Circles to the East, History in the Making Overview: Our team is excited to use community history as a way of weaving arts and history together. Our school is rich with a history that can be integrated into our student’s lives through fieldtrips, visual arts, creative and engaging lessons and in-school activities. Our goals are to help our students learn that our community’s rich history is varied as well as to show them that they are part of the intricate mosaic that makes our history. We will promote an understanding that while each of us are unique, when we work together our community becomes a masterpiece of talents. We will discuss how circles can represent the timelines of ourselves as well as of communities. We will show our own community has more in common with other cultures and communities that we may realize. We will use mosaics and mandalas as a way of visually explaining how rich and diverse communities are when a group works together tiling a work of art through talents and relationships. Integration: We will build integration by tiling together visual arts, performing arts and history. While our focus will be on our own community history, we will show students that cultures from all over the world use the arts in similar ways to enrich their community. Our school recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, we will take a look back at what an integral part of the community our school has been. In Kindergarten and First Grade our youngest students will use integrated lessons to learn about how our community history can change over time (SOL K.2) and its past and present (SOL 1.1). Second and third graders will focus on the similarities that we have with ancient cultures. We will look specifically at Ancient China, Ancient Egypt (SOL 2.1), Ancient Greece, Rome (SOL 3.1), and Ancient Mali (SOL 3.2). We will work with our fourth grade students to develop an understanding of the role visual art has played in the history of Virginia and our local community. We will integrate many of the state SOL’s. In fifth grade, our oldest students will take a tour of the arts in world history including Europe, Mexico, Middle East, Africa and Asia (SOL WS.3b, WS.1c, WS.4b, WS.5b, WS.6b). We will develop within each student a sense of how the arts continue to be an integral part of our lives and the role it plays within our community. While we will look at various art forms, our focus will be on mosaics and mandalas from around the world and across the span of time. Our team will work with each grade level to develop lessons that include examples of how the arts were used and integrated into the daily lives of the people the grade is studying. Our lessons will be enriched with hands on experiences that will take place in the art classroom for all students and staff. Several classes will take a field trip to the local arts museum to explore mosaics and the rich history of visual arts. We will ignite the school’s excitement with an in school presentation that explores our state history at the beginning of the school year. Our school will create a large mosaic reminiscent of a mandala that depicts our community history with our school at the center. Our team will work with local mosaic artists to help us produce a large piece that is able to withstand time and can be showcased in our school. Part of the mosaic project will focus on how each individual piece of the project is unique and beautiful, when the pieces work together they create something much more. Implementation: We anticipate this project to be worked on throughout the year in stages. We will begin our year with a teacher training to excite staff and get them hooked on what our core team will be doing during the school year. We will introduce the project to the students during the first few weeks of the school year with an in-school performance to get them thinking about history. We will work with each grade level in accordance to their timeline for introducing specific history ideas. Large visuals of mosaics and mandalas will be on view in various areas of the school throughout the year to students and staff. We will begin creating the mosaic in stages with each grade level first painting rocks to be used. Photographs of individual rocks will be taken during the process. After our students have engaged in arts integrated lessons and activities specific to their SOL’s, we will begin piecing the mosaic. We will coordinate an open house in our school to showcase the work the school has done to create the mosaic of our history. Photographs of each individual rock will be displayed with the finished mosaic to demonstrate the beauty of the individual and the magnitude of individuals working together. Commitment: Our lead team is excited to commit the time for all phases of this project. We are able to attend the Joan Oates Institute and the various trainings we will need to implement this project. We have discussed this project with our administrative team and have their full support and commitment.
