exploring dance and bilingual literature pre-k through grade 3 kristin kusanovich senior lecturer,...
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Exploring Dance and Bilingual Literature
Pre-K through Grade 3
Kristin Kusanovich
Senior Lecturer, Santa Clara University Department of Theatre & Dance Liberal Studies Pre-Teaching Program Co-Director, Justice and the Arts Initiative at SCU
Teaching Artist,AEG program, Silicon Valley Arts Council
At the Justice and the Arts Initiative at SCU we are looking at the centrality of Art
in the Shaping of Justice
• Art and the artistic process are transformative in their nature, and more and more the arts are being engaged as catalysts for an inspiring array of outcomes: community-building, cultural celebration and livelihood, education, historical memory and identity claiming, psychological wellness, political mobilization, youth empowerment as well as for their universal and original purpose, explaining and shaping society.
Second Language Acquisition has two goals
Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills•takes about 2 to 3 years to develop
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency •develops in about 5 to 7 years
______
Seeing the ways dance can help serve both of these goals of second language acquisition
(BICS and CALP terms developed by Dr. James Cummins, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education)
Advantages of Learning Dance in Two Languages
• Allows formal discussions around learning an art form to occur in both languages
• Aids comprehension skills in L1 & L2• Helps formal writing skills in L1 & L2• Improves test success• Broadens view of art as a global enterprise,
not the domain of one culture
With acknowledgement to Margarita Calderón, www.margaritacalderon.org.
What are the supports to dual language learners and where does
dance fit in?Sensory Supports
Manipulatives, Pictures, Photographs, Illustrations, Physical Activities, Films, Models and Figures
Graphic SupportsCharts, Graphs, Tables, Timelines, Number lines, Maps
Interactive Supports Pairs, Triads, Foursomes, Whole group, Cooperative Learning,
Software,, Native Language Peer Coaches
With acknowledgement to Margarita Calderon, 2010 8 th Annual Academic Success Conference, SCCOE www.margaritacalderon.org.
Let’s look at just some of the realities of migrant children from the research
Migrant children might not feel a part of the communal activity of the school…
Migrant children might not be given opportunities to develop trust in and gain trust of others…
Migrant children may not have stable, positive peer influences…
Migrant children may not have a sense of home…
Migrant children know the transitory nature of reality…
How does dance in the curriculum help address some of the realities of
migrant children?
Dance helps people feel they belong to a communal activity
Dance helps people develop trust of others
Dance requires the best of people, so creates good peer influences
Dance can be like a home in terms of the joy and comfort it brings to dance with the same people consistently
The transitory nature of dance is its strength…
Three important developmental assets
common in those who study any kind of dance for
prolonged periods of time:Self-Reliance,
Resiliency and Relation
Indirect benefits of dance on literacy
#1
Dance creates a space where and a time when the differences between people that may matter in some other situation can seem diminished
and, in some cases, will be for the first time, utterly irrelevant.
(Kusanovich, in press)
Indirect benefits of dance on literacy
#2
For over 30 years, social scientists have posited that the achievement gaps between rich and poor students are related not only to economic differences but also to differences in the amount of access students have to the sorts of relationships in school that enable them to obtain the resources needed for school success
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Coleman, 1988; Stanton-Salazar, 2004
Some benefits of relatedness
“Those students who experience a sense of relatedness behave differently from those who do not. They have more positive attitudes toward school, class work, teachers, and their peers. They are more likely to like school, and they are also more engaged. They participate in more school activities, and they invest more of themselves in the learning process.”
(Osterman, 2000, p. 343)
Is dance a “verbal’ art?
Distinguishing between dance
&
the teaching of dance
Advantages of dance being NON-VERBAL
for Second Language Learners
Advantages of the teaching of dance being VERBAL for Second Language Learners
)
Dance and the Arts can be taught in a way that uses
language to its fullest capacity
Most dance teachers speak constantly while teaching, providing opportunities for repetition of new words that learners need, and context-specific usage for introducing new vocabulary.
Additionally, students experience an embodied sensation to associate with the word and its meaning.
In a high-quality dance education setting, the three primary learning
modalities are engaged
• Cognitive
• Affective (Social/Emotional)
• Psycho-Motor
In dance, the functions of language (explaining, comparing, counting) are experienced on both a linguistic and
a kinesthetic level
When experiencing dance as an art, participants will need to do with their bodies all the things that language does:
Predict, Identify, Interpret, Explain, Organize, Retell, Enumerate, Classify, Compare/Contrast, Define, Infer/ Hypothesize, Summarize
Dance allows for some fluidity between different “tiers” of
vocabulary
Simple More Sophisticated
Tier 1 Tier 2
Run Sprint
Fall Descend
Slow Sustained
Go Travel, Locomote
Dance allows for the teaching/learning of idiomatic
phrases while demonstrating and leading children through a task
“Once in a while”
“…now as you are moving through space, I’d like to see if, once in a while, you can suddenly change level, and if, once in a while, you can do a full turn while travelling through space…once in a while you may want to stop and hold a shape if you need a rest for a moment.”
Pre-Teaching a select group of words
Select Tier 3 words, that may be the most challenging and content specific.
Then select Tier 2 words that provide a context for those concepts
If necessary, then select Tier 1 words that students do not know and that they need to know, if necessary.
With acknowledgement to Margarita Calderon, 2010 8th Annual Academic Success Conference, SCCOE www.margaritacalderon.org.
Method for Pre-Teaching words before a dance unit / lesson
• Teacher says the word.• Teacher states the word in context from the text.• Teacher provides the dictionary definition(s).• Explains meaning with student-friendly definitions.• Asks students to repeat the word 3 times. • Engages students in activities to develop word/concept
knowledge.• Highlight features of the word: polysemous, cognate,
tense, prefixes, etc..
With acknowledgement to Margarita Calderon, 2010 8th Annual Academic Success Conference, SCCOE www.margaritacalderon.org.
Now for a short immersion course in
using dance to explore literature,
applying those methods to bilingual literature,
and creating our own lesson plans using these methods
Dance & Literacy Project #1Bilingual literature
appropriate for children4 to 7 years old
• Pio Peep! Rimas Tradicionales en Español – Traditional Spanish Nursery Rhymes Alma Flor Ada, F. Isabel Campoy, Alice Schertle, Vivi Escriva (illustrator). Rayo, 2003.
• Tortillas Para Mama and other Nursery Rhymes / Spanish and English, Margot C. Griego, Betsy L. Bucks, Sharon S. Gilbert, Laurel H. Kimball, Barbara Cooney (Illustrator), Henry Holt & Co., 1988.
Dance & Literacy Project #2Bilingual literature
appropriate for children6 to12 years old
The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos
Illustrator / Author Lucía González
Children's Book Press, 2008.
Music to explore…
Letras, Números Y Colores - Vol. 5
Jorge-Luis Orozco
Cada Niño
Tish Hinojosa
¡Nueva York!
Dan Zanes & Friends
“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
– John Cage
