Monthly Archives: December 2009

Teaching K-2 Literacy through the Arts

The Teaching Artist Project, a partnership between the San Diego Unified School District and the University of California, Irvine, uses the arts to boost language skills of K-2 students in 14 schools located in San Diego’s least affluent neighborhoods. Instead of asking children to sit quietly at desks, teachers co-teach 27 arts lessons (9 in theater, 9 in dance, 9 visual art) with teaching artists in their own classrooms. While co-teaching with the teaching artists, the teachers learn the content knowledge, key concepts, and skills of the three arts disciplines. As part of the arts lessons, the children are able to hear, see, respond, and demonstrate what they have learned at the same time. This boosts vocabulary and facility in the use of oral language.

In Year 1 of the program, 180 teachers and 3600 students were served. During Year 2, the school year following the weekly visits with teaching artists, teachers continue to teach the academically rigorous, standards-based arts lessons on their own. Teachers continue to get support, as needed, from San Diego arts resource teachers and teaching artists. Enthusiasm is high as teachers who worked with teaching artists last year approach the end of their first term of teaching the arts on their own. To assist teachers in remembering important aspects of the lessons, video versions of the theater lessons have been made available on-line: http://www.clta.uci.edu/Theatre_1.html

The Teaching Artist Program is funded by an $828,000 Improving Teacher Quality grant administered by the California Postsecondary Education Commission. In 2009-10, three more schools joined the program, bringing the number of schools to 15.

Over a million children who are unfamiliar with English attend California schools. English learners make up a quarter of K-12 students, state-wide; in the San Diego Unified School District 30.2 % of students are English learners. If these students are to achieve to their full potential, they will need direct and frequent interaction with individuals who know the language of instruction well and can provide English learners with accurate feedback.

As budget cuts force class sizes higher, (K-2 class size in San Diego could be as high as 30 next year), one-on-one verbal interactions between teachers and individual pupils become more limited. Arts activities that allow for the use of nonverbal communication in combination with verbal interactions can be an effective way for teachers to directly interact with many children at once, providing feedback and building vocabulary.

Please see photos on the following pages. For more information please call:

Denise Lynne, Coordinator
ITQ Teaching Artist Program
Phone: 858-539-5350
E-mail: dlynne@sandi.net

Liane Brouillette, Principal Investigator
ITQ Teaching Artist Program
Phone: 949-824-4317