Introduction

We as a group have decided to focus on creating a curriculum that will help

inform teachers about the resources that are available and the skills they need in order to
overcome the effects of budget cuts. This curriculum is directed towards teachers who
are experiencing budget cuts in their school districts. The states new budgets are
providing less per pupil funding for K-12 than they did six years ago (Leachman and
Mai, 2014, p.1). This is drastically taking an effect on the student's academic performance
by prioritizing academics and allowing recess and specials such as gym, art and music to
take a back seat in our schools. Research shows that by including physical activity, art
and music into the daily classroom schedule, an achievement in academic subjects and
the overall health and well-being of young children will increase.
Curriculum Rationale
It has been shown that the amount of time students spend in physical education
class can be correlated to how well the students perform academically. In the article
written by Rasbery, Lee, Robin, Laris, Russell, Coyle and Nihiser (2011), the authors
found that forty-seven studies to show the connection between physical education and
academic performance. The study revealed that sixteen of the studies had positive
correlations between physical education and academic performance. Thirty-one showed
no association and zero studies have showed a negative association (Rasberry et
al.,2011). If schools were to increase the amount of time that students spent in the
physical education class it still would not be detrimental to students academic
performance, even when the physical education class is taking time away from other core
subject areas.

This curriculum has been created in order to provide teachers with the skills
needed to incorporate in the daily classroom schedule; physical activity, art and music.
Students need to be provided with outlets during the day to be able to clearly focus and
comprehend during instruction. Schools that are cutting specials because of budget cuts
are often times also cutting out the students outlets. These outlets such as gym, art, and
music are being taken out of schools to focus more on instructing students for the
upcoming tests. Stagnation of the body leads to stagnation of the brain and unfocused,
hyper children (11 Ways Finlands Education System Shows us that Less is More,
2015). Research shows in other countries, such as Finland, that students perform better
in class and on assessments when they are provided with fifteen to twenty minute breaks
per sixty minutes of instruction. When eliminating art class from the students schedule,
it is harming young students fine motor development. By handling paint brushes and
gripping a marker a students fine motor skills are being developed and enhanced. Art
is a way to encourage the process of making things better, the up and coming
generations are not creative or inventive (Lynch, 2013). Students that participate in art
are more likely to be successful during academics because it gives students the skills to
observe, problem-solve, encourage listening skills and develops rich cooperative skills
(Gelineau, 2012).
Our group believes that students need to have the opportunity to express
themselves differently because each student learns in their own way. Thus, students
should be given ample time during the school day to express themselves through subjects
such as art, music, and gym. These subject areas will also correlate back to success in the
classroom.

Our curriculum will be focused towards an operational and hidden curriculum.

Operational curriculum can be described as what the teacher is teaching and how it is
being taught. The skills that the teachers are being taught in order to implement the
curriculum into their classroom will change how and in what way the teacher will teach
in the classroom. For example, during the day the teacher will include brain breaks
between activities such as jumping jacks, skip counting videos, arm circles, dance videos,
and BrainPOP videos. The teacher will also allow students to use more creative and
imaginative ways to present information that they have learned in different forms of
media, such as posters, videos, and plays. Our curriculum will also address the hidden
curriculum, which can be described as what students are unintentionally learning through
the lessons. Due to the frequent budge cuts students are experiencing less exposure to art,
music and physical activity. Through this curriculum teachers can expose students to
these outlets. The students are not directly being taught to be artists, musicians, and
athletes, but are giving the opportunity to learn how to use these medians as a form of
expression and in return experience more academic achievement in all areas.
Curriculum Overview
This curriculum is directed towards teachers who are experiencing budget cuts in
their school districts. It could also be particularly helpful to teachers and school
administrators that want to incorporate physical activity and the arts in the classroom.
Teachers will initially be taught the curriculum in a full-day workshop over the summer,
prior to the school year beginning. The first half of the workshop will be directed towards
the inclusion of physical activity and the arts in their everyday math and language arts
schedule. After an hour lunch break, the participants will begin learning how to

incorporate the arts and physical activity into their science and social studies instruction.
Finally, teachers will leave the workshop knowing:
How to recognize students need for an outlet of the arts and physical activity.
How to incorporate the arts and physical activity into their schedule.
How to actually carry out the objective of giving students an outlet.
Curriculum in Practice
Our philosophy is for students to achieve academic success in the classroom
through multiple ways of learning that incorporates the arts and physical movement. Each
subject can easily include activities and assignments that allow students to express their
learning in multiple ways. During our workshop we will demonstrate and present to
educators how to incorporate physical activity and the arts into all subject areas such as
math, science, social studies and language arts in a school that is undergoing budget cuts.
Math
During this workshop we will show ways to integrate physical activity into an
early childhood classroom through videos that get students up and moving while still
learning the math content. For example, showing BrianPOP videos, skip counting
videos, doing a timeline hop activity, or other educational videos that can be found
online. Math music videos also give the students the chance to express themselves
through music and singing. Teachers can be creative when it comes to designing lessons
that get students up and moving. For example, another way to integrate physical activity
into a math lesson would be to allow the students to use jump ropes and their bodies to
create shapes like polygons and parallel lines. This activity is a good way for students to
learn the characteristics of shapes by allowing students to work together and develop
social skills.

Incorporating art into an early childhood classroom can be really fun and
engaging for students, as well. For example, during a geometry lesson teachers can
encourage students to draw tessellations using the shapes that they have been taught.
Following the drawing, the teacher will encourage the students to add color to their
tessellations and will then be able to use them as a classroom decoration. Through the
choice to display student work the teacher is expressing larger purposes and more
overarching values. This encourages students to control and shape a part of their lives by
presenting them with a larger audience for efforts (Ayers, 2010 p.66). Displaying student
artwork gives the students a feeling of achievement and will encourage them to work
harder and become proud of their learning achievements.

Language Arts
During our workshop, we will demonstrate and present ways to incorporate
physical activity and the arts into the language arts curriculum. The arts are a great way to
enhance language art instruction. One example of this is having the students participate in
a readers theater. In readers theater (the students are actively working as a group to
create and then present a play of the story they read. Through readers theater, students
are not only engaging with the text and interpreting characters, the students are bringing a
text to life (Tompkins, 2013).
Another example is having the students create an open-minded portrait where the
students must read about a story and then draw a picture of the main character. The
students then draw or explain how that character is feeling during different sections in the

text. This activity has the students making their own creation of what they think the
character will look like as well as interpreting how the character is feeling. You can also
easily incorporate music into a language art lesson by having the students work on poetry
and songs. In the article, Improving your Writing through Poetry, Donovan states, poetry
writing are fun and creative methods for improving your writing (Donovan p.1)
You can then have them perform their pieces to the rest of the class to demonstrate music
styles as well as shining a light on the student. Through poetry writing comes a natural
ability to marry musicality with language. When this musicality is brought to other forms
of writing, readers feel it in their bones and muscles (Donovan p.1) Poetry and song
writing are great ways to incoperateincorporate miusicmusic into the language art class
while on a budget cut. All you need is a pencil, paper and your voice.

We will also focus on how to use physical activity during language art instruction.
One way to use physical activity is by introducing prepositions and verbs to the students.
During this activity you can have the students act out the words, such as going under the
table to recognize the word under. Another activity to further this vocabulary lesson
would be having the students spin in circles when introducing the action word spinning.

In the article, Verbs Relay Race! Williams states that students need endless practice with
reading skills in all forms, but often these come on pencil and paper, or inside
classrooms. Many kids benefit when they can get their full bodies in on the task
(Williams p.1). One final example of an activity that we would introduce to our teachers
and administrators during our workshop would be to use yoga to enhance the way their
students retell stories. In the article Yoga in The Classroom-Oral Storytelling the author
states, And for every image that the story contained, they were moving and shaping
their bodies. This is unbelievably powerful for the brain. The more ways we can
experience something, and the more senses we call upon, the more connections are built
in the brain. Having the students act out specific poses for different sections in a text will
help the student with their comprehension of the overall text and get the students active.
This is a great strategy for classes that are worried about funding because all you need to
do this strategy is your body. .
Social Studies
One way to include physical activity into the social studies curriculum is by
having the students play games from different time periods to understand what it was like
to be a child in era. Some eras that have been done in other classrooms in Canada that
could be adapted are History of The Titanic and First Nations-Origins of Our
Country ("Social Studies Lessons").The teachers can also have the students create a mini
society in the classroom where the students must start their own businesses and sell and
trade with other businesses. The teacher can also have the students participate in any
experiential learning such a churning butter and making wax candles. During these
activities, the students are moving around and being active as well as learning about
history and how to interact with one another for a common good. An example of how to

use the arts during social studies would be to have the students make a my place in the
world craft. During this activity the students will be able to understand how they fit into
the rest of the world, as well as allow the students to express how they see the rest of the
world from their eyes. You can also introduce students to songs from different time
periods as well as the use of instruments through the years and how music has influence
people since the beginning of time.
Science
There are so many ways to incorporate art into science. One way to integrate art
into science would be to have the students create a visual of the food chain. This is a great
way to address all the learning styles; visual, audio, and kinesthetic learners will benefit
from seeing the pictures, talking through the food chain, and physically creating the
project. Another way to include the arts into science is through music. An entire week
long lesson could be created that addresses how sound is made and how the sounds
change through different mediums. Morgan and Ansberry (2013) provide a lesson plan
that give some examples for using sound stations for students to explore in small groups.
These stations range from listening activities, to making sounds with materials premade,
and creating sound makers. Students could work together to create a class song using the
mediums they learned about as well as create instruments.

Alternative

We understand that some teachers and administrators feel that there may not be
enough time in the day to always incorporate physical activity and the arts into all of the
subjects. We will compile a list of websites that teachers can turn to find other ideas to
incorporate the arts and physical activity into their lessons. Some of the websites we
would include would be Teachers Pay Teachers, The Teachers Corner, and
Pinterest. We also recognize that some districts have restrictions on what the teachers
can and cannot do. In regards to testing, we feel it is important that teachers know how to
help their students during this stressful time. Therefore, we will end our workshop with
presenting ways in which teachers can incorporate physical activity and the arts as
transitional activities. An example of one transitional activity is to create a free Go
Noodle account which has a variety of videos from fun to watch to get up and move.
These five to ten minute breaks in a day can benefit a students learning as well as help
them concentrate on their school work.
Conclusion
To assess the success of our curriculum we will ask the teachers to keep a journal
of the positives they see in their classroom due to the curriculum as well as any negatives
as an effect of the curriculum. Through these journals we will be able to receive real life
examples of the successes and/or the difficulties of using this curriculum. We will also
administer a survey at the end of the year that asks specific questions that directly
correlate to what we hope the students will achieve from receiving our curriculum. The
questions will be directed at the students attention spans, their use of creativity through
the arts, and the amount of physical activity they participated in. Another form of
assessment that we will incorporate would be comparing the grades of a classroom that is

using our curriculum to a classroom that is not. Finally, we will ask that our teachers
continually self-reflect on their lessons. We will not require the teachers self-reflections
to be in written form; instead this will be a way for the teachers to be held accountable for
themselves. Through the feedback we are given from the teachers, we will continue to
improve this curriculum and hope to encourage teachers to permanently adopt this
curriculum into their classrooms.
Future teachers need to be mindful of the amount of time students are sitting
behind their desks doing worksheets. With budget cuts becoming more prevalent, it is
likely that specials will continue to be eliminated from students daily schedules. Students
need to be exposed to the arts and physical education during the school day because it
provides the students with outlets, helps develop creativity and promotes a healthy
lifestyle. Without an outlet the students are going to have trouble focusing during class
instruction. Even though specials may be eliminated from the daily schedule, through this
curriculum teachers can continue to expose students to creativity and physical activity in
the classroom. Integrating the arts and physical activity will enhance and further the
students learning achievements.

Katrina, Emily, Michelle, and Lydia,

You have a nice solution for a very real situation. You need to be a bit more upfront with
the fact that this is not for increased physical activity in the classroom per se but
curriculum solutions for teachers suffering from budget cut and would like to increase the

arts and physical activity in the classroom. Your groups curriculum lacks the research
base that could make this very strong. I have several suggestions for you to add more
citations/references in where your curriculum overview is located . That is an easier and
quicker way to add some resources. You may also want to search for a few more studies
that you can mention in the rationale at the beginning or within the overview. If you have
questons, you can call my cell, 378-6708, or send me an email.
Your prezi looks really niceclear, concise, and thorough. The prezi should work in
Shriver but just in case, bring it on a flash drive as a power point if we cannot access the
internet.
Katherine
Introduction

--5/5 points

Curriculum Rationale

--4/5 points

Curriculum Overview

4/5

8/10 need citations and references back to the studies

here. Maybe the solution is to integrate the studies into here?

Curriculum in Practice

Assessments/ Reflection/ Follow Up?

Conclusion

5/5

5/5

Grammatical Issues and Formatting3/5

Total34/40

General Format: For your power point presentation

20/20
Grand total54/60

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