Engaging Minds and Hearts by Infusing the Arts

By Kate Wolfe Maxlow

I can still sing the entire jingle from a Milky Way commercial that played non-stop on TV when I was five. I remember all of King Henry VIII’s wives from a coloring page activity I did when I was eight. I can name all of the states in alphabetical order because of a school play I did at age 10.

The unrelated facts all stuck in my brain for the same reason: I learned them via the arts. Music, visual arts, and acting can all have powerful effects on our abilities to understand and retain information. There’s a lot of research out there on why the arts help students use more regions of their brain and how it can impact achievement.

For instance, check out these cool arts and learning facts:

• Because of its emphasis on pitch and rhythm, there’s more and more evidence of a link between music and reading abilities (Patel, 2003; McMullen & Saffran, 2004; Asoridou & McQueen, 2013).
• We can increase comprehension by asking students to stop, visualize, and create a piece of art that represents their visualization of what they’re studying (Wilhelm, 1995).
• Emotions are strongly tied to memory, and having students act out what they are learning helps activate the emotional centers of the brain (Armstrong, 2008).

Not only are the arts a great way to activate more regions of the brain, students usually find them fun. Sure, there are a few young people who would rather do a worksheet than sculpt with playdough or act a quick skit with their friends, but the majority of kids are going to grab the playdough every time.

Don’t think that older kids don’t feel the same way. I’ve talked to many high school teaches who weren’t afraid to give their students some playdough and the students loved it. In fact, I’ve used it in PDs before and had plenty of teachers who can’t resist it, either.

That being said, there are some tips for successfully incorporating the arts into your classroom:

• Time can easily slip away when having fun. Consider beforehand how much time you want to spend on an arts activity, and stick to it. Students can easily spend an entire class period perfecting a single drawing or creating a song, so it’s important to set the time limits up front and stick to them as much as possible.
• Students who are not used to these kinds of tasks, especially older students, might be reluctant at first to participate in things they don’t think are “real learning.” It can be helpful to share the research with these students so they understand why sculpting, drawing, singing, or moving are “real learning.”
• Arts have a huge impact on memory, so check with students frequently while they work to make sure they’re not unintentionally incorporating misconceptions into their learning.

Ready to try it out?

Here are some quick and easy ways to incorporate the arts into your classroom.

• Have students write a song and/or dance that explains the concepts that you’re learning.
• Instead of a multiple choice test, ask students to do a Quick Draw about the topic as an Exit Ticket.
• Put students in groups of 3-4 and give them a vocabulary word from the current unit and have them come up with a 1-minute or less skit that “acts out” the word without using the actual word. Have other groups then guess what the group is acting out.
• Want more ideas? Check out this Navigation Guide for Integrating the Arts.

Write a Goal

We're always more likely to actually do something when we write a goal. Here are some examples:

• During the first quarter, I will infuse at least one arts activity per week into my lessons.
• During the first quarter, I will ensure that students have an opportunity to sing, dance, sculpt, and act at least once.

Hampton City Schools Teachers

Do you work in Hampton City Schools? Great! Here are some ideas from the Instructional Technique Library that use art. Click on the links to see more ideas for how to use them for YOUR classroom. (If you don't work at Hampton City Schools, you should. Look at all the fun we're having!)

Chatter Drawing: Students create a graphic representation of their knowledge on a topic before and after the lesson, and compare and contrast the two drawings.

Graffiti Art: Students “graffiti” a large piece of butcher paper in groups either before or after learning, then look at themes across all groups’ work.

Show Don’t Tell: Students draw, act out, or sculpt an important word or phrase from the topic and the rest of the class has to guess what it is.






References to check out for more information on the arts and learning:
Armstrong, S. (2008) Teaching smarter with the brain in focus: Practical ways to apply the latest brain research to deepen comprehension, improve memory, and motivate students to achieve. New York: Scholastic.

Asaridou, S. S., & McQueen, J. M. (2013). Speech and music shape the listening brain: Evidence for shared domain-general mechanisms. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 321.

Brown, C. (2010). Children of reform: The impact of high-stakes education reform on preservice teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(5), 477-491.

Garvis, S. & Prendergast, D. (2010). Supporting novice teachers and the arts. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 11(8), 1-23.

Johnson, C.Y. (2013).  “Learn music, be better at math, right?  Study finds it’s not so.”  The Boston Globe.  Retrieved from http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/12/11/music-makes-you-smarter-right-actually-doesn-harvard-study-finds-harvard-study-finds-studying-music-doesn-make-you-smarter/OkdbVM6fQR4hryFuKNm9gJ/story.html

Kraus, N. & Anderson, S. (2015). “Beat-keeping ability relates to reading readiness.” The Hearing Journal, 68(3), 54-56.

Oreck, B. (2004). The artistic and professional development of teachers: A study of teachers' attitudes toward and use of the arts in teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 55, 55-69.

Patel, A. (2003). Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience (6)7, 674-681.

Saffron, J. (2003). Absolute pitch in infancy and adulthood: The role of tonal structure. Developmental Science, 6(1), 35-47.

Silverman, M.J. (2010). The effect of pitch, rhythm, and familiarity on working memory and anxiety as measured by digit recall performance. Journal of Music Therapy, 47(1), 70-83.

Wilhelm, J. (1995). Reading is seeing: Using visual response to improve the literary reading of reluctant readers. Journal of Reading Behavior, 27(4), 467-503.

Giving Students Choice (Without Giving Up All Control)

by Robyn Crump

Raise your hand if you enjoy being told what to do all the time. I can't see you, but I'm pretty sure your hand did not go up. You like making decisions for yourself and so do I. Well, guess what? Kids appreciate having choices, too. And, we can help them out by infusing choices into our classrooms and teaching our young people how to make those choices responsibly.

Let's be clear. No one is suggesting free reign over the classroom, but there are a couple of ways to provide your students with some say-so in their learning:

✩ Students Choose the Process

Providing students with an opportunity to choose how they learn creates a sense of ownership. Here are some simple ways you can give students process choices:

• Allow flexible seating: give students the choice to work while standing, sitting on the floor, or sitting at their desk. (More on flexible seating ideas here.)
• When researching, give students the choice of what resources to use. Give them selections of books and websites.
• Give students a series of "Must do" and "May do" tasks for the lesson, but allow them to choose the order in which they'll complete them.

OR

✩ Students Choose the Product

Rather than making 25 cloud flip books that look exactly the same, you can let students choose what product they will create to represent their learning. It works like this: give students a list of criteria they have to meet (for instance, needs to have representations of the four main cloud types; needs to list what kind of weather is usually associated with each), a choice of materials (crayons, markers, construction paper, cotton balls, stuffing, fabric, etc.), and then let the kids go to town with their imaginations. The sky's the limit (ha!) as long as they meet the criteria.

Other ways to let students choose the product:

• Choice boards allow students to select one or more ways
• Learning menus give students options between appetizers (small portions of the assignment), entrees (main portions of the assignment), and desserts (extra portions). With learning menus, your students gain the freedom of creating a unique final project.
• Tell students they need to make a digital product using Google Apps, but don't specify whether they have to use Google sites, Google slides, Google docs, etc..

Making It Work

One of the keys to making student choices in the classroom successfully is that teachers have to explicitly teach and model how to make appropriate choices. For instance, if you're going to have a classroom with a couch, you have to model for students how to sit on the couch and how to not sit on the couch. You need a system for determining who gets to sit on the couch when, for how long, and what happens if it's not done appropriately.

If you're letting students choose how to conduct their research, you'll want to give them a graphic organizer to use, model how to choose appropriate resources, and how to share resources if they're limited.

Similarly, if you're going to allow students to choose a product to create to demonstrate their learning, you need to set clear parameters ahead of time around that product and then check in frequently with students to make sure they're meeting those parameters.

In other words, you're not letting go of control. Instead, you're teaching students how to make good choices...which is probably one of the most important skills they can learn in life.

Now that you're a pro...

Create a goal to get yourself started! Sample goals:

• During the first quarter, I will allow students to make at least one instructionally relevant choice each week.
• By the end of the first quarter, I will create five options for flexible seating in my classroom.
• During the first quarter, I will implement choice boards as weekly homework for my class.

Hampton City Schools Teachers

Do you work in Hampton City Schools? Great! Here are some ideas for how to give students choices using the Instructional Technique Library. (If you don't work at Hampton City Schools, you should. Look at all the fun we're having!)

• Show Don't Tell: Students get to choose how they will represent the concept that you give them.
• Thinking Maps: (and other graphic organizers): Let students choose how they will organize
• Socratic Seminar: When done well, students learn to lead discussions around relevant tasks, discussing things they think are important and making connections 

Robyn Crump, Curriculum Integration Technology Teacher

(former Grade Three Teacher)

Hampton City Schools

rcrump@hampton.k12.va.us

Gaming Like a Boss: Simple Ways to Gamify Your Classroom

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

The other day, my kid woke up with a sore throat, fever, and tears. The sore throat wasn't causing the crying, though; he knew that he would have to miss his summer camp that day...the day that they were doing an Escape Room. He had been look
ing forward to it all week and he was devastated.

My thought was: Wow. What if kids felt like this every day? What if they were BEGGING us to go to school because they were just so darn excited about what they would be doing that day?

Games are a great way to get young people motivated in the classroom, too--and they can help students achieve at higher levels when done well. John Hattie (2017) reports that gaming and simulations can result in an average 14 percentile point increase for students. Moreover, cooperative learning (versus individualistic) can result in an average of a 21 percentile point gain. AND, games are fun.

Why do we like games so much? They hit at the very core of human curiosity: in The New Art and Science of Teaching, Marzano (2017) explains that "all games require a search for something that is missing or unknown but circumstances provide clues as to how to complete the scenario." In other words, the same reason why you stay up binge watching that Netflix series instead of sleeping is the same reason we love games--humans have this insatiable curiosity to figure out the what, why, and how.

So, if you want to increase student achievement AND motivation AND just make your classroom somewhere everyone wants to be, consider trying out some games in your classroom.

Quick and Easy Games

• All the games here can be played at any level and take 15 minutes or less. Infuse them throughout your lessons to break up your Absorb activities and give students a chance to connect/do something with the new material that they're learning.
• Kahoot is a great, quick way to get your students motivated and break up an Absorb cycle of learning.
• Somewhat like Kahoot, Quizizz allows students to engage in some friendly competition around your content.

More Elaborate Games

• So You Want to Build a Classroom Escape Room? Good fundamental rules for helping anyone to figure out how to start an Escape Room. Then check out these resources for more specific ideas. Want to incorporate technology? Check out how to do an online escape room (bonus: no materials required!)
• Want to turn your classroom into a D&D style role-playing game? Check out Classcraft. The free version allows students to choose roles and earn points for fulfilling "quests" (you know, like completing homework).
• Why not turn your classroom into a good old-fashioned Who Dunnit? Add mysteries to your classroom! Instead of simply teaching about historical figures or the Pythagorean Theorem, give students clues and have them work together to figure out the day's content on their own.

Hampton City Schools Teachers

Do you work in Hampton City Schools? Great! Here are some ideas for how to turn activities from the Instructional Techniques Library into games. (If you don't work at Hampton City Schools, you should. Look at all the fun we're having!)

• Show Don't Tell: Have students make up gestures that represent concepts...and then have other students guess what concepts are being represented!
• I Think, I See, I Wonder: Introduce a unit with a cryptic picture. For instance: About to teach about ancient Greece? Show students this picture and use the I Think, I See, I Wonder to have them explore the picture, then have a classroom discussion.
• Cubing: Instead of having students complete all the activities, have them roll a die, and then answer a prompt about the given topic based upon the number they rolled. For instance, if they roll a 1, they answer a Remember level question. Roll a 2, answer an Understand level question, etc..

Next Steps

Ready to get started? We all know that we're more likely to actually do something if we write a goal around here. Here are some examples:

• During the first quarter, I will play at least one game a week with my students.
• During the first quarter, I will implement an Escape Room and a Classroom Mystery for my students.
• During the first quarter, I will start each unit with an I Think, I See, I Wonder mystery for students to solve.

Now what are you waiting for? Go have fun!

Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Professional Learning Coordinator at Hampton City Schools. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.

We Like to Move It, Move It: Motivating Students with Movement

by Robyn Crump

Do you often find yourself wondering why your students have difficulty staying focused or engaged? You've spent hours planning a "fun" lesson and students were still sporting the most bored expression ever. Well, here's a solution: MOVE! Allowing students to get up and move while they are learning promotes engagement and retention.

There are two types of movement you should add to your lessons: active learning or curriculum-embedded movement. Active learning occurs when students move about the room. Curriculum-embedded movement fuses content with a specific movement. Either type can encourage student engagement.

Here how you can get started today:

1. Start Small
Don't get overwhelmed with the idea of students wildly roaming about the classroom all day. Students can remain by their seats if you're not ready to make that leap. Have students respond to questions using their bodies. For example, "stand on one leg if you can explain how to multiply fractions". To start small using curriculum-embedded movement choose a vocabulary word and create a simple movement that will help students understand the concept. Students can demonstrate the process of soil erosion by doing the wave.

2. Model Examples & Non-examples
Get up and move with your students! You have to be the model of appropriate movement. Remind them to be safe while moving. Show them the movements you've created and give them time to practice. When my students played Predator vs. Prey (It's just Freeze Tag with roles) I modeled  by showing "predators" where and how to tag the "prey".

3. Frequency (show don't tell)
Try to intentionally incorporate more and more movement. Start with one movement per unit until you're comfortable. Begin working your way up to using movement in every lesson! A quick way to add movement to almost any lesson is playing Show Don't Tell in which students act out specific vocabulary or content and other students take a guess at what they are acting out.

4. Now that you're a pro...
Create a goal to get yourself started! Sample goals:

• During the first quarter, I will use one or more curriculum-embedded movements per unit.
• By the end of the first quarter, I will allow students to participate in a Gallery Walk/Walk-About (students migrate to predetermined stations to complete an activity) at least once per week.

Engage students in critical thinking by allowing them to create their own movements for the content.

There are numerous ways to get your students up and moving. If you work teach in Hampton City Schools, head over to the Instructional Technique Library and choose a new way to add movement to your upcoming lesson! (We recommend Kinesthetic Models, Show Don't Tell, and Graffiti Art, but feel free to put your own spin on things.)

Robyn Crump, Curriculum Integration Technology Teacher

(former Grade Three Teacher)

Hampton City Schools

rcrump@hampton.k12.va.us

Writing Better Emails: Every Professional Email Needs These Five Parts

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Whether it's to a parent, a colleague, or your boss...at some point, you're writing emails. Emails prove especially challenging for a lot of people because they live somewhere in that fuzzy space between the incredibly informal text and the very formal letter. They're not really one or the other, and it can be easy to err on the side of one or the other.

Of course, it's better to err on the side of too formal than too informal, especially if you don't know the person really well (and if you do know them really well, why not just text them?). Even more importantly, a well-written email should contain the following parts:


1. A relevant but short subject
My email comes to my phone at all hours of the day, including when I'm at home or out and about with my kids. I use the subject line to determine whether it's something I need to answer right away or whether it can wait until we're done riding the Grover Coaster.  I'm really striving for that work-life balance and only want to interrupt my non-work time if I really need to. When I get an email with a subject like this: "Need to talk to you," I almost always have to open it to figure out whether I need to answer it, rather than simply glancing at my phone.

Sometimes, I guess incorrectly and read it right away, even though I didn't need to...or worse, I DON'T open it even though I SHOULD have. Give a subject line that briefly tells the person what the email is about.

But don't be TOO succinct, either. Sometimes, I just get emails that have the title "PD." Given that I'm the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment and I oversee a LOT of professional development training sessions, that doesn't really provide me enough information, nor help me find your email again if I need it later on down the road.


2. A greeting
If you know the person well, it can be just their name, or even "Hi." You can use "Good morning" or "Good afternoon," but it always feels a little strange to me given that I have no idea what time of day someone will read something. I usually like to lead with something like, "Hello Mr. Smith" (if I don't know the person well or the person is in a leadership position) or "Hello Jane," (if I know the person or am at a collegially level with them). If you're not sure whether the person is a Dr. or a Ms., do your due diligence to look it up. If you still can't figure it out, use a generic greeting ("Greetings!").

Too often I get emails like this:




Rarely do I get messages like this from people I actually know really well (if I know them that well, they usually text me), so the lack of greeting can feel somewhat unsettling.

3. A message that leads with the most important thing first
I admit to having broken this rule A LOT over the years; I always wanted to start with WHY. For instance, if I was asking curriculum leaders to sign up for curriculum review times, I would start by explaining the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum.

You know the problem, though, right?

I didn't get to the thing that I actually needed them to do (sign up for a curriculum review time) until the end of the email, and most people don't read more than about 3 sentences these days.

A better way would look like this:

This is called the BLUF method: Bottom Line Up Front. If you need an action to take place, you have to put it at the very front (if not even in the subject line).

4. Use formatting to call out direct actions you need people to take and to highlight key words.

Sometimes emails have to be long, and there's no way around it. In these cases, I first start by letting people know that an email is going to be long because it is full of important information they're going to need later, so they WILL need to read it all the way to the end. This cues people to set it aside for a time when they have a few moments of peace and quiet to concentrate.

In this case, I use various formatting to help people skim information more accurately (even if they read it throughly the first time, they're going to want key words pointed out so they can easily skim it when they refer to it later). Check out this doozy of an email:

Here's another example in which I used multiple types of formatting to call out various tasks.

I mildly broke my own rule by not putting the sentence in red first, but that's why I made that sentence red. The reason I didn't flip it with the first sentence was because I knew that I needed to list the dates right below it for the sake of brevity.

You'll also notice in this email that I said I would send a calendar invite with the due date. I try to do this ANYTIME something is due; it not only helps other people remember when to turn things in, it reminds ME to check to make sure that they did.

5. A closing/signature that includes your name, organization, and best ways of reaching you
Quite frankly, it drives me bananas when I get emails from people that require me to figure things out for them, but there's no information telling me where the person is from and I spend more time either 1) hunting for them on our organization's resources, or 2) having to email them back to ask where they work before I can even get to solving their issue. 

For instance, I run over 30 Google Classrooms for various PD courses. Every school in our district has its own Google Classroom. Too often, I'll get an email from a teacher that says: Hi, can you invite me to my school's Google Classroom? But there's no signature and no information about where the person works or what they do.

You can see an example of my signature in the above email. For reference, I made the picture using Canva's business card templates, then uploaded a picture into my signature in Gmail. While you can purchase programs that do something similar, it only takes a few extra steps to do it yourself for free.

You can see that emails don't need quite all the bells and whistles that go into the formal letter, but they still need a certain amount of structure in order to fulfill their intended purpose. Adding these five pieces is a great start to any professional email.

Kate Maxlow is the Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for Hampton City Schools. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.