Adding the Arts

to Language Arts

A proposal

By Kaleem Raja

Adding the Arts to Language Arts

A proposal

By Kaleem Raja

In term 3, to continue the spirit of the Deepest, Darkest Africa Project, I propose taking a

creative, cultural multi-media, multi-sensory, multi-textual approach to language arts in 3B.

The structure and content of the weekly plan for language arts shall remain the same, with

lessons dedicated to spellings, reading skills, writing, grammar, syntax and covering the

curriculum objectives for term 3 in language arts.

What will change is introducing more multi-media texts into the lessons, namely classic and

contemporary cinematic films, animations, theatre, cgi videos, documentaries; all with

elements of popular and classical music.

Viewing and discussion of the films in lessons 1 and 2 of each week, will be followed up

with the reading, analysis, comparison and production of written texts. These texts will span a

variety of different genres such as journals, fantasy, newspaper reports, poetry, fairy tales,

historical accounts, fables, comic strips, Greek myths and morality tales.

This is a 10 week proposal and the selected films are as follows:

1. Peter Brook’s Lord of the flies (1963)

2. Albert Lamorrise’s The Red Balloon (1956)

3. Disney’s The Ugly Duckling (1939)

4. Phil Paris Zarcilla’s Smile (c. 2007)

5. Chaplin’s The Kid (1921)

6. Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman (1982)

7. Disney’s The Grasshopper and the Ants (1934)

8. Aidan Gibbon’s The Piano (2005)

9. David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980)

10. Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1937)

The first 3 week’s lessons and concomitant resources are attached with this proposal; the rest

will follow as the term unfolds.

Kaleem Raja