The art, music and physical education teachers at elementary schools in the Woodland Public Schools District have worked together to create innovative cross-curricular lessons for students and their families to take part in to stay in shape, exercise creativity and enhance their studies during distance learning.
Madison Fraser, Miles Thoming-Gale and Cheryl Nesbitt serve as the district's art, music and physical education teachers for all three of Woodland’s elementary schools. While students focus on their core curriculum during remote learning, the three work together to ensure students have specialist lessons that serve as “brain breaks” from their studies from all three subject areas.
“Given how rigorous remote learning can be, the three of us worked together to create bonus curriculum to serve as ‘brain breaks,’” Nesbitt said in the press release. “We know our students spend a lot of time working on the computer, so we wanted to offer opportunities for them to take a break from typing to take part in something creative and physical.”
Unlike a traditional classroom setting where educators would teach subjects separately, the three teachers have decided to work together to develop lessons and activities that involve multiple subjects. In addition to cross-curricular lessons, the three teachers even designed their Google Classrooms to carry similar looks and feels to provide a more unified feel for students. “Collaboration between the three of us is key as we try to bring as much as we can from all three subjects into our lessons,” Nesbitt said.
Fraser and Thoming-Gale created a combination lesson which led students through experiences demonstrating the similarities and differences between the creation of music and the creation of art. “We want to provide activities that students will take part in because it’s fun,” Nesbitt said. “These lessons shouldn’t be stressful for our students, they should be engaging and help relieve stress.”
The upcoming virtual talent show, Woodland’s Got Talent, encourages students to demonstrate their talents in any of the three subjects. While some subjects have been challenging during distance-learning due to COVID-19, Thoming-Gale sees the virtual talent show benefiting from remote education. “Distance learning actually becomes a benefit because students can submit videos of their talents that they couldn’t demonstrate in a traditional talent show such as a student who’s a good baseball pitcher, one who rides horses, or another who rides motocross,” he said. “There would be no way to show off these talents during a typical talent show held in the auditorium of a school.”
To motivate elementary students to participate in the classes and activities, the teachers created the “AMP (Art, Music, Physical Education) It Up” Award. Each week, the teachers award each classroom from every grade with the most participation to win the award. Winners are featured in special weekly videos on YouTube at bit.ly/AMPitupaward.
According to the news release, families report greatly enjoying the bonus curriculum as well as the competitions for the AMP It Up Award. “It’s all about introducing my kids to the different elements of each specialty and letting them have fun,” said Terra Pfeifer, a parent of two elementary students and counselor at Woodland High School. “Not all parents may think they have the time to take part in this curriculum, but I think everyone needs to give these courses a shot; we love doing them and I’m so thankful that Woodland continues to offer these specialties.”
