Upcoming Events:
Mini- Institutes 2007
Teaching for Understanding In and Through the Arts
A Brain-based Approach to Learning
Various Mini-Institutes are planned for the 2007-2008 school year in Santa Monica.
Please contact Jennifer Zakkai for more info.
Previous Events:
Summer Institute 2007
Teaching for Understanding In and Through the Arts
A Brain-based Approach to Learning
Dates: August 7-10, 2007
Location: Santa Monica, CA
Join us for this 4-day SmART Schools summer institute facilitated by SmART Schools staff and notable professional/master teaching artists with expertise in all four arts disciplines (dance/movement; instrumental & vocal music; theatre; and visual arts). Ideal for interdisciplinary teams made up of arts specialists, core/classroom teachers, special education teachers, and/or school administrators. Participants will engage in hands-on studio workshops to develop new skills, techniques, and methodologies to: (1) advance the academic and social success of every student; (2) teach for deep understanding in and through the arts; (3) design and implement standards-based curriculum, instruction, and performance assessments; (4) differentiate instructional strategies using a multiple intelligence approach; (5) increase student creativity and problem solving skills; and (6) enhance teacher motivation, creativity, and effective collaboration.
Participants will have opportunities to design their own curriculum units utilizing the Wiggins/McTighe Understanding By Design backwards planning approach. Daily common planning time sessions will be facilitated by SmART Schools professional teaching artists and SmART Schools staff (including curriculum design and assessment experts). Participants will learn how to recognize and improve their individual and group working styles and use this information to create a productive culture of collegiality. Participants will also begin to establish close ties with California-based arts and cultural organizations, institutions of higher education, and the SmART Schools network.
Collaborative Leadership Training
August 6th, 2007 Santa Monica California
March 27th & 28 , 2007 Vermont
For the purposes of our seminar, we will define culture as the habits, rituals, routines, and behaviors (conscious and unconscious) that reveal the beliefs, norms, and values that build upover time within the school. Most schools have an “official culture,” spelled out in the mission statement and the rule books. Those don’t tell much about what actually governs day-to-day behavior. For that information, you have to look at more indirect evidence. This six-day seminar is designed to support you as a leader and a change agent as you explore your school’s culture and build an action plan for school improvement that will embed the five key elements of the SmART Schools model.
We will spend our time together:
1) Learning about the aspects of school culture that exist in and affect schools.
2) Analyzing the culture of our own schools, identifying which aspects of our school's culture can act as leverage points—and which could act as barriers—to improving student achievement.
3) Understanding how the development of professional learning communities can support adult learning and increased student achievement in our schools.
4) Learning about the leadership traits and characteristics that support the development of professional learning communities focused on increased student achievement.
5) Creating an action plan to support implementation of the SmART Schools model in your school.
The institute is open free of cost to all participating SmART Schools in VT. Limited space available. Registration is on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Please contact Wendy Cohen to register at wcohen@edc.org.
Professional Learning Communities Training
A SmART Schools workshop with Wendy Cohen and Eileen Mackin
March 13, April 10, May 8, 2007
8:30 AM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION: Bradford, VT
In this three-day SmART Schools seminar, participants will learn how the development of professional learning communities in schools contribute to increased student achievement. Inaddition, participants will work together to develop a SmART Schools network-wide group as a model for learning the concepts, habits, tools, and skills that lead to more reflective practice. They will prepare to adapt and translate their seminar experiences in order to create and lead groups back in their own schools.
The goals of this training are as follows:
1) Help SmART Teams to understand the significance of, and to function as a professional learning community in improving student academic and social success.
2) Train SmART Teams in the practice of using the Tuning, CAC, and Consultancy protocols to reflect on arts-embedded teacher and student work.
3) Help SmART Teams to cultivate the habits of mind to analyze and discuss student work respectfully and with sensitivity.
4) Help SmART Teams make connections between the practice of Teaching for Understanding in and through the ARTS (TFU) and social and academic outcomes.
5) Provide a vehicle for SmART Teams to consider data thoughtfully.
6) Facilitate SmART Teams in conversations about research and best practices.
7)Help teams to establish action plans for organizing, and working with, SmART Teams back in their own sites.
8) Foster networking of SmART Teams across participating districts.
January
One Day Mini-Insitute
Daisy and the Doll and Malian's Song:
Exploring hope through text and song
Facilitated by SmART School's Robert Allwarden
Location: Robinson Elementary School, Starksboro, VT
Date: January 22, 2007
Time: 8:30 - 3:00
This SmART Schools workshop will explore issues of citizenship and New England life utilizing a central text and music. Participants will take pieces of the text and turn them into musical pieces discovering what they feel to be at the core of the text. From this they will create patterns (repeating the text), and layering of the text patterns (more then one going on at the same time). The text will then become a rhythm piece, first with body percussion (BP) then unpitched instruments (UPP) then pitched instruments. The final performance will include the spoken text moving into purely a musical form. The hope is that the core element of the text will then (after this musical manifestation) have a strong emotional impact on the performer and the listener.
In the afternoon we will deconstruct the “unit” presented in the AM, focusing on the creation of enduring understandings and essential questions, as well as how assessment and instruction were developed from these central ideas.
Please contact Wendy Cohen to register at wcohen@edc.org.
The institute is open free of cost to all participating SmART Schools in VT. Limited space available. Registration is on a first-come-first-serve basis.
February
Two Day Mini-Institute
What Makes You Unique? Flying Above the Crowd!
A SmART Schools Workshop facilitated by Kurt Wootton
February 1 & 2
Time: 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM
Location: Bridgewater Grange, Route 100, Bridgewater, Vermont
This SmART Schools workshop will explore issues of community and individuality utilizing performance, image-making, and responsive writing. Kurt Wootton will lead teachers through an active arts-infused workshop demonstrating how multiple art forms might be used to both enhanceliteracy and build community. Using text, Mr. Wootton will demonstrate how arts experiences can be woven around a text and how these experiences help students make meaningful text-to-self connections. Throughout the workshop teachers will experience the various essential elements of curriculum planning including: developing an enduring understanding of a theme, performing in a culminating event, and making evidence of student learning explicit.
On the second day of the workshop, teachers will have the opportunity to participate in an arts integrated planning process led by Mr. Wootton. In this process teachers will take the concepts from previous arts-integrated workshop and apply them in their own classroom.
“Literacy, Community, and the Arts.” Kurt also consults for and is a faculty member for SmART Schools, an organization based at the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts, with the goal of integrating the arts throughout entire school systems. Previously Kurt taught in a variety of schools including urban, private, and suburban, and he has an extensive background in acting and directing.
The institute is open free of cost to all participating SmART Schools in VT. Limited space available. Registration is on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Please contact Wendy Cohen to register at wcohen@edc.org. REGISTRATION CLOSED
Summer Institute 2006
Teaching for Understanding In and Through the Arts
A Brain-based Approach to Learning
Join
us for this 4-day SmART Schools summer institute facilitated by SmART
Schools staff and notable professional/master teaching artists with expertise
in all four arts disciplines (dance/movement; instrumental & vocal
music; theatre; and visual arts). Ideal for interdisciplinary teams made
up of arts specialists, core/classroom teachers, special education teachers,
and/or school administrators. Participants will engage in hands-on studio
workshops to develop new skills, techniques, and methodologies to: (1)
advance the academic and social success of every student; (2) teach for
deep understanding in and through the arts; (3) design and implement standards-based
curriculum, instruction, and performance assessments; (4) differentiate
instructional strategies using a multiple intelligence approach; (5) increase
student creativity and problem solving skills; and (6) enhance teacher
motivation, creativity, and effective collaboration.
Participants will have opportunities to design their own curriculum units
utilizing the Wiggins/McTighe Understanding By Design backwards
planning approach. Daily common planning time sessions will be facilitated
by SmART Schools professional teaching artists and SmART Schools staff
(including curriculum design and assessment experts). Participants will
learn how to recognize and improve their individual and group working
styles and use this information to create a productive culture of collegiality.
Participants will also begin to establish close ties with New England
based arts and cultural organizations, institutions of higher education,
and the SmART Schools network.
(3
graduate level credits are available through Rhode Island College.)
Dates: August 15-18, 2006
Location: Portsmouth Sheraton, Portsmouth, NH
Hours: 8:30AM - 4PM daily
Cost: $1100
 |
Click HERE
to download a brochure to register for the SmART Schools Summer Institute. REGISTRATION CLOSED Click HERE to read biographies of SmART Schools staff and master teaching artists. |
One Day Mini-Institute!
Teaching Story Structure Through Movie Making
February 10, 2006
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM
LOCATION: Meredith, NH
The Inns & Spa at Mill Falls - Church Landing
A SmART Schools Workshop facilitated by Magdalena Gomez & James Lescault.
In this arts and literacy workshop we will focus on building understanding of the story making process through a variety of methods. We will explore ways to connect the cinematic process of storytelling, as used in iMovie and comic books, to the written story. Using story boards, oral story telling, physical story telling without words, and, finally, videography we will de-mystify the story writing process for students of various learning styles. Participants will also look at how to build the story arc in a storm of inspiration. Ah! The magic of beginning, middle and end.
Come prepared to be spontaneous and have fun! And let us know if you can bring-your-own video camera!
The institute is open free of cost to all participating SmART Schools in RI, NH, and VT. Limited space available. Registration is on a first-come-first-serve basis. Priority given to participating SmART Schools.The institute registration fee for nonparticipating schools is $250.00 per participant.
Breakfast and lunch are included. Accommodations the night before (02/09) are available to all attendees at a reduced rate. Room and registration information available on registration sheet. Rooms must be booked by 1/20.
To be added to the waitlist please download the word document registration sheet and return it to Taylor Amaio (tamaio@edc.org). Download printable flyer pdf.
Summer Institute RIC Follow-up
Nov 8, Nov 21, & Dec 7
Special One day Mini-Institute
November 8th
Morning Workshop: Theater and Literacy workshop by Kurt Wootton.
Afternoon workshop: Special Guests **Letty Mills, Simon Hole and Deb Crary**In this workshop presenters and participants will explore how arts strategies and methodologies can be used to deepen understanding. It is our hope that participants will see that this work is not just about curriculum or planning lessons. It is about broadening teaching practice and interweaving different ways of knowing to provide students and teachers with learning opportunities that allow all of us to know our world better.
**Letty Mills, Simon Hole and Deb Crary are teachers at Narragansett Elementary School. Since attending the first SmART School Summer Institute in 1999, they have worked together to enhance student learning and growth through a fusion of arts and classroom disciplines and techniques. They have shared their work at workshops and institutes for the past four years.
Summer Institutes
August, 2005
At these 4 and 5 day SmART Schools Summer Institutes in NH and RI, participants learned how to teach core academic curriculum for deeper understanding in and through the arts.
Check out the photos here!
A New Kind of Literacy: Puppetry and Performance in the Classroom
Mar. 22-23, 2005
This innovative SmART Schools workshop will combine ideas developed by Erminio Pinque, Artistic Director of the nationally renowned Big Nazo -- an international performance group of visual artists, puppet performers, and masked musicians -- and Kurt Wootton, Director of the ArtsLiteracy Project at Brown University.
This workshop will explore ways to fuse performance and visual art together through the medium of puppetry. Participants will learn how to design and develop puppets in an open-ended "creature creation" process. Then teachers will take a traditional text, taught in many elementary school classrooms, and animate it through the use of performance and puppetry. Dress appropriately for both performance and painting!
Check out the photos here!
Being SmART about the Grade Level Expectations, Instruction, and Assessment in Grades K-8
North Kingstown District Office
Feb. 17, 2005
Wendy Cohen presented this workshop using the concepts of backward design to help align arts integration performance tasks with standards and Grade Level Expectations. The importance of aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment for student learning was discussed as well as discovering new ways in which to accomplish this.
Participants brought a performance task, its scoring guide, and the Grade Level Expectations to the workshop. Some great examples of performance tasks came out of our summer institute: Nature Journals, Math and Art Mandalas, Sneetches, Zax and Seuss to Music, Theater and Literacy – The Red Tree, etc.
Voices of Courage - "When Marian Sang"
North Kingstown District Office
Jan. 20, 2005
Loriana De Crescenzo, OperaProv and Taylor Amaio, SmART Schools, have collaborated in presenting a studio-based, art integration workshop on the life and musical works of Marian Anderson.She is one of our country’s many historical figures whose deep inner conviction and faith in herself continued through years of adversity and eventually led to her achieving her dreams.
Social, cultural, and historical aspects Marian Anderson’s journey will be explored through a variety of media including literature. Participants will create and perform a mini-opera in response to the text, including a focus on classroom-based set design. Connections to Eleanor Roosevelt’s biography will be examined. This workshop will enable participants to immediately apply this prototype curriculum in their classrooms.
Check out the photos here!
More Information:
SmART Schools Master Teaching Artists and Faculty: High School (pdf)
SmART Schools Master Teaching Artists and Faculty: K-8 (pdf)
SmART Schools Evaluation (pdf)
Reviews findings during phase 1 of a three-part assessment of programs implemented in Rhode Island schools.
Read "SmART Schools Use the Arts to Engage Students."
EDC feature article that describes how the arts are used across the curriculum to engage all students.
