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Week 5:
Standards are certainly becoming the "word" in education today. We'll not mention the other word that seems to drive every teacher crazy in the spring time. Although if not approached correctly, meeting standards in the classroom can become overwhelming, they are designed to help us as educators to promote age/grade appropriate learning. "Ohio's social studies standards lend themselves toward a constructivist view of learning meaningful concepts. Constructivism refers to the idea that knowledge is constructed by learners - what children learn is a result of actively building relationships between old knowledge and new knowledge. Facts serve as building blocks, furnishing the details necessary to develop meaningful concepts. Concepts are gradually built as the learner accumulates knowledge through varied developmentally appropriate experiences. Students are considered active participants on a journey of discovery that values in-depth knowledge, a view founded upon the work of Piaget, Vygotsky, Dewey, Bruner and others who hold a holistic view of learning." (from Ohio Department of Education Academic Content Standards K-12 Social Studies) It is becoming widely accepted that children must construct or build, develop, accumulate, and experience to learn. Learning that is easily applied to life must mean something to the child. What is most likely to spark meaning? Emotional connections coming from experiential learning ignite meaning! Theater arts are a limitless resource for emotional connections. Theater encompasses all other art forms and stimulates human interpersonal interaction and intrapersonal reflection. Theater is a "place in space and time" where you can experience what is apart from yourself and integrate it into yourself. The content is there because you allowed yourself to "live" it. A curriculum infused with the use of theater arts is a repository for meaningful learning! For Discussion: Now that you have participated in the activities of "living history" first hand by the facilitation of beginning with a primary source document; researching the author's life, the time period in which they lived, the clothing they wore, the food they ate, the work they did, the experiences they had; and developing a theatrical piece to present the research do you feel a project of this composition promotes emersion and meaningful learning and meets the targeted standards? Do you feel that you are able to adequately assess this project utilized in your classroom? Click on the link to the rubrics and read the presentation rubric. Do you think this rubric is representative of adequate assessment? What changes would you make? Post your answers to the discussion and then assess your students with the presentation rubric including any additions you have suggested. Post a summary of your assessments to the discussion. This concludes the Living History course/workshop for classroom teachers.
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