CNY Grants for Arts in Education - art$TART

Morgan Road Elementary and Ginger Dunlap-Dietz

The M.R.E. community came together with questioning, exploring, and visualizing-stimulating poetic and artistic imagery, and applied this interaction to the process of creating a mosaic mural. The mission was accomplished. . . and more.

Morgan Road students used the language of rhythm, pattern, texture/layers, tone color, and imagery as they listened to and created music, wrote poetry and displayed imagery through work with clay. In theater workshop, Morgan Road students were able to put the idea of imagery and demonstrate the idea of imagery within their bodies and physical beings. Students showed understanding of the correlation among these elements in visual art, music, and poetry, leading to the success of the mosaic experience.

Morgan Road students used the language of rhythm, pattern, texture/layers, tone color, and imagery as they listened to and created music, wrote poetry and displayed imagery through work with clay. In theater workshop, students were able to put the idea of imagery and demonstrate the idea of imagery within their bodies and physical beings. Daily integration of vocabulary and language of the mosaic project used was used in all classrooms. Students showed understanding of the correlation among these elements in visual art, music, and poetry, leading to the success of the mosaic experience. This project brought a cohesive connection of character education throughout our community.

Expression and creativity flowed throughout the project.  Each fifth and sixth grader expressed his/her poetry through visual artistic imagery.  All students have taken ownership in this mosaic artwork.  They have spoken about their work to others, and described the meaning of their artistic imagery, and the connection between the visual work and their individual poems. Students and adults have implemented similar tile/mosaic work at home. Morgan Road plans to continue making connections among the disciplines of art, music, language arts, Social Studies, and character education.  The mosaic will be the theme for the first music project with sixth graders in September 2006.