Arkansas Learning Through The Arts (ALTTA), as part of its efforts to integrate the arts into the overall learning experience, offers more than 30 programs to elementary schools throughout the state of Arkansas.
Miss Wiley’s second grade at Jessieville Elementary School recently hosted teaching artist Zinse Agginie, originally from Ghana, as he demonstrated African drumming, told African stories, and conducted a drumming session with the students.
The workshop, tailored to enhance a lesson plan on “hand-me-down tales from around the world,” engaged the children in active listening, reading and acting, in addition to educating them about the differences and similarities among cultures.
After listening to Aginnie relate a folk tale, the kids were asked to think of ways to change the story by injecting their own feelings; they were then assigned roles and retold the story by acting it out.
Class participation went up a notch when the kids moved into Amy Bailey’s music classroom. Aginnie demonstrated and described his African drums, and made the landscape of his former home come alive with the sounds of slithering snakes and stomping elephants.
Aginnie played his “beat” (which sounded suspiciously like “We will, we will rock you”) for the students, and asked each one to come up with his own. The children seemed to enjoy the creative aspect of the exercise, and willingly shared their beats with the class.
The workshop concluded with Aginnie teaching a simple, 10-beat song, using a step-by-step method that enabled all the students to participate. The students quickly learned to play together, in sequence and rhythmically.
ALTTA board president Martha Smither said the programs are designed to “increase class participation,” and that the “artists become magnets” for the kids. The shouted questions (“Is that story true?) and opportunities to contribute to the story (when Aginnie asked the kids to come up with the name of a bird, one child volunteered “toucan”) made for a lively and, hopefully, educational experience for this group of second graders.
For further information about ALTTA, contact Martha Smither at 501-922-2743. Program bookings are already being made for the 2016–2017 school year.
