Keynote for Illinois Writing Project March 2, 2012

1. Writing
On Your
Feet
Katie McKnight, Ph.D
Katherine.McKnight@nl.edu

2. Second City and Arts Outreach
• Made possible with a grant from
Kraft Foods.
• This research study, which is
exploratory in nature, was
conducted at the request of The
Second City Training Center.
• Why did a place that produces
artists like Steven Colbert and
Tina Fey connect with schools?

3. An Overview
Qualitative Design:
Over one hundred clock hours of observation in
the classrooms of the study’s participants.
Participant-Observers in teacher professional
development workshops.
Conducted open-ended, semi-structured interviews
(Spradley, 1979) with several teachers from each of
the schools in order to better understand the
project from the teachers’ point of view.
Student Artifacts.

4. Table 1: Racial/Ethnic Background and Other Information—Lakeside Elementary School
SCHOOL DISTRICT
White 19.8 8.8
Black 41.2 49.2
Hispanic 22.7 38.4
Asian/Pacific Islander 15.5 3.3
Native American 0.8 0.2
Multi-Racial 0.0 0.0
Low Income 74.2 85.4
LEP 14.4 14.0
Truancy Rate 1.0 3.9
Mobility Rate 5.4 24.0
Attendance Rate 95.6 92.0
Enrollment 1557

5. Table 2: Racial/Ethnic Background and Other Information—South Primary School
SCHOOL DISTRICT
White 0.0 8.8
Black 100.0 49.2
Hispanic 0.0 38.4
Asian/Pacific Islander 0.0 3.3
Native American 0.0 0.2
Multi-Racial 0.0 0.0
Low Income 99.6 85.4
LEP 0.0 14.0
Truancy Rate 5.0 3.9
Mobility Rate 25.8 24.0
Attendance Rate 94.6 92.0
Enrollment 485

6. Table 3: Racial/Ethnic Background and Other Information—Midtown Elementary School
SCHOOL DISTRICT
White 0.0 8.8
Black 95.0 49.2
Hispanic 5.0 38.4
Asian/Pacific Islander 0.0 3.3
Native American 0.0 0.2
Multi-Racial 0.0 0.0
Low Income 95.0 85.4
LEP 1.5 14.0
Truancy Rate 17.5 3.9
Mobility Rate 63.5 24.0
Attendance Rate 88.6 92.0
Enrollment 201

7. It Begins with Play
Montessori
She argued that play was the work of children and
central to child development
The Essential Dimensions of Play Are:
Being voluntary, enjoyable, purposeful, and
spontaneous.
Expanding creativity by using problem-solving skills,
social skills, language skills, and physical skills.
Helping to expand on ideas.
Supporting the child in adapting socially.
Serving to thwart emotional problems.

8. Spolin’s Connection
between
Play and Learning
Montessori’s ideas are echoed
in the work of Viola Spolin.
Spolin is the foundational theorist for a highly
structured form of theater/drama called improvisation.
•Spolin’s beginnings in the Chicago settlement houses.
•It was her son, Paul Sills who founded The Second City.

9. • Develops and demands focus that
prompts our physical and mental
state to merge.
• Creates a game having a specific
problem to be solved. Players
engage intuitive energy through
improvisation and develop
problem-solving skills.
• Prompts the merging of action and
thought to solve a problem.

10. Literacy and Improvisation
Connections

11. Improvisation Exercises Reading Instruction
In Balanced Literacy
Program
Grouping is spontaneous and
changes with almost every exercise.
Student grouping is dynamic and
Skill development is embedded flexible. The composition of the
within the literacy activity. groups regularly changes.
Participants learn by doing
(Spolin, 1986). Skills development and practice is
embedded within the literacy activity.
Focus is on the participant and
contribution to the ensemble. Focus is on the student, not the
exercise.
Teacher actively participates and
is a member of the ensemble. Teacher actively participates and
interacts with the students.
Teacher and students actively
participate and interact in the Teacher and students actively
improvisation exercise. interact with the text.

12. Improvisation Exercises Reading Instruction
In Balanced Literacy
Program
Side coaching is designed to aid the
participants in problem solving as the students
participate in the improvisation activity.
Questions are created to develop
higher order thinking skills and to
The participants are focused on presenting actively problem solve.
dramatic representations that communicate
clearly to the audience. In other words, the
meaning that the participants create, most be The students are focusing in
understood by the audience.
understanding meaning from the text.
Students create and respond in the exercise
with personal, authentic, and meaningful Students respond to the story through
representations and interpretations. personal and authentic exercises
Students create independently as Students read independently.
members of a creative ensemble.
Assessment is ongoing and continuous Assessment is ongoing and
through peer and teacher feedback. continuous through peer and
teacher feedback.

13. SKILLS READING WRITING SPEAKING LISTENING
Vocabulary Development
Sequencing
Table 4: Language Arts Skill Sets Developed Through The Second
Prediction
City’s Improvisation for Creative Pedagogy Program
Representation of
non-linguistic text
Adding details to textual
representations
Focus
Concentration
Interpretation
Synthesis of information
Developing an understanding and
appreciation of literary genres
Idea and topic generation
Active exploration of student
author’s voice
Appropriate use of oral language
Analysis of context in both
linguistic and non-linguistic text

14. There were positive impacts in several areas, and although the
work is exploratory in nature, it corroborates other studies that
show the benefits of drama and theater arts in the classroom,
and that it points to the potential for such work to make even
greater contributions to literacy pedagogy and student learning.

15. Four Major Themes
First, the playfulness inherent in the
art of improvisation engaged the
students wholly in the activities,
increasing the involvement even of
youngsters who had been reluctant to
participate in other classroom work.

16. Secondly, this engagement
strengthened classroom community,
making possible the opportunity for
students who had previously been
marginalized and/or who had special
learning needs to take on more
positive roles in their classrooms.

17. Third, particular children’s increased
engagement led to confidence with expression,
which helped them to extend their authoring
abilities in both spoken and written forms and
to take on the identity of “author.”

18. The qualitative data make clear that these
activities helped all the students - many of
whom were reluctant readers and writers -
to enter texts, to respond, and to create,
and to evoke and exert control over the
ideas, sensations, characters, and
meanings that they were experiencing in
their required schoolwork.

19. Finally, for most of the
teachers, participating in
training workshops and
collaborating with visiting
artists in their classrooms
helped to expand their
repertoire of pedagogical
strategies and began to
broaden their definition of
literacy beyond what Shannon (1995) calls
a psychological view and Street (1995) calls an autonomous
model of literacy that emphasizes mere “correctness” of
language use and that is based on the belief that reading
and writing are best learned one sub-skill at a time.

20. Potential Impact on
Students With Special Needs
Engaging mixed ability groups, which include
students with special needs, creates a setting
where students are able to transcend barriers.
In the schools where the research team observed,
we were able to observe collaboration,
participation and engagement of students with
special needs as they participated in improvisation
activities with their regular education peers.

21. Next Steps
Connecting research
between the adolescent
brain and improvisation.
Greater exploration of
improvisation and students
with special needs.
Additional study examining
the connections between
literacy and improvisation.

22. In Loving Memory
My co-author and sister
Mary Siewert Scruggs
(April 16, 1964-January 12, 2011)

23. How to Reach Me:
Email: Katie@KatherineMcKnight.com
Website: www.KatherineMcKnight.com
Twitter: @literacyworld
Facebook: Katie McKnight Literacy
For more materials and updated powerpoint,
see my blog at www.KatherineMcKnight.com