For years, schools have considered arts education a costly frill ready to be whacked out of the budget when money gets tight. But hold that ax. The latest research proves that a healthy dose of the arts makes kids better readers.
Whirlwind, a not-for-profit group of actors, dancers and musicians with arts programs in 24 Chicago schools, uses dancers to teach 1st graders how to bend their bodies to learn the rudiments of phonics. Whirlwind actors teach 4th graders how to create “movies” in their heads of the stories they’re reading, thereby improving their reading-comprehension scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.
Students in the program improved their reading skills 33 percent more than other 4th graders in the same school, according to a study released in October 1997. During 10 weeks of creating movies in their heads, students improved reading comprehension by 12.1 months, compared to 9.1 months for other 4th graders, which was described as a significant difference by the 3-D Group, the California research firm that conducted the study.
Whirlwind bases its trail-blazing programs on educational research. Its Reading Comprehension Through Drama program is based on studies conducted by California research practitioner and former classroom teacher Nanci Bell, author of “Gestalt Imagery: A Critical Factor in Language Comprehension.” Bell discovered that good readers create pictures or movies in their heads as they read.
“We took that idea and said, `Let’s see if we can get those pictures forming in kids’ heads better and therefore their reading skills and their reading scores going up,’ ” said Karl Androes, Whirlwind’s executive director.
He said a student cuts a story’s characters from paper and works with a partner to tell the tale. Then the class acts it out.
“They read something that is flat on the page and turn it into an acted-out drama. Then we use both of those things to discuss the facts and inferences,” said Androes.
Another Whirlwind program, called Basic Reading Through Dance, teaches 1st graders how to recognize the sights and sounds of letters and even whole words by using their bodies to form the letters.
“Dancers frequently use different sources for motivation, sometimes shapes or a text, but I haven’t heard of anyone who is doing what we are doing to teach reading,” said Elizabeth Johnston, Whirlwind’s program manager, who is a dancer.
A study evaluating the results of the dance program is expected to be released this summer.
It’s not surprising that Whirlwind arts programs and their reading-test results are sparking national interest. “We get a call about once a week” from educators wanting a copy of the Whirlwind research, said Androes.
Whirlwind recently introduced another educational innovation. Its after-school Arts Labs, at three Chicago elementary schools, create teams of teachers and parents to improve academic performance through the arts.
“We wanted to see schools networking with one another, teachers sharing with one another and the involvement of parents in the schools,” said Pat Ford, program director for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the major funder for Whirlwind’s Arts Lab project.
Annenberg fosters programs that help schools create “a more personalized environment so that students and their families are well known. Too many schools were built to be anonymous factories,” said Ford. “We want schools to think of ways where they can put smaller numbers of kids in relationship with adults so that kids have a sense of belonging, a sense that someone cares about them.”
The Arts Lab was Whirlwind’s answer.
Two parents, two teachers, a Whirlwind artist/facilitator and 20 students take part in each of the after-school programs.
“We found many parents were eager to work in the schools, but they were afraid,” said Androes. The parents feared they lacked knowledge and training. At the same time teachers were eager for parents’ help but were “scared about having someone in their classroom without training. They feared (volunteers) might be more of a hindrance than a help,” said Androes.
By training parents and teachers to work as a team, everyone benefits, he said.
“The wonderful thing about the Whirlwind program is that it really transforms the educational process. The teachers are learning new techniques that carry over into all of their subjects,” said Geraldine Banks, principal at John H. Kinzie Elementary School, on Chicago’s Southwest Side, one of three city schools with Arts Lab programs.
Teachers trained in Whirlwind techniques like the results they are seeing in their classrooms. Teryl Woods, a Kinzie 1st-grade teacher of deaf students, said her students “are much more active readers” since she and her team teacher, Sandra Caudill, went through the Arts Lab course. “They’re a lot more excited about a lot of things that we’re doing,” said Woods, explaining that the techniques help even non-readers or “emerging” readers feel successful.
Melissa Munoz, a pigtailed Kinzie 1st grader, was eager to prove Woods’ point. Her eyes flashed with eagerness as she held her hands in front of her as if they were an open book. She was signing to the teacher that she wanted to be the narrator when the class acted out the latest reading assignment, “Five Little Monkeys Jumped on the Bed.” “No one wanted to be the narrator before,” said Woods.
At a Kinzie training session, volunteer parent Debora Rolek was leading a learning circle of two teachers, two parents and Whirlwind actor/facilitor Little Tom Jackson. The kids were expected the next day. Rolek struggled to pass an imaginary box, seemingly very heavy and very big, to one of the teachers in the team. Everyone took a turn, gingerly passing along the nonexistent box. Jackson called the exercise “the energy pass” game, designed to teach children how to focus on a task.
The teacher-parent teams learn three basic skills: establishing teamwork, gaining control of a classroom and using the arts as a teaching tool.
“There’s nothing more frustrating to a teacher than having 30 kids in a room who are moving around and you can’t get them to stop. It’s a sense chaos will begin, which is why teachers get very scared about movement and drama and music,” said Androes, a professional trombone player who along with two other artists founded Whirlwind 15 years ago when they were looking for “day jobs.”
Today his trombone is nowhere to be seen. Instead, language-arts books crowd his office bookcase. “I’ve never read so much about reading in my entire life,” he said.
