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July 31, 2014

Family Globes: Art, Social Studies and French Immersion

Guest blogger Sara Pitt teaches French Immersion Kindergarten at George Pringle Elementary in West Kelowna, BC. She has been involved in arts integration over her 17-year teaching career and is excited to be developing her own such projects, as well as being recently involved with ArtStarts and working with artist Paula Scott as part of the Infusion Cohort program. Sara will be sharing some of the arts integration projects that she has been involved in.


As part of our Primary arts integration experience throughout this school year, we completed a series of projects with Infusion Teaching Artist Paula Scott.

The family globes project was an awesome opportunity for students to learn more art processes, develop those they already have had exposure to, and to use the end product for our Kindergarten Social Studies theme of Families.

Students learned how to papier mâché (a common Primary practice!) … and create an attractive "finish" to the globes with torn tissue paper and modge podge.

Students then drew their families and cut them out and modge podged them onto the globes.

Challenges included, of course, things taking longer than expected and taking into account student absences at the different stages! Once our Infusion Teaching Artist, Paula, had completed her time with the students on this project, we continued to work on them.

I responded to a call for art to be displayed at Rotary Centre for the Arts as part of our Education Week. The globes are displayed in the main foyer of the Arts Centre for our community to enjoy!

One of the most exciting and encouraging thing for me as a class teacher, especially in French Immersion, is to see the created art applied in another curriculum area. Students shared family photos, and then their globes, as part of our daily Show and Tell and learned how to ask and respond to questions in French concerning their family as well as making "summary statement" about their family.

Many of my students during our free-choice centre times, they will take my "modeled sentence structures" and "props" (photos, globes etc) and re-enact the process all over again! Recently, I observed two boys who have only ever played with "hands on" equipment up to this point, enjoying using the globes and family photos to ask and answer questions in French! Initialized learning taking place: check! Development of language skills: check!


Learn more about the Infusion Cohort program.

Read more guest blogs about Arts Integration in Action!

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