Arts and Culture United States Project #9220

Teach Literacy through the Arts in DC, MD, and VA

by Story Tapestries Inc.

Teach Literacy through the Arts in DC, MD, and VA

Project Report | Sep 12, 2016
The power of language arts at a Family Festival

By Arianna Ross | Executive Director

We're excited to start a new academic year filled with programs for communities in need - empowering individuals to recognize and implement their inherent talents and skills and helping them build teams to create a greater positive impact sharing common goals. To start off the new year, we'd like to share with you, our loyal supporters, a story from an artist's perspective that shares about an event several Story Tapestries artists participated in within our home community of Montgomery County, Maryland. Read below about how all artistic disciplines weaved together to support colorful, engaging storytelling experiences, building excitement about books and encouraging families to read together.

Thank you for being part of the amazing network that makes arts education programs possible!

The Scoop:

Several of our artists had the pleasure of leading programs at the Strathmore for their annual Discover Strathmore festival to kick off summer.

ST Artist, Barbara Effron, shares about her experience:

Discover Strathmore, a free, family-friendly festival, is an annual neighborhood tradition providing an up-close look at the many offerings of this multi-disciplinary arts center.

This year’s theme, “Discover Strathmore Off the Page,” presented in association with Story Tapestries, celebrated the “way we tell stories through various forms of artistic expression - like song, spoken word, puppetry, and film.”

Blog contributor, Barbara Effron, performing at Discover Strathmore

I was delighted to join with ten artists from the greater D.C. area for this wonderful family day. What a treat to hear Jamaal Collier engage his audiences with his beatbox and rapping style, to watch so many children join Diane Macklin on stage to create an adaptation of an Aesop’s fable, and to listen to The Fourth Wall tell “The History of the Toy Soldier” – featuring a flutist dancing like a mechanical ballerina, and a trombonist simulating a sword.

I opened my storytelling set with a story song, “King Kong Kichie, Kichie Kimee-oh”, followed by my musical adaptations of two folktales -- “Wide Mouth Frog,” told with puppets, and “The Old Woman and the Pumpkin.” Children and parents joined in the fun by singing...
discover more by clicking HERE!

Here's a short video of Arianna Ross performing at the Discover Strathmore festival:
https://vimeo.com/178718971

Additional News:

We are working with Total Learning Digital to make our dreams of building a Virtual Classroom come true! Read more about our project here. Sue Snyder, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized consultant in integrated and arts-infused curriculum design, development creativity and higher order thinking skills, early literacy and early learning, arts advocacy, and music education. She is president of IDEAS: Inventive Designs for Education and the ArtS, LLC, a consulting and publishing company dedicated to facilitating child appropriate educational models and programs. Sue connected with Story Tapestries and her platform for the Total Learning site will help Story Tapestries launch a Virtual Classroom site that brings the power of arts integration tools directly to teachers, teaching artists and parents 24/7. To make this a reality, ST needs to raise $5,000 by October 31 to set up our current website for the next steps toward this transition. If you are interested in supporting this initiative, see the ST Virtual Classroom Project on GlobalGiving.

Thank you!

Links:

Full Story

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Jun 16, 2016
Greek Mythology Style Student Writings

By Grace Millar | Program Cordinator

Writing Assignments

WE HAVE REACHED 97% OF THIS PROJECTS GOAL!!!

Thank you for your continued support

As promised here is another young author's writing sample. This is again from our recent visit to Jessup Elementary School. This time though the student is from Mrs. Siple’s Kindergarten class. It is a "take" on a Greek Myth style, the subject being:

What causes big storms?

Below is the students outline for the story, enjoy!!

Characters:

Zeus: 110 years old, mean, grumpy, holds lightening bolt

Hermes: 4 years old, sneaky, excited, holds a harp

Athena: 19 years old, brave, miserable, holds a shield

Setting: The story takes place in outer space on the planet Mars. However, this Mars also has green trees and a deep blue lake. This planet had a lot of rain and storms that came from the sky. The rain looked like golden slime. It had dark blue clouds always hanging over it.

Problem: Suddenly, Zeus’ lightening bolt and cloud was not working. He had to leave his cloud behind. His cloud was constantly causing thunderstorms when it was not supposed to. One day, his cloud even started to pour on Athena while she was starting a war. Instantly, the war ended and she was furious. Athena was angry that she had been rained upon. It even messed up her luxuriously beautiful hair. She was left standing by herself in the middle of the field. She sent Hermes to Zeus. He responded with IT’s NOT MY FAULT. Hermes brought a message from Zeus to Athena…HE REFUSED to apologize. She marched over to where Zeus was reading a book. Hermes felt like he was in between two grumpy adults. He looked at both of them not knowing what to do. Athena chucked her sticky gooey lunch at Zeus. She laughed and shouted “HA HA HA, that’s what you get.” It hit Zeus in the middle of his forehead. Liquid oozed into his surprised eyes.

We simply can not get enough time with these young hearts. We love the time we get to have with them and truly enjoy the follow up stories and testimonials we get afterwards.

Thank you so much for your support, please continue to advocate for us by sending this report to friends and family that would love to be part of this project too.

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May 19, 2016
Magical Time in Vero Beach

By Carrie Sue Ayvar | Teaching Artist

WE HAVE REACHED 95% OF THIS PROJECTS GOAL!!!

Thank you for your continued support

One of our partnering artist, Carrie Sue Ayvar, had a wonderful experience with another partnering group we love, The Learning Alliance. Here is her story of their time:

“My hands say thank you with a clap, clap, clap. My feet say thank you with a tap, tap, tap.” It was an amazing, filled with magical, light-bulb-going-on moments, week in Vero Beach. We started off the week with a 3 hour workshop for Early Childhood Teachers, Once Upon A Story:

Early Childhood Language and Literacy Learning. Following the theory of an old Chinese Proverb, “Tell me & I forget. Show me & I remember. Involve me & I understand” seventy teachers rhymed and moved, played and learned and even told a story in three languages! How wonderful that so many of them let me know how they would use the strategies and skills we practiced. As one teacher wrote, “Multi-sensory literacy strategies learned was awesome. I will love using all the information given today. ”

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Then came an Embedded Coaching and Residency with three brilliant teachers at the Child Care Resources of Indian River Center. Using child directed creative and dramatic play, we went on Imaginary Journeys, learned new rhymes, songs and stories, and used steady beat to enhance language acquisition. We not only boosted verbal communication, used our problem solving skills, practiced turn taking and cooperation but we had a huge amount of fun. How gratifying to hear how these amazing, gifted teachers are using the new strategies!

Here are a few quotes from teachers at these sessions:

“I’ve learned new strategies and techniques for building language and learning through play.”

“I’ve learned so much this past week, adding signing and gestures, graphing, tally marks, props and more.”

“We were amazed at how receptive the children were to Carrie Sue’s introduction of the Spanish language. We plan to work on incorporating more multi-lingual activities.” How incredible to watch these two, three and four year olds absorb these ideas and use them throughout the day. They were retelling the stories, singing the songs on the playground, repeating rhymes at home to their parents.

On Parent’s Night the families came to play! All were eager to learn ways to support their children’s learning. They not only jumped right in but were excited to take these ideas home.

Parents walked away saying:

“This was great. I will be using more Nursery Rhymes – everywhere!”

“Oh, you have inspired me to read and tell stories more. Thank you.”

This is exactly why I love being a Teaching Artist. A wonderful week and no doubt that the fun – and learning! – will be continuing. My hands, my feet, my heart all say thank you!

Thank you so much for your support, please continue to advocate for us by sending this report to friends and family that would love to be part of this project too.

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