Arts for Learning Lesson Units
The Arts for Learning Units are designed for K-8 classroom teachers with little or no arts experience or background. Through training conducted by Young Audiences staff, anyone can learn these dynamic arts-integration techniques in theatre, music, dance or visual art! Each Arts for Learning Unit provides teachers with 9-12 hours of literacy-focused classroom lessons and activities designed to enhance classroom teaching and bring fun back into learning.
Arts for Learning Lesson Units provide tailored professional development, content and practices that sustain effective implementation and connections across the curriculum.
 Arts for Learning Lessons address students’ multiple learning styles. Students work individually and in teams, using a specific art form to sharpen as well as express ideas generated through reading and writing. They continue to revise and reflecting on their work in both literacy and the arts. In the final lessons, students prepare and present a culminating artistic work or performance and refine an original piece of writing. For each Unit, teachers receive a teacher’s curriculum guide, student notebooks, literary texts, transparency masters, and support materials.
Schools and districts may choose the components of the Arts for Learning Lessons that best fit their needs. Units and Residencies can be used separately or in sequence.
Unit 1: Upside Down Fairy Tales
Through the theatre technique of tableau, students explore how perspective (or point-of-view) changes a story and then rewrite and perform a fairy tale from another character’s point of view.
Primary texts: The Three Little Pigs, The Cat and His Master
Unit 2: Graphic Story Adventures
Engage all your students in reading long-form comics to captivate even the most reluctant of readers. Creating their own graphic story requires students to read for detail and justify artistic choices based on story content.
Primary text: My Father’s Dragon
 Unit 3: Everyday Heroes
Through an inspiring biography of baseball great Roberto Clemente, teachers engage students in synthesizing information, conducting research and communicating meaning through images. Constructing their own collages directly appeals to students’ visual and spatial intelligence as they engage in examining each other’s work.
Primary text: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates
Unit 4: Planting a Community
If you’ve ever wondered how composers do it, this is your unit. Students discover how easy it can be to create music that tells a story. Using everyday objects, students create simple musical phrases to represent characters based upon inferences drawn from the text. These lessons tap students’ musical intelligence and engage those who learn best by interacting with others.
Primary text: Seedfolks
Unit 5: Words in Motion
Using uncomplicated movements, teachers lead students through reading poetry with expression and symbolizing meaning with their movements. Kinesthetic learners will this unit, creating their own choreography and improving skills in reading aloud.
Primary text: various poetry
Twenty-First Century skills and strategies for learning and life practiced in all of the Units:
▪ critical thinking ▪ creative thinking ▪ teamwork ▪ communication skills ▪ leadership skills ▪ problem solving skills ▪ planning ▪ self-esteem ▪ presentation skills ▪ questioning ▪ peer review ▪ self-assessment ▪ self-discipline
Literacy skills and strategies practiced in different Units:
▪ compare and contrast ▪ interpret and represent ▪ cause and effect ▪ prediction ▪ description ▪ visualization ▪ making inferences ▪ sequencing ▪ determining importance ▪ synthesizing ▪ summarizing ▪ vocabulary development and use ▪ fluency ▪ revising for better understanding in reading and writing ▪ reading with expression ▪ general writing skills ▪ expository writing ▪ writing to entertain |
