Early Years Integration- PE and Art

In my "Examples of Integration" page, you can see an example of a stand alone integration with PE and Art. We have been preparing the Early Years students for their annual Sports Day which was held at ISPP on Thursday, Feb. 17th. About 4 weeks ago in PE, I began to introduce 'Road signs and symbols' to the children. I introduced 3 road signs per class and had the students run through various activities aimed at helping them not only to visually identify each road sign, but to also be able to apply each sign's meaning in variety of designed activities. 

In Art class, the teacher, Kristin Anson, introduced different forms of transportation to the students. Kristin did a wonderful job in helping the students inquire into the various forms of transport and their main identifying features. This in itself took a couple of weeks for Kristin, but it led to the students having a working knowledge of different modes of transport and their main features. At this point, she brought large cardboard boxes into the classes and allowed them to create their own driving machines. And they created it! By week 5, they had created motorcycles with wings, tuk tuks, flying buses, cars that could turn into rockets, and simple trucks with 4 wheels. A true inquiry was at work and it was great to watch the process unfold.

By week 5, both Kristin and I had the Early Years students tune into the fact that they would be using these amazing contraptions to maneuver through a road course that would be set up for Sports Day. As mentioned in a previous blog, the director of our school, Barry Sutherland, would act as Mr. Policeman watching the students work their way through the road course and busting them when they broke the law. As the old song goes, "I fought the law and the law won", our fine cop was handing out fines left and right busily pulling the students over in their wacky contraptions. Barry even went to extraordinary lengths to have his own Cambodian police outfit done up at a local tailor's shop to assert a real presence which was a great touch. The students loved it! Enjoy the photos below...... There was a rubric that was done for each student assessing their understanding and application of road signs and symbols. Rubric will be uploaded soon. Please try this unit out, it's great!