Creating Tableau

Our arts integrated education has already begun. Last October we earned national recognition in Parents magazine as one of the top ten most innovative schools in America for this approach. Teachers attend a weeklong AWE (arts with education) institute then go back to their rooms and institute the techniques which include "signing" a contract to control our body, voice, and imagination and to use cooperation and concentration. Then we move on to build our concentration through games like concentration circle. We also work on cooperation by completing various cooperation challenges. I will try to post more pics of those things so you get an idea of what that all means. Here today though are some pictures of our first attempt at tableau. In tableau (which means frozen picture), the students have to use all their skills of cooperation and concentration to build a frozen picture of something with their team. This is used in content instruction to assess and also to extend their understanding in a kinesthetic way. Right now, we are working on successfully making a tableau with our team and sharing them with each other. We also are going to be visited by guest teaching artists in the next week to practice these skills. The directions for this one were to make a picture of something they liked about summer. To extend this we will continue practicing working together and also include high, medium, and low levels in our tableau.

This group made starfish.

 This group made an apple.

 This group made an airplane.

Please post supportive comments! I would love to share them with my students so they see that others are looking at our blog and are interested in what we do at school. Thanks for taking the time to read it!