Homer to Hip-Hop: Teaching Writing through Painting, Performance, and Poetry

A fourth-grade classroom at Freemansburg Elementary School receives a Teacher-Artist Partnership grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in cooperation with the Allentown Art Museum and the Bethlehem Area School District to teach reading and writing through arts integration. Two artists’ Mark McKenna, theater artist, and William Christine, visual artist’ join the ELA classroom three days a week. “Tales from the Odyssey,” a fourth-grade version of Homer’s classic by Mary Pope Osborne provides the inspiration. Students become engaged with the material physically, mentally, and emotionally through the acts of performing and painting. Students empathize with the characters in “The Odyssey” and compose their own poems based on similar themes. Many students write about their experiences of loss through the heroic voices of Odysseus, Telemechus, and Penelope. Various genres “story, dialogue, photographs, description, poetry, and interview” are combined to create a patchwork image of the arts-integrated classroom.