Active Learning through Drama, Podcasting and Puppetry » (New Edition)

KRISTIN FONTICHIARO is an elementary media specialist in Michigan. She has been a classroom teacher at the elementary, middle, and senior high school levels and an arts educator.

Contrary to the trend to do away with arts education as an unnecessary expense in schools trying to boost student test scores, this book promotes and explains the value of integrated arts instruction in furthering the accomplishment of curricular objectives and fostering student achievement. Accomplished library media specialist and arts instructor Kristin Fontichiaro discusses how drama, shadow puppetry, and podcasting can be used as tools to meet curriculum objectives in the K-8 media center. By concentrating on the process of creating a piece of drama or puppetry or a podcast, as opposed to the goal of performance, and by infusing the arts with curriculum objectives in story or research, these techniques can intensify a child's learning and provide context for classroom curriculum objectives. A discussion of the affective and academic benefits of this process-based work as well as sample lessons are included. Photographs and examples of student work illustrate the oechniques. Grades K-8.

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     xi
Drama
The Benefits of Learning Through the Arts     3
Getting Started: Welcoming Rituals and Actors' Warm-ups (All Grades)     9
Telling and Retelling Stories Through Drama: Narrative Pantomime and Circle Drama (Preschool and Up)     31
Animating History: Biography Wax Museum (Grades 3 and Up)     69
Ideas in Action: Drama Machines (Grades 3 and Up)     81
"Living Pictures": Tableau (Grades 4 and Up)     99
Putting It Together: Living Newspapers (Grades 5 and Up)     125
Working with the Voice
Oral Tapestries: Choral Readings (Grades 2 and Up)     141
Drama on the Air: Using Podcasting to Create Radio Plays (Grades 3 and Up)     155
Puppetry
Storytelling with Shadow: Shadow Puppetry (Grades K and Up)     169
Advocacy
Advocating for Arts-Infused Curriculum in the Media Center     201
Bibliography     205
Index     209
Author/illustrator/Title Index     221