Page McBrier

Teaching Artist Residencies

 

Teachers: Do you have a science or social studies unit that needs a boost or a fresh approach? Tired of making your kids sit in their chairs all day? Learn how to integrate the arts into your science, social studies and language arts curriculum and bring the fun back to your classroom.

 

My residencies and programs are custom-designed to get your students engaged and writing. Common Core Standards-based lesson plans insure that you’re on the right track.

 

 

These are some examples of my recent residencies and programs:

 

★ Natural Disasters: Fifth graders broadened their knowledge of natural disasters by experimenting with various literary and artistic forms including movement poems and legends.

 

★ Create a Community: Second graders invented a community and then created puppets and stories about the various characters living there.

 

Third graders used theater and visual arts to explore behavioral and structural adaptations; researched and wrote habitat specific non-fiction reports about individual animals★ Animal Adaptations:; and then used their imaginations to do the same for invented animals.

 

★ Sustainable agriculture models around the world: Second graders combined their life cycles thread with their multicultural thread by learning about various sustainable models around the world, such as tilapia farming in East Africa and honeybees in Honduras.  Collaborative groups wrote “all-about” books and created dioramas.

 

★ Energy Poems: Fifth graders experimented with various types of poetry as they learned about sources of natural energy. They created energy gods and goddesses, and they used photographs of an oil spill to reflect on the consequences of man’s carelessness.

 

★ Human Body Poems: Fifth graders wrote odes to their noses and feet, and they imitated William Blake’s The Sick Rose by imagining the consequences of neglect on the human body.

 

★ Japanese Culture: Third graders imitated ancient Japanese poetic forms and also created Japanese counting books.

 

Students learned about several genres, including counting books, seasonal books ★ Picture book genres:and diaries, and then created and illustrated their own books.

 

★ Ancient Egypt and King Tut: Based on their research, middle-school students created characters and then wrote stories from that character’s point of view, focusing on one particular event, the annual Feast of Opet.

 

★ Colonial Characters: Each student assumed a Colonial occupation, worked on personal characterization through role-playing, created tools needed for the job, and then wrote a letter home to England describing his or her life.

 

★ Local History: Third graders visited local historic landmarks and then wrote different types of poetry inspired by each visit.

 

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Your Idea Here! I will work with you to integrate any unit of study. My goal as a teaching artist is to leave every classroom with a replicable standards-based hands-on integrated unit that teachers can continue to use as part of their yearly teaching practice.