Joyce Winfrey and Erin Sand, previously featured in our Teacher Impact Series, created this lesson for their third grade students with Artist Mentor Dave Quicksall. Read the interview with Joyce and Erin!
In this Theater, SEL, and Social Studies lesson students build understanding of The Big Picture – Seeing the entire picture of a situation vs just a small portion of the situation. Inspired by photographs, they use posture, movement, and voice to create tableaux that begin in Close-up and “Zooming Out”, they progress though Action to end showing the Big Picture. View the complete lesson.
Students looked at photographs to explore the idea of different perspectives. They started with an extreme close-up showing one person’s feelings, and then slowly “zooming out” to see what is happening in the entire scene, or “Big Picture.” Students created their own tableau to show the process.
Enduring Understanding:
Knowing as many details as possible can lead to a fuller perspective on a story or situation (the Big Picture).
“My son still talks about the game where they saw a portion of someone’s face and had to guess what was happening by their expression. He loved that Mr. Quicksall then revealed the complete picture and they could see if any of their inferences were correct. I really appreciate how intentional Mrs. Winfrey and Ms. Sand are with integrating the arts into their lessons.”
~Joann Varnell (Parent)
“Research shows that integrating art with other disciplines reaches students who might not otherwise be engaged in classwork. Mrs. Winfrey and Ms. Sand embrace this idea when teaching all children. By integrating arts into their curriculum, both teachers skillfully help to boost student self-esteem, decision-making skills, language skills, and motor skills, in addition to learning new core concepts.”
~ Vince Blauser, Principal Grant Center for the Expressive Arts
Ms. Sand and Mrs. Winfrey include Art by using music and acting activities. They have a partner, Mr. Quicksall. They ask questions so that other students can answer. They play songs based on the theme of the day. When they show a picture with an action, we act it out!
~ Student (Age 10)
“My student has struggled with math. She was anxious about the looming matter of “times tables”. Ms. Sand used play doh with a virtual small group to build immediate understanding and confidence. In another moment, Kate came home from school saying, “We did something really fun today. We learned about fractions and used play doh. I’m really excited to do more of that.”
~Sonya Galvon (Parent)
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