Our Imaginative Symposium

Students decided they wanted to play with language, words, and ideas through a symposium.  These are the questions that came out of our graffiti and music sessions: Why did MLK want to help people?  Why was it important to MLK to have people work together?  What inspired MLK to be a heroic bystander?  Do you ever have dreams that can change the world?  What are they?  How can you be a hero?  Why are heroes put in jail?  How can we make connections between words in MLK's speeches?  Where do prejudice and racism come from?  Would you be willing to fight racism as a bystander?  Why were blacks enslaved and not whites?  Why are heroes assassinated?

Students created rules for this simulated and imaginative symposium:
Each person gets to speak.  Raise your hand to respond.  Four people should discuss and debate one topic at a time.  Figure out a way to "get along" the entire time.  Debating should be playful and fun.

Here is an example of one of our debates:

Maliyah-"Where do prejudice and racism come from?  It comes from whites not ever seeing a black so they put them to work."

Erieyon-"It came from whites never saw a black before so they want them to be treated differently."

Maliyah-"I think this because the whites had them to do everything for them."

Erieyon-"I think that because they whipped them and they know they don't want to be whipped."

Together-"So we came up with they put the slaves to work because they had never seen their kind before."

Imagination

In light of my interest in the imagination (and how development of the imagination directly relates to success in the act of learning), I am narrowing down my choice of focus.  So, I will be writing only about the imaginative play section of our indoor recess.  I'll also be writing about our arts partnership lessons that are built to increase the imaginative thought-process.  This is built through questioning that is a lot like art criticism: noticing, analyzing, interpreting, and (only then) judging or critiquing.  As of now my questions are these: How is the imagination related to play?  If play is exploration-the act of learning-then how does the work of the imagination directly influence the cycle of learning in my students? 

Share thoughts.  My forte has never been narrowing things down :)  My imagination gets the better of me, and yet it is always the thing-the playfulness of it-that finally leads me to the simplicity of an idea.

ALSO

We recently played around with the public art form of graffiti.  After exploring words from MLK's speeches, life story, and gospel music, we took a connective word (that was heard in all three contexts) and created our own graffiti-forms of that word.  We then played with chalk and paint on the walls in the stairwell of the school to express our words in a different size and medium.  Pics and comments to come...

What are the students saying?

Room 105 angels asked to observe their counterparts in the heat of free play.  Here's a taste of what they saw and heard:

Kaelyn-"Mshayia and Xavier are dancing.  The kids playing are telling each other what to do.  The girls are talking when they play like judges.  Dion, Zavella, and De'Anre are playing an educational game.  Ra'ell chooses to read quietly."

Jalen-"That's mine!  That's mine!  You need one more boy!  Blue sky, blue sky.  Everybody out except for you.  So keep him on green.  Would you stop?  You're getting on peoples' nerves.  This part-shoo shoo!  Who wants to go to the movies?  Oh.  Martrell is dancing-It's time to get it ready for the show..."

Lariel-"I noticed that Jetaun was coloring and wrote Kayla in pink and blue.  I noticed Amitri, Javonte, Kaelyn, Michael, De'Andre, and Tiante were playing Monopoly.  I noticed Jalen, Martrell, Erieyon are playing Following Directions.  I noticed Samirah, Maliyah, Kayla, and Xavier are playing detective.  Kayla was making Xavier apologize for what he did.  I noticed Mahari and Jaya playing hangman on the board.  I noticed Kiarra, Destiney, Ayana, and Keiah talking while Kiarra was doing Destiney's hair."

Related to MLK:

Kiarra and Ayana inspect a painting of a painting about segregation at the cinema.

Kiarra-This picture ain't fair!  See how this entrance is smaller and this one is really nice?

Ayana-So how did segregation get changed?

 

Imaginitive Play

Our imaginative play area is on the large rug in the center of our desk-rectangle.

There is a group of six students that have gathered a bunch of small white boards, dry erase markers, and winter clothes from the closet.  They came up with the idea to draw different parts of a person (a teacher to be exact) on the white boards.  Then they put them all together to make a big teacher that lies in the middle of the rug all the time.  They act as if the teacher is giving them directions, teaching them something, or just hanging out.  The students move around the rug accordingly.  There is a play that comes out of this.  The play includes dancing, singing, running, and lots of talking back to the imaginary whiteboard teacher.  The teacher has green eyes and curly orange and brown hair.  she reminds me of myself, but my students swear up and down that her name is Miss Bootynice and she is NOT me.  Hmmm...

Indoor Recess

Board Game: Following Directions is its title (this makes me giggle, because the game is playfully inept, but the students create their own directions to make it more playful).

Tiante-It's good enough.  Just be quiet already.
Michael-Gawd!

Martrell sings Michael Jackson quietly-Don't stop til you get enough.  He's walking around.  Whooah!  HE shakes his shoulders.  Hoo-hoo-hee. 

Erieyon-Woowee.  I'm too tired for this, Martrell.

Tiante slaps Ra'ell.  They both continue to have amiles plastered to their faces though.

Amitri is communicating to Destiney that it's boring to talk about people behind their backs-this is reflective of a conversation I had with them yesterday.

ANOTHER DAY

Scrabble is out.

Maliyah-No it's my turn.  We got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

Meanwhile, Kayla is walking around to different groups in the room.  She's not trying to participate in their games, she's dancing and singing and getting in their faces.

Amitri says she made a booty snowflake.

Javonte is acting as a snowman from Avatar.

Xavier sings-Oh say can you see?!

Mshayia-Can you help me (with snowflake cutting)?

ANOTHER DAY

Kyle is visiting our room from Ms. Young's room.  He was my student last year and children in our room know him well.

Kyle plays hangman-I need something more challenging, please.

Maliyah is playing Scrabble-Look I made two words out of grape: grape and ape.

Amitri-I know I'm running with this snowflake, but I don't even want this.

Samirah-See, she spelled calendar and those are all her guesses I wrote down.

Javon-No, you have to go like this...

Kyle and Xavier-Can we jump?  This is jumping for Jesus.

Javonte-I know how ya'll make it (the more intricately cut snowflakes).