Arts For All | A Day in the Classroom with Arts For All: PS76

Written by 2023-24 AFA Intern Mackenzie Timbrell

November 8, 2023:

On Wednesday, November 8th, I was able to join teaching artists Marcela Artunduaga and Allison Reed at PS76 in Queens. The first two classrooms I joined were kindergarten classes with Marcela. For each classroom, we started out with a fun acting exercise to get prepared to engage with the material we were looking at for the day. Then, we moved on to a poem called The Sound Collector that was about a person who collected all of the sounds in the world. As we read the story, we made the noise of every sound that was mentioned. The children loved this activity, particularly the call and response aspect of the noises we were repeating. This was a great and engaging activity to familiarize the students with poems. At the end of this activity, we focused on other noises we may hear in different environments. At the end of both classes, we said our final call and response goodbye, which transitioned the students from art to their next subject. The final class of the day was a second-grade classroom with Marcela and Allison. In the previous class, they had just read the book, Duck for President, which is about a duck holding an election to be the leader of the farm. For this class, the activity was to make an election poster saying whether or not you want the duck to be president. The children loved this idea and got right to work creating their election posters. They also learned about debate and how to have a friendly debate about different topics (summer vs. winter, burger vs. pizza, etc.). This class was so much fun, and it was great to see the students so involved in debate and understanding how to be respectful while presenting your argument. It was a wonderful experience going to PS76, and I look forward to seeing what activities the teaching artists have planned next!

November 29, 2023:

On Wednesday, November 29th, I had the pleasure of going back to PS76 in Queens to shadow Marcela and Allison once more. I started out in two kindergarten classrooms with Marcela. In a previous class, they were working with the book, The Gruffalo. Their first read-through was done without seeing a picture of the Gruffalo, so in this class we worked on mimicking what we thought the features of the Gruffalo looked like. Then, we read through the book again and revealed the appearance of the creature. The kids were really excited about this aspect of waiting to see the features of the Gruffalo. Our next activity was for the students to each take on a role in The Gruffalo and put on a “play.” The kids loved being characters and liked the call-and-response aspect of Marcela reading out the lines and the students repeating. After this activity, we did our final goodbye song with each classroom, and the students went back to their regular class schedule. The teaching artists find that doing this goodbye song at the end helps the students transition from one activity to another. The final class I attended for the day was a second-grade class with Marcela and Allison. This was the first day they were working with the book, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Marcela and Allison started out by acting out the story with the class. Then, we read through the story with pictures to have context for the play they just put on. I thought that this approach was really interesting, and it was awesome to see the kids so engaged with the content. This second-grade class is a bilingual classroom, so when Marcela was going through the story, she first went through it in Spanish, and then when we read the story, it was read in English. This was a really fascinating dynamic to see between all the students and how much respect everyone had for each language level. After this, we finished with a goodbye song, and the class transitioned to another subject. This was yet another wonderful experience shadowing Marcela and Allison, and it was great to see how engaged they are with the arts and the students.