Adapting to New Curriculum: Expeditionary Learning in the Artist Residency

4th grade students at Schulze Academy use theater and writing to learn animal defense mechanisms in a residency led by Teaching Artists Karilú Forshee and Aja Dier. All photos by Karilú Forshee.

Living Arts has been working hard to train our teaching artist team in the suite of new curriculum offerings at Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD). This past summer in particular, our K-8 team went through training with an Expeditionary Learning Specialist, building on their long-term knowledge about arts integration and honing into the specific areas in the curriculum our work fits. In addition, our administrative team was trained by EL administrative staff. Lots of great conversation and learning happened!

Teaching Artists Karilú Forshee and Aja Dier led a residency in Ms. Swaby and Mrs. McGhee's 4th grade classrooms at Shulze Academy. The Module the teaching artists and teachers will be focusing on is ELA G4:M2, Units 1-3, Researching to Build Knowledge and Teach Others: Animal Defense Mechanisms, with the guiding questions being: 1. How do animals' bodies and behaviors help them survive? 2. How can writers use knowledge from their research to inform and entertain? The students task is a choose-your-own adventure animal defense mechanism narrative.

A reflection from Teaching Artist Aja Dier:

Karilú and I have worked together onstage and it was so exciting to team up with her in the classroom to facilitate a five week ELA/Drama Arts Integration residency at Schulze Elementary.  This five week residency began with a poetry workshop to wrap up the 4th grade poetry unit in Ms. Swaby’s class. I performed some of my original poetry as well as “My Garden” by Thomas Edward Brown, where we discussed examples of metaphor and “Alphabet City” from the play Slanguage by Universes where the students learned about alliteration.

We were excited to dive into the next module: Animal Defense Mechanisms. We worked with animals discussed in the text. Before we got to the material, each class began with the “Hello Song” led by Karilú and a I would lead a physical and vocal warm-up. The students embodied the movements and sounds of monarch butterflies, springboks, ostriches, armadillos, red robins, chickadees and Florida scrub jays. We then discussed their natural predators such as rodents, cheetahs, hawks, bobcats and mice.

Karilú and I wanted the students to have a hand in creating their own theater piece. The 4th graders worked together in groups to write a first person narrative about the animals and their predators. Karilú and I then took their writings and turned them into scripts where some students were predators and some students were prey. We rehearsed each scene, and made revisions to the script. On the last week of the residency, we brought in costumes for the final performance. The students not only had a strong grasp of the material, but they fully embodied these animals. We were blown away by their commitment and excited to see that they were having so much fun!