From Katarina Vlasic. You are invited to passionately celebrate the Literature Experience with Dr. Leonora Macy. This award winning professor from the University of Alberta is presenting at ASIA -Abbotsford School of Integrated Arts North Poplar. Dr. Macy is set to ignite the literature experience by implementing drama as tool for learning.
We are privileged to have Dr. Macy as a key note speaker and workshop presenter of Language Arts Across the Science Curriculum Through Drama – An Integrated Perspective.
As ASIA North Poplar’s Key Note Speaker- Through her repertoire of educational experience, and research, Dr. Macy will present powerful stories of the how, why and who benefits when teachers use drama as a tool for learning. She intends on activating your imagination through guided participation whereby you will actively be engaged to use these dramatic tools.
Leonora will also be presenting a two part workshop entitled: Language Arts Across the Science Curriculum: An Integrated Perspective: The World’s Greatest Fossilist. Dr. Macy illustrates the effectiveness of applying dramatic tools to scientific concentration. See below.
About the Presenter:
Leonora Macy completed her teacher education in South Africa. She has taught various grades in South Africa and Canada. For the past nine years, in the Elementary Education Department at the University of Alberta, she taught both the required language arts course and the literacy-through-drama course. She has provided many inservice training sessions to elementary and preservice teachers that focus on drama as a tool for learning.
Leonora completed her Masters of Education degree. She followed her passion for finding ways to engage students in literacy and language arts through drama. Her thesis explored how a teacher used drama in a Grade 4 classroom. In 2005 Leonora completed her Ph.D. Her dissertation explored multiple classroom environments where drama was used as a tool to enhance language learning.
Below is a list of her publications:
Macy,L. (2013). Educational drama in the age of 21st Century literacy. Educational Matters: The Journal of Teaching and Learning. 1(2).
Macy, L. &Payne, P. (2011). Living the literature experience: Drama conventions for teaching the elementary language arts. Edmonton, AB:CANCOPY
Macy, L. (2009, November). Using a ‘drama eye’ to plan an integrated language arts program. Drama Research: International Journal of Drama in Education {Preview issue}, 107-128.
Bainbridge, J., & Macy, L. (2008). Voices: teacher link teacher education to perceptions of preparedness for literacy teaching: Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(2), 65-83.
Macy, L. (2004). A novel study through drama. The Reading Teacher, 58(3), 240-249.
Macy, L. (2003). Drama and writing: Complementary meaning-making processes. Language and Literacy: A Canadian Education E-Journal, 8(1).
Workshop A4: Language Arts Across the Science Curriculum Through Drama – An Integrated Perspective: The World’s Greatest Fossilist – (See Chapter 11 p. 58 – 63)
My personal challenge, as both a teacher and an academic, is to ensure that when engaging the arts across curriculum it is achieved in a way that the art or arts and the subject or subjects are meaningfully represented. The work of science researchers who forwarded my thinking about science and drama integration were Martin Monk, Jonathan Osborne, and Clive Sutton.
The former two researchers posited that there is a need for children to be exposed to human creative thinking and historical context in a science curriculum. Sutton offered more specific foci within a similar philosophy of engagement. He provided a scheme with two foci for creating science units.
The first focus is on a story about some interesting happening, which is used in a science unit to consider a point of view. The learner is exposed to the life and thinking of someone who is already in the know. His second focus is concerned with material on the bench or what is commonly termed hands on learning – the doing of science. Finding suitable children’s literature to link with science concepts and practices is a challenge. In this workshop the story of Mary Anning is explored alongside language arts and drama.
The workshop introduces the participants to a number of illustrated books that capture Mary Anning as a young 12-year-old living in Lyme Regis who makes one of the most important fossils discoveries. Through language and drama, the science of paleontology and rocks and minerals is explored. A bibliography of children’s literature related to science concepts and practices will be shared.
This workshop addresses Sutton’s first focus.