At LGA, we believe the arts are as important to learning and growth as academic skills. Along with weekly music and art classes with trained educators, students experience creative activities throughout the curriculum and the community. Teachers incorporate a wide range of media in many units of study, and parent volunteers bring a range of creative skills into the classrooms as well. Many of the faculty and staff participate in the arts outside of school, and regularly bring their talents to our students.
Our children meet weekly with a highly accomplished teacher whose musicianship extends outside of the classroom to public performance and composition. The components of the music curriculum at all grade levels include: Judaic music, American folk music, Western classical music, World Music, instrumental experiences (percussion for all and recorder beginning in grade 3), activities that teach and reinforce rhythm, pitch, notation, composition/improvisation and music terminology. The program builds on specific, articulated goals and objectives for each grade so that by sixth grade our students can sing in harmony through rounds, ostinato, and simple part songs, are familiar with periods of music history, representative composers, and styles; have honed their aural identification skills, learn about the science of sound, are developing rhythmic improvisation and composition and understand advanced notation. In addition, teachers regularly incorporate music into classroom experiences.
Every Monday begins with an all-school Morning Meeting (parents are always welcome) at which the entire LGA community joins together for singing, sharing and the week’s announcements
Art at LGA is part of an Emergent Curriculum that builds directly upon the interests of our students. Topics of study and project choices are captured from every-day conversations, ideas and interests that arise within art class, during other subjects and during life outside the classroom. Projects are encouraged to be viewed as an adventure, and may last one week or an entire month flowing seamlessly from one medium or topic to another
The art curriculum is scaffolded and incorporates collaborations with the General Studies program as well as the Judaics program. Together, we study various artists (both modern and classical), art theory, genres, materials and processes. Topics are explored using approaches which encourage students to think, communicate, speculate and feel.
The philosophy of our seasoned art teacher, Kitty Marshall, is to guide the ship without controlling it too tightly, offering ideas, direction, provocation and instruction. Kitty celebrates improvisation and values spontaneity and students are encouraged to come into the studio without a preordained vision of how everything is going to be or how everything is going to turn out. Each student experiences art class in various ways, with a wide range of feelings and emotions, individually and collectively.
There will always be questions to peruse, hypotheses to investigate, and discoveries to celebrate. According to Marshall, “My goal is to teach children to see.”
Performance is an integral component of the school environment, valued for its ability to build confidence, community, and appreciation for viewing the arts. Most classes perform at least one production that reflects a curriculum unit, such as first grade’s show of fables with handmade marionettes and third grade’s Native peoples’ myths, and fifth grade’s Pi Day celebration. The sixth grade often writes and performs a Purim Shpiel with a surprise twist!
In addition there are all-school sings, assemblies and celebrations, the PTO’s end-of-year talent show, and numerous cross-grade curricular activities such as poetry readings, writing celebrations, the biography fair, the medieval fair, and the invention fair. Events such as the community-wide Hanukkah celebration also give students the opportunity to perform for larger audiences.
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