Jim DellaCioppa

“The biggest success I find is that my kids’ work in poetry improved a lot! Their understanding of big themes like mood, rhythm, organization all showed signs of significant improvement after we did the TTAAP project. Even if the connections across the arts isn’t what we’d hope sometimes, their work in the subject areas gets better. They seem to write better poetry, and that’s makes it worth it to me. It was really surprising to see how well students carried over the themes they learned in poetry, to other forms of writing we did in language arts for the rest of the year. Though we haven’t formally researched it, it seems that kids’ transfer and understanding within the specific disciplines improves when we teacher for transfer.”

One of the most rewarding outcomes of this project has been seeing how the kids began to listen to music intelligently. I loved seeing the kids experiment with different instruments and just try out their ideas. They were immersed in their learning in music. It was wonderful to have kids understand that revising is a big part of learning and not evidence of punishment or failure. Sometimes after working on their projects with Linda Tilden, the art teacher at R.M.S., students would then rush down to the music room and ask to revise their compositions with me because of new ideas they got from art class. The shared themes and content between the arts began to link up for them.

Having one fifth grade student tell me, "Mrs. Tilden, I like doing this project. Art is starting to make sense to me" made the TTAAP project worthwhile for me. When I asked the student how art made sense, she replied, "it's about putting ideas on paper in color and shapes, and then being able to explain them to somebody." I found out later on that day that Jim DellaCioppa had talked about "putting ideas on paper" and "providing explanations for images poets use in their poems" during a poetry lesson he did. It seemed clear to me that this student had experienced some kind of insight about art. Although we didn't teach specifically for that particular connection in this case, this student made a jump in understanding. That felt pretty good to me.

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