WATCH: Kids Create 'Animals' at Salvador School

Students at Salvador Elementary School learned how to use shapes to create animal figures in a recent "performance night"" captured on video.

Salvador Principal Pam Perkins said the "performance night" idea is to blend Salvador's "arts integration" focus with 21st Century skills such as video.

"In the attached video clip, second and third graders work with artist residents -- Michael and Valerie Nelson of the Magical Moonshine puppet theater group," Perkins said.

"The concept of our second graders' unit of study was 'interdependence,'" she added. "All the learning pushes back to that big concept to allow students to have a deep understanding."

Perkins said the students began the process by looking at shapes within the animals that were drawn in pictures.

"Then, as a group, students began their performance as isolated pieces and then moved together to create animals and other objects – almost like a dance," Perkins said. "Students had to work together to plan their piece and then perform it."

Other students added music to the performance using both classroom instruments and some handmade instruments, she said.

Later in the video, the third graders performed the Nigerian folktale “How Moon and Sun Got in the Sky” using puppets that they made during class, Perkins said. Their learning focus was "cause and effect," she said.

In the performance of the folktale, they integrated concepts of light and shadow that they had studied in class.

"What happens when you use different kinds of light to create a shadow?," Perkins said. "How does the shadow change when you are close to the light source or further away?"

The video was taken at one of Salvador's performance nights, which are held every trimester. The performance nights celebrate learning and highlight the work of students.

"All students have the opportunity to be on stage, gaining self confidence and collaboration skills," Perkins said.

For more information, see www.salvadorschool.com

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