Cool stuff happening for Maine kids
I had the pleasure recently of meeting with Catherine Anderson, Ovations Offstage director at Portland Ovations. Portland Ovations is one of the Maine Arts Commission’s recipients of the Arts Learning grant for the 2017-18 school year. The programming that Ovations Offstage has in place for learners is engaging, thought provoking, and creative. It is clear that Catherine is always thinking, planning, and considering ideas that will ‘light kids up’ to learning. Catherine came to Ovations three years ago after teaching Language Arts at King Middle School for 14 years. She is energetic and clearly focuses on what is best for learning and the learner. Thanks to Catherine for providing the information and images below that paints a picture of the opportunities that took place earlier this school year.
Ovations Offstage’s Cultivating Curiosity: Story to Stage programming incorporated arts integration built around the theatrical presentation of childhood literary classics (“Guess How Much I Love You” & “I Love My Little Storybook”) to promote early passion and understanding for the performing arts and pre/early literacy skills earlier this fall. The project supported these goals through professional development for early childhood educators in the summer, in-class pre-performance workshops with several area schools and post-performance workshops with the performing artists and their magical puppets from Nova Scotia.
Mushroom man – professional developme
The programming began with a delightful group of eager-to-play early childhood educators coming together to learn how to turn any story into a play in any classroom with even the most limited resources. We were particularly inspired by their willingness to look at stories they might be very familiar with in a completely new way. Visiting the classroom is always a thrill for our teaching artists. This fall’s visits to Kaler Elementary in South Portland, and the kindergarteners in North Yarmouth was no exception. Students pre-and post-assessment activities showed a rather sophisticated understanding of the similarities between an actor and character in a story!
Professional development for educators
We were very proud of our ability to place a hard copy of the book “Guess How Much I Love You” in the hands of all of the students who attended the play. Building a home library, and having an anchor-text for an entire class is so important to early literacy acquisition. What was most challenging for us was the fact that even with the finding in place to provide the books to students we still had empty seats in the Merill Auditorium. The thought that there were many young people out there who could not attend because their teachers or administrators did not have access to transportation, or the subsidized tickets is always hard for us to accept.
Our future dreams are to provide at least three to four offerings like this with books for a full house of students from across the state and a gaggle of teaching artists on board ready to work with any classroom ready and willing to turn their own stories into a play!
me arts ed 