the ampersand

The Emerging Curriculum Unfolds:  A Teacher Expands on How a Decision to see a Play Leads to a Multi-Faceted Unit  by Eileen Hynes

    Returning from mid-winter break, the primary classroom at the Lake and Park School launched into a study of Korea inspired by the novel A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park and the Seattle Children’s Theatre’s adaptation of the story on the stage.  To prepare for an integrated study it is always necessary for teachers to do some ground work and preliminary planning.  Mid-winter break provided the perfect opportunity.  The Children’s Theater offers a teacher preview that helps us prepare students for the performance.  At Lake and Park School we often like to wait to see the play towards the end of the study, after we have read the story the play is based on and also studied many related aspects of the story, as we did with Robin Hood.
      In Seattle we are fortunate to have many other resources available to teachers for use in our classrooms.  I visited the East Asia Resource Center at the University of Washington where Mary Cincade offered me many picture books, folk tales, videos, maps and a wonderful art exhibit from the Philadelphia Art Museum including a video of a modern day potter at work in Korea.  This video truly made apparent the ongoing work of the protagonist of the novel.

     I also arranged to borrow a teaching kit from the Seattle Art Museum.  This collection included child sized Hanbok, traditional Korean clothes for both boys and girls, a celadon vase, and a metalwork sculpture of Buddha.  In addition to our trip to the Seattle Children’s Theatre we visited the Wing Luke Museum, a real treasure in the heart of the international district, this museum focuses on the Asian American immigrant experience.  A final preparation during the mid-winter break was to reserve many books for our Korean study at the Seattle Public Library.  Whenever I am looking for reliable resources and booklists to use in my classroom I always first visit the World Affairs Council Global Classroom website. There I found a great lists of books.  Most of the books were available and I put them on reserve so I knew our scheduled walk to the Columbia City Library the first week of the study would be a successful experience, the books would be waiting for us.

 

I am an alumnus of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia.  This amazing class taught in many cities around the country and funded by the Freeman Foundation is a wonderful teacher resource and has provided me with a strong background in Asian studies and ongoing opportunities to continue to further my own learning.  The final resource is a truly a treasure, and that is your own school community.  The opportunity for students to plan questions and learn directly from a Korean American parent in our school community was the highlight of our learning together.

Once the homework (on the part of the teachers) is done, the resources made available in the classroom, and a couple of questions posed to the students the magic of learning can begin.  We knew our study was to be based on Linda Sue Park's Newbery award winning novel, A Single Shard.  In this mixed-age classroom some students who were able to read the book worked together in a teacher guided literature circle and others worked in a small group where the book was read aloud by a teacher.  In this way all students could participate and find the right balance between support and challenge.  All students were asked to discuss character development, make predictions, and glean different aspects of Korean culture that are evident in the story.  Students drew pictures to help them understand the setting of the story, acted out scenes from the book in a Reader’s Theater format, and made personal connections to the story.

     Throughout the study we read and listened to Korean folktales, learning about the importance of the tiger, the rabbit, the fox, and the crane.  (Because of our background in the tales, we were ready when the fox was mentioned in the novel and nodded in our shared knowledge and experience when Tree-ear spends the night in the mountains and does meet a fox.)   Students used Cuisenaire rods to build stages and sets of the folk tales, reinforcing the story and supporting our math work with the rods.  The students observed plum blossoms and drew and created scrolls depicting typical imagery of pottery and blossom.



Clay work became a natural extension of the study and we will always remember the Korean contributions to this art form.  Working with clay we were able to connect to the hard work Tree-ear did for potter Min as he dug the clay and prepared the slip.

Using a language "app", we learned to greet each other in Korean, annyounghaesso.  We were introduced to the most well known Korean children’s song, "San Toki" at the Wing Luke Museum. Returning to the classroom the class learned the song with the help of "YouTube" as a way to welcome and thank our parent visitors. 

We began the study with students asking questions about the country far across the Pacific Ocean. We learned about the geography of Korea during the month:  the climate, the peninsula, the mountains, and the sea.

A week before a Young-Bean Song, a Lake and Park parent and person of Korean ethnicity, was to come we again wrote questions, this time to be answered by our guest.  It was an effective way to see what we had learned and to focus on what new questions we had.

When Young-Bean Song visited our classroom he prepared an activity to introduce the students to the Korean alphabet in order to write each one's name in Korean.  It was a highlight of the study.  When it was time to write thank you notes many students signed their names in their new found script.  Everyone was happy to thank Young-Bean and Kelly, his wife, for the delicious Bi Bim Bop they shared with the class as well as so much more.

As a final acknowledgment of the learning and work the children  accomplished throughout the unit, parents were invited to visit the classroom and share their child’s folder of work before it went home.  The confidence and skill in writing and communicating original and complex ideas was a theme throughout the study and evident in the work.