Today's kindergarteners will be retiring in the year 2067. We have no idea of what the world will look like in five years, much less 60 years, yet we are charged with preparing our students for life in that world. With technology developing at break neck speed and a society that is increasingly diverse, globalized, and complex, education must be more than the 3 R's. Our students must be creative problem solvers who know how to collaborate using technology. This workshop focuses on the essential 21st Century process skills of creativity, collaboration, problem solving and technology.

Participants will create a work of literary art that reflects perspectives from within their professional lives using the alphabet as a guide. This experiential process, supported with a variety of materials, will allow for reflection that illuminates and magnifies both the subtle as well as the obvious within participants’ professional lives and responsibilities. Participants will be offered a safe and respectful experience that is like the experiences in an A+ classroom.

Positive attitude is essential for developing positive school climate. A shared thought or idea is like a “drop in the bucket’ that continues on like a ripple in water as either a positive or negative force. Introducing self while exchanging liquids using an eye dropper, participants will learn that we unknowingly have the power to contaminate the character of another’s liquids with or without personal contact. Activities include: postcard images of an ideal school’s climate; creating a block structure; and taking a piece of the puzzle.

In choosing colorful words to enhance our sentence writing, we can realize how a “picture is worth a thousand words.” No mystery, but perhaps a little magic happens as participants rub, blow, tear and glue to create a multi-media tree that becomes a personal reference for richer, descriptive language.

We all have an artist within us. We might not always feel it, sometimes we don't listen to it, and sometimes we lose touch with it altogether. But it's there. As teachers, we know it's there-we see the artist within children every day, but we don't always make the connection to our own busy, adult lives. In this workshop, we will explore the idea of living artfully and accessing our inner creative spirit, and we will have an opportunity for quiet reflection and a rich, visual arts experience.

Have you forgotten how to be creative? Are you tired of doing the same thing the same way? Do you want to understand creativity better? This workshop will awaken your creative side and enable you to help you and your students to “think outside the box.” Find out how creative you really are!

Need ideas for arts integration? Come explore Asian culture through fairy tales, Confucius sayings/proverbs, and visual arts of China and Japan. Examine how cultural values are expressed. Participants will view Chinese seals and create a family crest in the style of the Japanese Kaman. Curriculum connections to Literature, Social Studies and visual arts will be shared during the workshops.

Have you tried to get your students to look at things from someone else’s perspective? This arts integration workshop will do just that. Teachers will discover ways to enhance their language arts and social studies curriculum using both visual and theatre arts techniques. Participants will create puppets, masks and an original Reader’s Theatre piece that will assist them in assessing their students and encouraging all learning styles.

Young children learn about visual art through questioning and making. They are natural philosophers who love to explain what they think about art. This workshop helps adults who work with young children guide children’s questioning and art making. Children learn to see in three separate spatial areas: lines and shapes, color, and form. Each of these three areas has its own set of challenges and fascinations. Participants will learn how to think about the three areas separately and in combination to create complete visual art experiences for learners in their care.

Plugging into Art Prints! Come discover an easy way to connect art prints to Early Childhood Curriculum. Participants will be given resources for the use and management of art prints in a variety of early childhood settings. In exploring Art Prints, examples of successful lessons as well as an opportunity to generate meaningful connections to PASS will be included.

Music and art are closely connected art forms that allow us to express our most personal feelings. The see-feel-mean and decide reflective process helps students create a rich dialogue with any subject matter. This workshop will feature art prints, music and writing exercises to generate unique poetry and artwork. See how students can create sophisticated interpretations no matter what their age.

Imagine you are an archaeologist in the year 4022. You discover a well-preserved structure believed to date back to twentieth first-century United States. Imagine what you may find in this very room, frozen in time for two millennia, from this precise moment.  Assume the role of a future archaeologist excavating the remains of an ancient twentieth first century conference room. Theorize, imagine, observe, draw, discuss, and write about the uses of this room and the objects you find in it. This workshop offers a fertile experience prompting countless forms of academic and creative writing and skills: exposition, inference, narrative, poetry, descriptive vocabulary…and more, as we study the artifacts and site left behind by a previous society.

The Balancing Act explores our natural tendencies toward control. When in balance, life moves at a controlled, predictable pace that can be stagnant at times. Yet, when pushed by factors outside of our control, our state of balance teeters looking for focal points that bring stability. Finding focal points in nature and art allows creativity and discovery amid the whirlwinds where we reside. The Balancing Act explores balance as a force, a state of survival, and as the fine line between control and chaos.

Using Visual Art and Science PASS Objectives, come discover the art of balance in our bodies, our world, and our creations. Come in comfortable clothes and be prepared to paint, glue, design and sculpt.

Beyond the Research Paper is a workshop for students to create a picture book based on historical event or person. This workshop integrates history, English, writing, literature, information literacy (library skills), art, music and drama.

Designed to share tools for assessment, Beyond the Rubric introduces brief and simple ways to document and grade student progress. Come explore how enriched assessment is intertwined throughout curriculum and experiential learning. We will share a plethora of ways to assess student progress while creating tools that are appropriate for the students you teach.

“I can’t get parents to come to my classroom.” “My student’s parents don’t even speak English!” Does this sound familiar? Turn your negatives into positives! Come to this Family Partnerships Workshop to find the rainbow after the storm. We’ll develop tools for building and enhancing family partnerships including finding ways to engage English Language Learning families. You will take away a new perspective and a pot of golden ideas!

Experience ways to introduce students to historical events, including the Holocaust, powerful children's literature and the arts. Empower global awareness as students become responsible and responsive citizens of our world.

This workshop will deal with the issues of changes in school and community demographics and explore some ways for A+ Schools to address those changing social conditions.

Breeze through this abbreviated workshop teaching you how to make Story-Teller/Listener Dolls. These dolls are versatile and can be utilized in subjects such as Literary Arts, Social Studies and Science. Using Story-Teller/Listener Dolls you will discover how to make any unit involving people come alive for your students.

Clay is a gift from the earth. Those who respond positively to clay will reap countless rewards. There are many forms of manipulative modeling materials available on the open market and the participants will explore many of them. Let’s research the properties explore the possibilities and share our creations

The benefits of feeling, molding and creating with clay far outweigh the logistics of how to and where to use it. This workshop allows you to "be one with the clay" by offering the opportunity to construct a mural of clay creations. Come experience the building of a clay wall and hand built clay figures, and imagine the possibilities. Clay as a natural material that returns to the earth - making for easy cleanup of outdoor projects. Other ideas for using clay in the classroom will be shared as well.

Using clay as a reflective tool, participants will process thoughts as they model clay. Manipulation of clay connects us to earth and is a source of discovery and contemplation. In a silent, reflective walk the clay will be returned to a selected place outdoors.

Participants will choose a concept from PASS and will create a storyboard to teach that concept. They will then make clay figures and background scenery to depict the storyboard. Participants will film their clay figures in a claymation video and present their results to others.

We move through life by seeing, feeling, experiencing and knowing. In this workshop participants will make connections between their daily lives and arts vocabulary. Participants will be guaranteed their daily regimen of easy exercise plus visual art activities with handouts that can be transferred to a variety of curricular interests that directly address PASS.

This workshop is designed to provide teachers with a movement/dance experience that is enjoyable and non-threatening. Teachers will explore the art form and discover classroom applications.

This workshop is designed to provide teachers with a movement/dance experience that is enjoyable and non-threatening. Knowing that many teachers have had little experience with dance, this workshop is designed to help teachers explore the art form and discover possible classroom applications.

Moving is an important part of dancing, but it is only the beginning. In this session, we will discover how dance differs from everyday movement and how that can affect its meaning for children. We will explore dance vocabulary and ways of integrating dance into the curriculum.

Come and experience our workshop, as our students do…diversely! Share with us strategies utilizing our learning styles, focused on writing, social studies, music and movement to make our teaching more successful. Acknowledge ongoing assessment to help plan effective instruction and to accommodate our student's intelligences. Be the teacher who makes a difference, the one where students excel and enjoy learning.

This workshop will provide a variety of hands-on, interactive and fun activities that will help increase students’ vocabulary and test-taking skills. Participants will gain an understanding of some of the difficulties that at-risk students face when working with vocabulary and language arts curriculum. Teachers will gain tools that will help strengthen students ability to “decode” school.

This dig will explore the connections between Early Childhood and the A+ Essentials. Come along as we rediscover treasures of young children. We’ll use many tools to investigate MI in the Early Childhood classroom. You’ll take with you artifacts and ideas for your next excursion.

Drum Circles make connections with people, communities and curriculum!   Basic drumming techniques as well as curricular ties will be experienced by all participants as they enjoy exploring instruments, cultures and making music.   Participants will take the experience of the drum circle and many ideas for application and management back to their own classroom settings.

This is truly a musical experience that will get you moving! We will be taking Will Schmid's World Music Drumming curriculum and infusing Orff, dancing and singing. While staying true to the African culture of teaching by rote, all participants will be learning important skills needed to be successful in the classroom including focus, communication, trust, and respect.

Drum Circles make connections with people, communities and curriculum!   Basic drumming techniques as well as curricular ties will be experienced by all participants as they enjoy exploring instruments, cultures and making music.   Participants will take the experience of the drum circle and many ideas for application and management back to their own classroom settings.

This workshop is designed to guide participants into simple ways of integrating the experiences of music into classrooms. Participants will learn simple and healthy drumming techniques that they can use with students to explore the rhythm of language (including poetry) as it applies to reading and speaking. They will learn some simple rhythmic patterns and how these patterns “weave together” to make musical textures. There will be spaces in which participants may add new parts as they become more comfortable with the way drumming and rhythm textures (also called “polyrhythms”) work. This workshop is adaptable to all classroom levels. Participants will have a handout of the resources used to take with them.

If you have ever noticed how your Early Childhood students twist, bend, and look at you upside down, then this is the workshop for you! Utilizing that young energy this workshop focuses on Early Childhood curriculum that can be taught through creative dance experiences. Curriculum content will include shapes, vocabulary, opposites, patterns, rhymes and sequencing, plus your own ideas! In addition, suggestions for directing that youthful energy into a productive (not chaotic) movement experience will be discussed. Join us in some fun

Enriching Vocabulary allows participants to experience activities that appeal to and inform both sides of the brain. Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic tools will be utilized. These arts-integrated practices promise to stimulate need, interest, and even passion for words. Additionally, each practice is ideal for adjustment according to a particular classroom's curriculum and level. Experience it today---use it tomorrow!

Classroom teachers love the A+ musical ideas, but always lack funding for musical instruments. This workshop will provide all participants with ideas and resources on how to take junk, recyclables, and other inexpensive easy-to-find materials and turn them into beautiful, functioning classroom instruments. Each participant will create his own original musical instrument and collaboratively present an informance at the end of the session. Bring any materials you would like to "get rid of." Some examples might be empty bottles, fishing tackle, keys, string, laundry detergent boxes, buckets, wood scrapes, mailing tubes, etc...

Grab your saddle bag, map, diary and run back to . Experience life the 1800. Experience life in the 19th century. What did you need to live? How did you live? Who were your neighbors? How did you handle life's conflicts? Let's dramatize with puppets resolutions that occurred and created this new state. Boomers and Sooners are welcomed!

Excite and motivate your students for learning about cultural diversity! Bring Social Studies alive as you explore the continents through games, movement, songs, and stories while making connections across the curriculum.

“Faces” uses literature to inspire collaboration in poetry and art. This workshop draws its focus from literature but lessons can be aligned easily in other curriculum areas. Participants will respond to literature and information about cultural masks by creating their own original poem inspired by their feelings and by creating a mask to reflect those feelings.

Your test-taking prayers are answered! Based on blueprints from the State Department of Education website on accountability and accessibility, these activities are designed to engage students in deeper thinking. Discover how to transfer knowledge into test format. This workshop focuses on comprehension, critical literacy, data interpretation, and positive mind-set for testing!

What are your students reaping from their reading? Join us for an interactive exploration using creative dramatics to encourage literacy skills and creative writing. Predicting, inferences, comprehension, perception and summary skills will be utilized during the workshop. Participants will leave energized with no cost strategy to use with students in the classroom.

Become more comfortable with using dance in your classroom as you review and apply the elements of creative dance. Using the language arts example of the beloved fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, you will use dance as a teaching tool highlighting classroom management strategies through the use of verbal cueing and props. The steps we will take, both literally and figuratively, will accumulate into an “informance”, an enriched assessment tool.

 

Is it art fake or fabulous? How would you know? Examine "Masterpieces" including Monet, Van Gogh and Pollock. Look through the eyes of an artist. Examine the evidence as a scientist and then analyze the data as a mathematician. What will be our recommendation- Garage Sale or Gallery?

Don’t miss your chance to become the A+ action hero. Job Opportunities for Quality control experts! Is Barbie a real Model? Can Spider man be human? Participants will explore the relationship between dolls and/or action figures and the average man or woman. We will work in groups to examine the evidence. We will share our findings and opinions in an article for a newspaper. Then using a scale factor, measurement and imagination each participant will create an A+ action figure hero wire sculpture of themselves. Who do you want to be? What super power would you like to have? You are only limited by the size of your imagination.

Be creative. Think outside the book. Come and experience Reader's Theatre that is based on social studies, science, and math curriculum. Participate in a reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution . Discover easy ways to stage readings to make them interesting and meaningful for your students.   Connections to your curriculum and how to create Reader's Theatre will be discussed and shared.

 

This workshop will help teachers integrate science and drama with their units on the solar system. Focus will be on the sun as the star at the center of our solar system. Acting out stories from around the world about the sun will be incorporated with an artistic experiment using the sun and solar sensitive paper. Connections to other scientific units will be made.

Designed to deepen levels of two way integration, I’ve got the POWER! explores movement in the science classroom. Participants will explore energy through inquiry based experimentation and movement. Starting with preliminary steps to prepare students for moving in the classroom, we will progress through a variety of levels of dance integration and finish with movement as an assessment of student understanding, Participants will leave with basic steps to implement dance in their classrooms and a common vocabulary so they can have the POWER to continue to use dance in their classroom.

You’d like to have your students do more Informances, but they always turn into major events. In this workshop you will get ideas and suggestions on how to keep Informances informative, informal and student centered. Also, how to use informances as assessments and learning opportunities will be covered. 

 

Inspiration for lessons comes from a variety of sources. Let us help you find PASS concepts in stimulating resources of literature, visual art and educational websites. This collaborative experience offers different hands on visual art and writing activities.

Participants will explore basics of biodiversity and environmental science as we integrate visual art, drama, and creativity into the study of ecosystems, biomes and food webs. Collaborating fellows teaching middle school and high school collaborated to create a workshop with different levels of students in mind. Come explore interactions all over the planet!

Travel the globe without ever leaving the building. This journey begins with a classroom study of a country. Individual classrooms study a country integrating PASS, using multiple resources such as books, internet, artifacts, videos and interviews. Connect with community groups and parents to share their talents. This study culminates in a school-wide celebration of cultural diversity.

Remember the good old days of the Junk Yard Band? This workshop will provide all participants with ideas and resources on how to take junk, recyclables, and other inexpensive easy-to-find materials and turn them into beautiful, functioning, classroom instruments. Connections to science curriculum and how sound travels through space will be explored as well as looking at how instruments are classified. Each participant will create a musical instrument and collaborate on a musical composition. (Materials will be provided, but feel free to bring materials you would like to “get rid of.” Some examples might be empty bottles, fishing tackle, keys, string, laundry detergent bottles and boxes, buckets, wood scrapes, mailing tubes, etc.)

What makes us move is also what makes us think. A better brain is better equipped to think, remember, and learn. This workshop will help teachers learn strategies for encouraging movement throughout the day in a classroom setting. Participants will create a “treasure chest” of movement tools to help students become kinesthetic learners.

An overview of Dr. Jane Goodall’s curriculum, Lessons for Hope, this workshop will cover multiple intelligences, self-reflection, and observation skills. Using her website, participants explore Dr. Goodall’s work with chimpanzees throughout her years of research. Development of student created community action plans and promoting conservation awareness are a large component in Lessons for Hope.

Designed particularly for counselors, this workshop uses a road metaphor to help students make sense of their feelings and behaviors. Participants will create their own symbolic “life road”, covering a specified period of time in their lives. Discussion will cover ways to process students’ maps therapeutically, establish connections to core subjects and the Multiple Intelligences, and integrate music, drama, or movement into this process.

Do you want to make math more exciting? Do you long for music class to have a deeper meaning? Then M & M – Math and Music workshop is a must see for you! This music and math workshop will combine PASS objectives from both math and music to create exciting ideas for direct application in the classroom. Many mathematical concepts are imbedded within music and naturally lend understanding and insight to each other during instruction. Participants in this workshop will explore such concepts as congruent shapes, fractions, patterning, graphing, order of operations and analysis through participation in the activities planned. Teachers will take easily adaptable lesson plan ideas back to the classroom from this workshop.

Move your students toward higher level thinking skills. It IS mathematically possible and motivating for students and teachers alike! Dance and creative movement will be used to establish a positive classroom community as well as address conceptual ideas in math. A basic understanding of the elements of dance will be integrated with problem solving skills, geometry, operations, patterning, time, measurement, and number sense. "M"-agine how fun and motivating math can be as you "M"-power and "M"-bellish your practice!

Do you have students for whom the translation of sounds to symbols and vice versa is a challenge? Do you have students you'd like to interest and inspire with visual art while tapping into the power of higher order thinking? This workshop will provide you with tools and ideas to take back for classroom application and great ways to use the resources of the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art for your students. We will address the history of the written word using real artifacts and artwork from the Museum collection, connections between literacy and musical notation, and connections of visual art to literacy skills.

 

Participants will identify number patterns appropriate for their students from simple multiples to binomial expansion coefficients. We will use Pascal’s Triangle to extend some of those patterns and then combine them with color to create a design. Participants will learn how these connections can be applied to enhance our mathematics curriculum and provide our students with experiences that reinforce important PASS skills through the arts integration model of Oklahoma A+ Schools®.

Not able to take your class to the museum? Never fear, the museum can come to you! Discover how you can use museums as a resource for your class and make connections to your curriculum. In this workshop, we will use art on loan from the Maybee-Gerrer Museum in Shawnee to visit African culture. Participants will use African designs to create a small mask to wear. Literature connections using stories about Anansi the Spider will be used to integrate dance and theater. Come visit the art museum, right in your own classroom!

This workshop will demonstrate meeting the needs of all learners by integrating dance and visual arts with math curriculum. Participants will experience The Brain Dance and creative dance elements of shape, space, time and force/effort/energy to explore the math concepts of sequence, place value, multiplication, geometry, and algebra. In visual art they will analyze 2 dimensional visual artworks, identifying line, pattern, repetition variation and unity.

Participants will be introduced to the art forms of a contemporary native culture of Mexico whose heritage is rooted in pre-Colombian traditions. Mayan bark painting often reflects the customs and beliefs of the people. Through a short narrative, participants will be given a brief introduction to the culture while learning the objectives that go into making a bark painting. Using a piece of "bark" paper, participants will create a beautiful painting.

Jump into experiencing Multiple Intelligence strategies that promote the understanding and application of measurement. This workshop tackles a variety of mathematical skills connected to measurement and the tools needed to support our work. A moving experience where you will surely measure up in a big way!

How would simple observation of a single object develop process skills in both science and visual art? Use all the Multiple Intelligences? How could students then learn to expand that observation? Observation is listed as the basis to the Science PASS process skills in every grade level   It is also listed along with imagination and memory as key to the process PASS skills of visual art. This workshop will show participants how to use observation of a single object to learn about all the science process skills, make art, and develop more productive and creative problem solving skills at the same time. Participants will also learn how to use the planning tool, A Curriculum and Project Planner that correlates Blooms with multiple intelligences.

Participants will take part in exploring ways to assess PASS objectives using all eight Multiple Intelligences. They will create a variety of assessment activities using MIs to evaluate student’s mastery of PASS. Each teacher will come away with new MI assessment tools to use in their classroom.

 

Have fun exploring connections by constructing beautiful mobiles.   Participants will literally and figuratively create “family branches”. Discover curriculum connections for all core subjects while integrating the Arts and honoring all Multiple Intelligences. Explore enriched assessment for different age levels. This workshop, simple yet profound, is packed with possibilities!

This workshop is demonstrated by two special education teachers who used these art integrated ideas in their resource room / lab setting with children with a range of levels and disabilities. Together we will explore the art of mural painting, mosaics, and stain glass all in a modified sense. This workshop will not only give you three more great ideas for your classroom but we’ll also have so much fun creating!

Using theater, story-telling and classical music selections, participants will create a movie, complete with soundtrack, to retell a historical event or era. Examples might include the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, Letters Home from Soldiers, Voices of Women, or other topics.

What are Multiple Intelligences? How can the understanding of this theory impact classroom instructional practices? Come to this session to get an experiential overview of Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences!

You are invited to come and “connect” with music in a safe, fun environment as we discover curricular connections that will make our classrooms more exciting. Within this workshop, participants will explore ways to use music in their classroom while creating a positive, emotionally-secure surrounding.

Why am I on this excavation? What treasures lay buried in my school for me to unearth? Paraprofessionals and support staff provide immeasurable assistance to A+ Schools. Come to this workshop to discover your value in the A+ Network!

The Oklahoma Centennial Poetry Workshop is designed to inform A+ Schools about this collaboration on the state centennial and offer practical ways to connect to specific PASS skills in creative and innovative ways. Participants will receive guidelines, ideas, and models suited to practical use this statewide poetry lesson. Come and find out about our exciting partnership with Canterbury Choral Society and this opportunity for meaningful integration of poetry writing in all grade levels.

 

Once Upon A Time in a Computer Lab offers practical and highly adaptable ideas and experiences for today’s curriculum as enhanced by technology. This workshop draws its focus from literature but each lesson can be aligned easily with most any curriculum area. It will offer open-ended lessons and will address varying degrees of technical ability.

Using the newspaper as a jumping off place, we explore music, writing, and movement to pull meaning from this simple prop. Participants will discover the power of their own creativity. Results may cover a wide range of possibilities from the humorous to the profound.

 

This interactive workshop will provide pertinent information to better understand how the human brain works as related to learning and memory. The workshop will look at facts, myths and mysteries of the brain, make a brain model, and find ways to help students remember what they need to know and how to access the information when they need it.

Using experiential learning experiences participants will explore and create portraits. Participants will also have an opportunity to have an art appreciation experience viewing art prints and having an open discussion of the characteristics of portraits. Participants will make direct connections to using visual arts for math, science, and social studies PASS.

How can dance be utilized to teach collaboration and group problem-solving skills? Whether 6 or 64, movement is the first form of communication, so why not use it in new and creative ways? The participants will gain insight and experience easy learning skills that can be shared with others.   Come with comfortable clothing, an open mind and a willingness to enjoy your own creativity. Dance experience is not required.

Quilting—Pieces of Lives uses narratives to inspire collaboration using all of the arts. Participants respond to quilt-inspired personal narratives using dance, drama, choral voice, visual art, and instrumental music. This response is then showcased in an informance.

Looking for a creative approach to get your students actively engaged in their learning process? Wanting theater ideas that immediately transfer to use in the classroom? This theater workshop provides activities that creatively and experientially teach PASS. Participants will walk away from this workshop saying, “I’m ready to DIG IN to Drama!”

How can we connect history to your school hallway? Help your students understand the importance of empathy and taking a stand through an examination of Holocaust poetry, art, and contemporary issues.

This High School-Middle School workshop shows a variety of classroom tools for students of different learning styles. It includes: a Renaissance power point, a student-created modern Dante's Inferno, Fibonacci math, body-building Brunelleschi's dome, and student-created songs, among other active learning activities.

Wow your students! Get kids interested in science! Learn how to put on a science magic show by watching and participating in this wild, crazy and dramatic experience. All levels!

Have you ever wanted your students to be a teacher for a day? This exercise will give them that opportunity, while reinforcing written material that all teachers must use at some point in instruction. Following step-by-step instructions, teachers will be given a variety of texts to create and perform their own plays.

This workshop answers the question of how to engage students in exploring and discovering their personal connections as they begin an area of study. The workshop combines creative movement and creative writing to help us all go deeper (rather than broader) into a concept or idea and finding personal meaning.   The reflective process we'll use applies to all content areas and all grades.   The workshop is hands-on. Everyone will leave with a small handmade book that captures their experience.   We'll see how silent instruction works. Adaptations to the classroom will be discussed.   Everyone will leave with a Reflective Process Guide to use in their classroom.

Space…the creative frontier. These are the voyages of the A+ Enterprise, using arts with students. This workshop explores basic beginning vocabulary for visual art, music, and dance. Using the glossary sections of the visual art and music PASS skills, we will find similarities between the art forms while creating a visual art project. This workshop is designed for any teacher wanting a review of terms or anyone just starting out on their voyage.

Discover the common threads in the arts of different people and the variations that contribute to the richness of the culture we enjoy today. Reenact common events in the lives of people through stories, songs, and dances of their place and time in history. Examples in this workshop will come from Colonial America’s European and African communities.

Participants will be able to use traditional and non-traditional (inexpensive) percussion instruments to create songs that will be easy and fun to do. Participants will also be able to take with them all the rhythms used during this workshop so that the drumming experience can be used in the classroom.

Many educators believe that all learners, beginners or accomplished artists, create beautiful and original works of art and poetry easily. Images (visual art) deserves words (poetry) and words (poetry) deserves images (visual art). It is in the playful and joyful conversation between the two that artists' find inspiration. So will you and your students. Or sometimes letting the original art be the starting point with the written reflection be the next step. All the ways the process can be used will be explained. Participants will come away with original art, poetry and a simple reflective process to use for themselves and their students that they can apply to multiple learning situations

Do our students consider the arts of other cultures as "walls" that include some but exclude others? As "bridges" that allow us to enter another culture? Or as "windows" through which to imagine and possibly, through participation and engagement, invite us to enter? Come and experience other people's lives through the unique creations of their cultures. Musical instruments invite you to open a window to China. A dance encourages you to take steps into a slice of Peruvian culture, and simple fans destroy walls and create bridges to the magical world of Japan.

Drawing on the countless versions of Cinderella, participants will experience research and analysis that culminates with a student-driven synthesis. Let the left and right sides of the brain work together painlessly to create a fresh, original piece of writing. This practice can be applied to any literary genre, not just the fairy tale. The practices offered in this workshop can infuse 4th-12th grade classrooms and offer the flexibility to reflect the different PASS objectives.

Classroom teachers love the A+ musical ideas, but always lack funding for musical instruments. This workshop will provide all participants with ideas and resources on how to take junk, recyclables, and other inexpensive easy-to-find materials and turn them into beautiful, functioning classroom instruments. Each participant will create his own original musical instrument and collaboratively present an informance at the end of the session. Materials will be provided, but feel free to bring any materials you would like to "get rid of." some examples might be empty bottles, fishing tackle, keys, string, laundry detergent boxes, buckets, wood scrapes, mailing tubes, etc...

Come enjoy the fun, power & unity of drum circles! Find out how drum circles could become an ESSENTIAL part of your school and community! No musical experience necessary! Traditional drum circles are not about teaching people to play, they are about giving people permission to play! Come see how easy it can be to facilitate and participate in a drum circle. This workshop is ESSENTIAL if you are looking for a fun, positive musical experience with helpful hints, tips and resources for establishing, facilitating, and participating in a drum circle. Everyone is welcome; all ages and all levels of ability

Looking intently is integral in learning to draw and in observing to collect scientific data. Understanding that the sense of sight helps us to sort and classify, we begin to teach our eyes to stand still and look intently. In an art activity, participants will copy the hand as they see it in contour line drawings. Next with The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown as a resource, participants will look and observe, record and write the important thing about an object.

E. Paul Torrance began developing the Incubation Model in 1949 when he became bothered that courses in psychology and education had such little impact upon what happened in classrooms. He knew that something could be done to arouse and motivate teachers and keep them thinking about their insights. His 3 step Incubation Model is easy, invigorating and powerful in addressing the learning needs of all students and encouraging creativity. This workshop will involve learning about and creating Incubation Model lesson plans.

 

How can you use theatre in the classroom? Gain confidence in your ability to lead theatre activities. Discover how to teach, reinforce, and assess curricular concepts through theatre games, improvisation, and dramatic structures. Get your kinesthetic and verbal learners involved!

This workshop is designed to share some of the communication and collaboration techniques we use in the A+ Fellows network with our A+ schools. How do we use inference skills wisely in our interactions with colleagues? What tools can assist us as we seek to understand our teammates? How can we maximize our conversation time?

This is the ultimate secondary transformation workshop. Participants will use transformations of functions to compose music, reinforce the concepts of geometric transformations, connect vocabulary across the disciplines, identify the symmetry in nature, and create an original design using transformations and symmetry. Participants will take with them a song book with original compositions of the class, a saved to disc copy of their design and class ready activity sheets and handouts correlated to PASS and their curriculum.

Dig into the connections between acquisition of literacy and musical skills. Through listening, creating and participation in musical experiences discover the parallels to language that strengthen fluency in both areas.

What do Visual Art and Math have in common? Using art prints, we will discover math in art and art in math, exploring pattern, proportion, position, equivalency, prediction, and memory.

This workshop will attempt to take the mystery out of visual art by offering opportunities to answer questions such as “What is art? and Where does art come from?” Participants will explore the visual world through hands-on experiences of discovery, observation and recall. Lessons are specifically linked to PASS skills.

If “seeing is believing,” students need to put the words they read into pictures that they can understand. This workshop will give participants three options to use with their students to deepen reading comprehension. Participants will leave with directions for the Body Biography, a Mural assignment, storyboarding and a Mind Map. Participants will create their own Mind Map.

What would you observe if you looked at a classroom where children were involved in creative movement? The furniture would be pushed back to create an open space. The children would be dressed in school clothes but may not be wearing shoes. Movements such as twisting, curling and melting would be uniquely expressed in each child. They are concentrating and aware that this movement is special and different from casual play or a game. They move, think, and feel. They are learning. They are dancing.

This non-threatening creative workshop focuses on developing a structure for making dance a viable element in the classroom. Using the language of movement with Science and Language Arts PASS Objectives, participants will experience scientific process and thinking skills, as the concepts of waves and weather are explored. Participants will leave with tools to use movement in their own class and a structure for guiding students in the creation of their own dance. Wear comfortable clothing so you, too, can “Walk with the Waves.”

 

Participants will learn how to create task cards that target multiple intelligences. They will see how an art print can be used in the place of literature to introduce a concept from PASS in various curriculum areas. They will create a set of task cards that can be used in their classroom next fall. Participants will have the resources and skills to create task cards in any subject as well as a sample set when they leave the workshop.

 

Join us as we paint some of Oklahoma's most famous wildflowers. We will be using posters and photos from Oklahoma City Beautiful as inspiration for our painting in hopes of returning the finished art work back to them to further their efforts to adorn our highways with the beautiful native Oklahoma wildflowers. We will also have a blank canvas for free expression of inspirations.

This workshop is designed to reconnect your school to the framework of A+ and can be adjusted to focus on any or all of the essentials. It can include emphasis on effective communication and climate of your school, community engagement, multiple intelligence practice, assessment, grounding new staff members in A+ or other objectives relevant to your school's needs. This workshop celebrates all that your school is doing which fits into the framework of the A+ Essentials.

Remove the mystery of Shakespeare by experiencing the language, rhythm, and the characters in a fresh and accessible way. Please note that two versions of this workshop are available depending upon your grade level.

Will Power, Jr.: (Grades 3-6) Learn how to present Iambic Pentameter in a non-threatening way by experiencing the rhythm that never changes. Design your own costumes for paper doll puppets to act out specific scenes using the Bard’s words. Create a time line and draw a map where the action takes place. Will Power says… Shakespeare is Elementary!

Will Power, Sr.: (Grades (7-12) Experience iambic pentameter in ways that provide insight into why it is what it is. Particpants will manipulate both sonnets and verses from The Comedy of Errors in exploring language and characterization. This workshop will touch on all that is offered in Will Power, Jr. as well as including ways to use masterpiece artwork from Emory University's Shakespeare Illustrated to provide prompts for the all-important essay.

 

Have you wondered- “What about the young child? How can I create menaingful experiences that connect objectives and A+ Essentials? How do I assess?”

You’ll discover some of the answers and gain experience as a variety of art forms are explored. You’ll take with you ideas that support planning, instructing and assessing in the early childhood classroom. 

 

Students with profound and mild autism (as well as other special needs) can benefit from a developmental approach to both movement and visual art. The facilitators will present a workshop that enables teachers to understand the basics of movement and visual art as they relate to the special needs of these learners.

Make movies count to support almost any curricular subject, while students learn to view them actively and critically. Through writing about film, students will increase media literacy while improving writing skills using a medium many students love.

Make room in your toolbox for some new ideas to take with you as you experience basic elements of drama and dance which are integrated into an activity that brings together science, language arts and social studies. This experience can be connected to every grade level as we zoom in on how to use and organize the arts. As you zoom out, you will see a clear image of how all the components fit together. In your toolbox you will take practical applications, glossaries, and a multitude of activities that will help you build your own classroom connections.