. Yet he personally enjoys that sense of spontaneity and serendipity, getting "a buzz out of the process", discovering where he's headed as he goes.  Wallace noted, "Words are like fresco painting--they're live material.  You don't want them to dry out and be brittle.  Use the material while it's alive."

Terry Heick, "10 Brilliant Examples Of Sketch Notes: Notetaking For The 21st Century"

Graphic recording by Jonny Goldstein, envisualize.com

Is a picture worth a thousand words?  Perhaps when it comes to note taking, yes.  My colleague Matt Awaya shared "10 Brilliant Examples of Sketch Notes: Notetaking for the 21st Century" by Terry Heick, an article on graphic notetaking.  While employing images in order to remember ideas for future reference is nothing new, I suspect that traditional note taking, which is linguistic in nature, arguably lacks the punch of visuals when it comes to thinking, aiding retention, or sharing ideas with other people.

While sketch notes like the ones shared in Heick's article or say, RSA Animate, are highly intimidating because of their sheer gorgeousness--face it, these are polished end-products, after all, done by professional graphic artists--there's a lot of value in using drawing as scaffolding for thinking, a valuable educational tool, and a means for differentiated learning.  In my classroom, for example, instead of having students construct a personal narrative assignment via outlining and/or writing a rough draft, I encourage them to sketch pictures and storyboard their work before they even type a word.  Same with poems.  It's a surprisingly simple tool, creating stories via pictures, but amazingly, it frees students to work out the essentials of their story and the narrative framework, without agonizing over words.  Also, because powerful writing engages all the senses, students literally must visualize first what they're trying to paint in words and imagine the details.  I also employ the strategy of "Sketch to Stretch", having students capture their understanding of literature via pictures, as well as words.

Use Arts Integration to Enhance Common Core

Photo courtesy Dane Larsen, via Creative Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nofolete/4427951907/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Found this Edutopia post on arts integration by Susan Riley, Arts Integration Specialist and founder of Education Closet, a web resource for integration and innovation in teaching.  Riley argues that the arts have some unique parallels to the Common Core Standards that may make their implementation a beneficial addition for teachers and administrators and articulates four key reasons for arts integration:

1. Process produces product: students are able to focus more on the process of their work, and thus create more meaningful and richer products.
2. Access points: the arts are naturally engaging to both teachers and learners, and allows greater connection to the subject matter.
3. True equity: employing the arts differentiates both instruction and learning.
4. Analytic practice: students must be able to analyze the components that create the whole, also understand how to synthesize parts into a whole.

Riley offers some useful links to sample lessons, web resources, and tips for successfully implementing arts in one's curriculum.  She suggests the following four keys for successful Arts Integration:

• Collaboration between arts and classroom teachers to find naturally-aligned objectives
• Using an arts area in which the classroom teacher is comfortable (for many, this starts with visual arts)
• Creating a lesson that truly teaches to both standards
• Assessing both areas equitably

What's Really Learned From Music Instruction: Eleanor, a case study

Self-initiated sketch by Eleanor, age 8

Music teaches far more than mere instrumental skills.  Two summers ago, my daughter Eleanor began piano studies at the age of six, enrolling in group piano classes at her school.  She had expressed interest in learning the instrument, and my husband and I were happy to oblige.  Though we weren't exactly sure how effective group lessons might be, we decided to try it out and see.  We'd absolutely no interest in ensuring a Carnegie Hall-bound piano prodigy; rather our interest was in cultivating a lifelong love of music; establishing strong foundational music-reading skills, either for continued long-term piano playing, further instrumental/vocal study, or both; and cultivating habits of mind and learning skills that transcend the subject matter: creativity, resilience, resourcefulness, problem-solving ability, and perseverance.

Having received no formal music instruction previously, Eleanor's progress was slow at first.  Truthfully, if I were to have gauged her trajectory from the first initial classes, she didn't seem to exhibit either as much aptitude nor enthusiasm as her classmates, some of whom had already learned note-reading in Musical Mind Games or who'd had prior piano instruction.  Even mastering the coordination necessary to play the all-black note clusters comprising the initial pieces was daunting.

I was struck by the vast differences between traditional piano pedagogical practice and the instructional methodology employed in the group piano classes, as well. The traditional piano instruction of my childhood was comprised of learning the grand staff and acquiring note recognition in both treble and bass clefs.  I remember memorizing acronyms to help note recognition (Bass clef lines: Good Boys Do Fine Always, space notes: All Cows Eat Grass; Treble clef lines: Every Good Boy Does Fine; space notes: FACE); and rote-learning notes and their denominations, before gradually working my way through primer pieces.  In contrast, Eleanor began playing right away, although she didn't even begin to read music per se, until midway through the first primer: 6 months into lessons.  My piano lessons were private 1:1 sessions, where I played in isolation, in contrast to the friendly, collaborative dynamic in Eleanor's class, where kids played in ensemble, as well as solo, in both small and whole class groupings.  Group instruction also incorporated ear interval-training--e.g., students sang a 5 note scale, assigning numbers to each pitch, and one by one, would select a note to omit on that scale, then sing the new pattern--not to mention games to strengthen rhythmic awareness, musical memory, and pitch awareness, and manipulative activities, e.g. ordering note letters in their proper sequence, creating possible measures given a certain time signature, tossing notes onto the clefs and identifying their placement.

During the last two years, we've definitely experienced some rough practice moments--to be expected, but not always easy to handle: frustration over tough musical passages, resistance to feedback or correction, no matter how gently delivered.  We jokingly refer to these moments as "Don Music" moments, after the easily-daunted composer of the same name on the children's show, "Sesame Street".  Don Music's a tortured English chap, who sounds and looks like actor Hugh Grant, and when he experiences composer's block, which is often, he slams his head on the piano keys, exclaiming, "I'll never get it!  Never, never!  Oh, my head!  My poor head..."

Fortunately, Eleanor's worked out some excellent learning strategies for these moments: slow down the tempo, tap/clap the rhythm, play hands separately, label problematic notes. Above all, be patient and good to yourself, and know that learning takes time!  Frustration always nets more problems and lousy playing too, as brain research notes.  As Eleanor's drawing notes: "Don't freak when you make mistakes--it's data"--fodder for improvement.

Two years later, Eleanor has come to the end of her group lessons in piano.  This spring, she began transitioning to private lessons at the Music School a year earlier than the expected trajectory, since she's showed both the commitment and promise to warrant the move, and this summer, will begin 1:1 private lessons in earnest. I'm happy to report that her love for piano has only increased with time; generally, no arm-twisting necessary to spur either daily practice nor lesson continuation.  She's exhibited a lot of growth in regard to her placement as well as fine motor coordination, has a good inner sense of tempo and rhythm, and has a nice feel for the mood, technique, and artistry informing pieces.   In the past year, she has begun composing her own pieces, as well as introductions to assigned ones, and piano has provided a happy creative outlet.  Most of all, piano has taught perseverance and the ability to work through challenges, one step at a time. 

Monday, 4/22/13 Classroom Visit: "Arts and Letters" with Nora Keller, Alison Lazzara, and Josh Tollefson

On Monday, 4/22/13, I observed long-period "Arts and Letters", an interdisciplinary art/English elective, for juniors and seniors, team-taught by my friends and colleagues, Nora Keller, Alison Lazzara, and Josh Tollefson.  This course also fulfills the SECR (Spiritual Ethical Community Responsibility) graduation requirement for Punahou.  The lesson I observed was entitled "Memory". 19 students were in the class.

The following was written on the whiteboard, prior to the start of class:

Josh framed the lesson, noting this class, as previous classes, was grounded in the premise that art tells a story.  He asked students to recall what they'd done in previous classes:

• Last class: how perspectives change a story, using "Cinderella" as an example
• 2 classes ago: Watched "Adaptation"
• 3 classes ago: Stenciled picnic tables and studied street art

then presented the lesson for the day: "Memory".

Projecting a painting on the board for a minute, Josh instructed students to "remember as many details as you can":

  
Students subsequently took a 20 question, true/false exam on the details of the painting, then reviewed the correct answers.  No students had a photographic memory, though apparently the other A&L large-group had one student who correctly answered all 20 questions.  The quiz is below:

Josh then asked, "How does memory help you?"  Students chorused back, "Tests."  Josh posed additional questions to the students: "How might memory help you as a writer? An artist?", and suggested that a journalist might benefit from having a good memory in order to document facts.
 
Contextualizing the painting, Josh informed the students that they'd viewed other samples of this artist's work before: twice.  He then asked students about their perceived narrative of the painting.  Students offered various answers: "An earthquake--that's a scientist observing the ground."  Josh questioned the class as to whom the girl in the car might be, pointing out details: her clothes, her hand on the gear shift, the fact that the car was a vintage Jaguar.  He explained that the painting was inspired by the New Testament story of Doubting Thomas, where Thomas felt the wounds of the resurrected Christ, an action paralleled by the man in the painting reaching out to touch the crack in the road.  No surprise, students didn't get that Biblical reference, but I reminded them that Chaplain Scott had shown a video clip of the story some weeks before for Easter chapel, and indeed, they made the connection.  Alison commented that although the Bible story is rather pejorative in its treatment of faithless people, in Arts and Letters, teachers want students to be Doubting Thomases, in the sense that they should be critical thinkers who question.

Next, Alison introduced a classic group memory game, "I'm going on a trip, and I'm taking...", and all three teachers modeled the activity.  Each of the three student tables then played the game. 

Two of the tables played the game conventionally, with each person simply adding objects to the collective listing, but one table started spontaneously creating its own variation of the game, with each person contributing a phrase in a narrative, rather than objects e.g. "I'm going on a trip, and I'm going to take my suitcase, water bottle, and sensible shoes, so I can learn about rocks and trees, and fall down waterfalls, yet live, and return home safely to my family and friends..."  Interestingly enough, confirming research on memory, the group that constructed the narrative did a great job accurately remembering the story, despite having more information to retain.  When the activity concluded, Josh noted that most people, on average, only remember 5-9 things.  Nora and Alison asked the class what strategies helped them to remember the listing of items, and students mentioned various things, e.g. having a story/narrative to connect the items, assigning particular items to specific people.

Then Josh showed a piece created by a professional artist: a booklet entitled "Drawn to Remember."  The photographer artist who'd created "Drawn to Remember" had hired a police sketch artist to create portraits of people, based on reports given by various individuals asked to describe those people, including family members, friends, co-workers, and casual acquaintances.   Josh flipped through the various samples, and students were invited to reflect on what they observed in the various sketches.  It was intriguing to see what features figured prominently in sketches, as well as how different the portraits could be, as they were based on verbal descriptions which could be quite variable.  Josh explained that the describers had been asked to mention the state of the person the last time the observer had seen him/her, and also provided further information as to how police sketch artists work--that they show a binder of various physical features, e.g. eyes, to informants and ask them to identify the one that's closest to what they remember, then flesh out the portrait from there, extrapolating based on the description given.

Nora wrote the assignment title, "Childhood Landscape Drawing," on the whiteboard, seguing into a drawing activity.

After taking sheets of newsprint and fistfuls of crayons, students received 15 minutes to draw.  They were to flash back to themselves as first graders--six year olds-- and draw a landscape as if they were that age.  A student asked whether she should use the full sheet, and Josh responded that she should if she did when she was six.   Students seemed tremendously engaged in the activity, laughing and occasionally chatting, as they sketched cool, smiling suns sporting Ray-Bans, cotton-puff clouds, two-story houses with 2 four-panel windows, and a front door with a doorknob, and triangular mountains.

After completing their landscapes, the class took a gallery walk, circulating around the different tables to examine each other's sketches.  Nora called upon students to contribute commonalities, sketching their observations on the whiteboard: rainbows flanked by clouds, "m" or "v"birds, corner suns, flower stems with 2 leaves, surrounded by three grass blades.

The class shared a chuckle, struck by the fact that these landscapes reflected fantasy, rather than reality, depicting phenomena rarely seen in Hawai`i, like trees with hollows, apple trees, smoking chimneys. Teachers closed the activity by highlighting its intent: recalling how fun drawing was as a child and remembering the symbolic landscape.  Students folded their drawings in half, and placed them in their Commonplace Books.

Next, Nora introduced the writing activity by reading an excerpt from p. 47 of Susan Shaughnessy's Walking on Alligators: A Book of Meditations for Writers, while Alison circulated around the room, passing out slips of paper to students.

The writing assignment was a Commonplace Book journal entry on memories.  Nora framed the assignment via a discussion.  She started by asking students to recall their first memories and how old they were.  She suggested that language provides a framework for memory, and shared a story about her brother, who emigrated to the U.S. when he was 9.  When Nora asked him if he could remember anything from his childhood in Korea, her brother said no--apparently the memories were encoded in Korean, rather than English.  Nora then raised an intriguing thought: that some people say we can remember things pre-language development, and a student shared a story about her friend, who supposedly could remember being in the womb.  Nora commented that it's often hard to distinguish what is authentically one's own memory, that often our memories are constructed via photos, other people's stories, and outside influences: borders are blurry.  She asked students to jot down as many details as they could about their first memory: who were they with? What were the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions, and encouraged them to be vivid and detailed in their description of the time and place of that event.

She gave them a few minutes to record their thoughts, then proceeded on to a second prompt, noting that students were welcome to continue their first thought later.  Prompt #2 was "the first day of school," however far back that memory stretched.  Nora suggested possible details to include: first friends, one's shoes and clothes, the teacher's name, what one liked to play.  Finally, both Nora and Alison introduced Prompt #3: creating a list of other "firsts" in a minute: first kiss, first tooth lost, first sleepover, first bully, first bike ride.  After the minute was up, each student selected one item from their list, jotted it on their slip of paper, and gave it to the teachers.  The teachers then distributed the slips randomly, so each student got a classmate's slip; that other person's "first" served as a fourth writing trigger for students.  The response was to be recorded again in their Commonplace Books.  Alison noted that if the "first" didn't exactly correspond to one's own experience, that students were able to modify the prompt, e.g. "first punch" could be transformed into "the first time I was hurt."  

I found the lesson truly inspiring: creative, focused, engaging, and beautifully framed, not to mention smoothly executed: a great example of how visual art and writing serve as tools for expression and critical thought, helping inform and enhance understanding.

Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, _Welcome to Your Brain_ (2008)

Aamodt and Wang's book is a concise and engaging neuroscience primer, exploring several brain-issues of interest to laypeople, including mental illness, memory, addiction, sexual behavior, and mental fitness.  One of the book's sections briefly explores the connection between music and the brain.

The authors note the parallels between music and language: both have "elements arranged into sequences which are variable, but follow certain rules".

Research suggests that learning to play a musical instrument, as opposed to passive listening, improves spatial reasoning skills.  fMRIs reveal that musical harmony tasks activate Broca's area, a region in the brain necessary for speech production, and a corresponding area in the right hemisphere that is important for prosody (intonation). 

Strategies For Arts Integration: An Educational Blog

Just found this excellent blog written by Carolyn Elwood, classroom teacher, and Rob Southwood: "Strategies For Arts Integration", courtesy Scholastic.com. 

English, the Arts, and Common Core Education

Common Core. a non-profit advocacy group founded in 2007, aims "to bring exciting, comprehensive, content-rich curriculum to every classroom in America."  The group believes that a child who graduates from high school without an understanding of culture, the arts, history, literature, civics, and language has in fact been left behind. To improve education in America, Common Core creates curriculum tools and also promotes programs, policies, and initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels that provide students with challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences.

The organization has produced several free curriculum tools for teachers in all disciplines.  Here's their terrific lesson plan guide, arranged by grade level, K-12, to show how the visual arts can enhance English and Language Arts instruction.  The lessons link texts and/or literary genres to art, music, and film, and are aligned with Common Core Standards.

Neuroscience and Music--Pierce Howard, The Owner's Manual for the Brain

Pierce Howard's Owner's Manual for the Brain, 3rd Edition, concisely summarizes several important points about music and the brain:

• Music doesn't activate a distinct part of the brain, but rather is a "by-product of other evolved areas for audio discrimination, muscular coordination, rhythmic sensitivity.  While there's some genetically-evolved basis for music, we know that people who aren't able to detect pitch changes in melody can in languages that are tonal, e.g. Chinese.
• Music is processed in the auditory cortex and extension to the thalamus, but doesn't possess unique processing areas.  In fact, some areas of the brain share overlapping functions for both music and language.  However, there's probably some separation of functions, as evidenced by the fact that people can lose linguistic, but not musical abilities, and vice versa.
• In regard to plasticity, individuals' brains are more aroused by sounds associated with their particular instrument specialties.  There are more pronounced electrical responses that're instrument-specific in individuals who received musical training prior to the age of 10.
• The much touted Mozart Effect, reported by Rauscher and Wright (1994) is bogus: any benefits of listening to music disappear after 10-15 minutes.  Chabris (1999) analyzed 16 musical effect studies and documented negative effects based on measurements of total traditional IQ.  But before you toss the Baby Mozart CDs, music may "warm up" the neural circuitry of the brain associated with spatial reasoning.  While research findings are mixed regarding the benefits of listening to music, there's more conclusive evidence that actively playing an instrument has a positive effect on cognition.
• There may be a possible sensitive period for high musical skill achievement, e.g. mapping of sound frequencies in the auditory cortex requires normal experience.  Harmonic structure is easier to acquire before the age of 8.
• Pitch perception is more easily learned, and absolute pitch more common in people who have tonal first languages (L1s), e.g. Mandarin Chinese.
• There are anatomical differences between professional musicians and non-musicians, but this may be attributable to genetic differences, vs. environmental exposure.
• There's a difference between passively listening to music and active music instruction/learning to play instruments.  Rauscher (1993) noted that second graders who received four months of piano keyboard training had a 27% score increase on math tests dealing with fractions and proportions.  A similar study with 5-6 year old subjects, where the experimental group played songs, learned to read music, and received training in understanding pitch and rhythm, yielded "marked improvement in abstract and spatial reasoning."
• Music does not necessarily have a positive impact on cognition.  In fact, listening to music interferes with complex tasks, especially verbal tasks, in comparison to verbal+spatial tasks.  In Germany, Wagner and Tilney (1983) studied a language learning method called "Accelerated Learning" where music is integrated into instruction.  The experimental group who learned language via Accelerated Learning ironically learned 50% less than the control group.  Bush, of the Monterey Institute studied learners in a 10 week Accelerated Learning Russian program vs. students in a 15 week traditional language-learning program, and found the so-called Accelerated Learners learned 40% less information than students in the traditional program.
• Music competes with other tasks for attentional focus.  Crawford and Strapp (1994) studied music listening on verbal and visual-spatial performance.  Their research noted the following:

1. Those who choose to listen to music while studying were generally much more extraverted.
2. Extraverts self-report being less bothered by noise.
3. Self-perceptions of what's bothersome are notoriously unreliable: music had a negative effect on attention.
4. Vocal music interferes more with attention than instrumental music.  Regular patterns of sound are less disruptive than irregular ones.  Also, playing the same piece over and over again is less distracting, as "well-established schema are less likely to interfere with learning."
5. Music interferes more with complex cognitive tasks, as opposed to simpler verbal tasks, with visual-spatial tasks being the least affected. 
6. Quiet is best for study/academic learning environments.  Music should be limited to "transitional uses", otherwise, it's competing for cognitive attention.  It isn't merely "white noise." 

• Gardiner (1996) conducted a seven-month study of Gr. 1 and Gr. 2 students who received Kodaly structured, sequential music instruction.  25% more students scored at grade level or higher in mathematical aptitude.  Sequential methodology seems to spur advancement, not merely exposure to art.
• Music has therapeutic value.  In an NIH Office of Alternative Medicine study led by Rohrbacher, music aided brain-injured patients by increasing emotional empathy, luicidity, and improving recovery and rehabilitation.  Mellow music seems to enhance immune function, by boosting production of immuglobulin A (IgA).
• Music can improve mood and spur positive emotions.  Generally, higher pitches have more beneficial effects.  Minor keys and slow tempi warm the brain, fostering cortical and limbic awareness.  Major keys and faster tempi cool the brain, fostering better moods.
• Across the world, regardless of culture and musical exposure, humans have the ability to distinguish music that conveys specific human moods and emotions.  See table below for common qualities that characterize joy, sadness, and excitement:

Musical Trait	JOY	SADNESS	EXCITEMENT
Frequency	High	Low	Variable
Melodic variation	Strong	Slight	Strong
Tonal course	Moderate: up then down	Down	Strong up, then down
Tonal color	Many overtones	Less	Barely any
Tempo	Rapid	Slow	Medium
Volume	Loud	Soft	Highly variable
Rhythm	Irregular	Regular	Very irregular

• Wilson (1994) found that repetitive rhythms induce a trance-like state in humans.  The body's rhythms also can adapt to music. 
• The Allegro Foundation did a year-long study where special needs students were provided weekly 30-minute dance and music workouts.  The workouts improved compliance with directions, increased participation, helped regulate emotional outbursts, and notably improved handwriting.