Our unique performing arts curriculum is focused on MUSIC & DANCE, DRAMA, CHOIR, and DIGITAL RECORDING.

Students enjoy the following:

◦ CA State Standard 1.0 Artistic Perception: Processing, analyzing and responding to sensory information through the language and skills unique to music.

◦ CA State Standard 1.5 Analyze the use of form in a varied repertoire of music representing diverse genres, styles and cultures.

◦ CA State Standard 2.0 Creative Expression; creating, performing and participating in music. Students apply vocal and instrumental musical skills in performing a varied repertoire of music. They compose and arrange music and improvise melodies, variations, and accompaniments, using digital/electronic technology when appropriate.

◦ CA State Standard 2.9 Improvise harmonizing parts, using an appropriate style.

◦ CA State Standard 5.0 Connections, Relationships, Applications; connecting and applying what is learned in music to learning in other art forms and subject areas and to careers. Students apply what they learn in music across subject areas. They develop competencies and creative skills in problem solving, communication and management of time and resources that contribute to lifelong learning and career skills. They also learn about careers in and related to music.

◦ CA State Standard 5.3 research musical careers in radio, television, and advertising.

VISION AND GOAL

Vision: Students need to have balance between academics and art expression. Our vision is to find creative and innovative ways to keep students engaged in school and life through the performing arts. Goal: Using the medium of technology we will provide students with a STEAM experience to connect them to the world of the arts, academics and humanity. Performance Evaluation: Performance Based Projects., Seasonal Productions at the completion of session modules.

STEAM: Science & Technology, interpreted through Engineering & the Arts, all based in Mathematical elements.

A framework for teaching that is based on natural ways of learning, customizable for ALL types of students and programs and is FUNctional! Students learn to organize with math, while they research as scientists and historians by using technology, so that they can understand global development and communicate about what is needed, wanted and possible in engineering for universal sustainability.

STEAM Framework Definition: Science and Technology are understood as the basis of what the world has to go forward with, to be analyzed and developed through Engineering and the Arts, with the knowledge that everything is based in elements of Mathematics. It is a contextual curriculum where the subjects are coordinated to support each other under a formal educational structure of how science, technology, engineering, mathematics and the broad spectrum of the arts all relate to each another in reality. This framework not only includes the art of aesthetics and design, but also the divisions of the liberal, language, musical, physical and manual arts.

The STEAM structure explains how all the divisions of education and life work together; therefore it offers a formal place in the STEM structure for the Language Arts, Social Studies, and the purposeful integration of the exploratory subjects including the Arts, Music, CTE and Physical Education divisions of public education.

It has been implemented in PK-12, college classes, museums, after-school programs and with rehabilitation and dementia patients. STEAM Education has a framework for lesson plans that show how it is adaptable, benchmarked and easily reinforces the standards in unique and engaging ways.

STEAM ties ALL the subjects to each other in an interdisciplinary way as well as to the full spectrum of the rapidly changing business and professional world. It is a life-long career and life-readiness way of educating and learning that is adaptable to the rapidly changing global world we live in.

Shifting to a STEAM perspective means understanding learning contextually; not only in terms of having a framework that illustrates where the subjects overlap, but also in providing a living and adaptable learning structure for ever-changing personal and unpredictable global development.

Programs

STEAM is being used in schools all around the world to teach academic and life skills in a standards-backed, reality-based, personally relevant exploratory learning environment. It is adaptable, benchmarked, crosscurricular alignment for multi-disciplinary student assessments, and reinforces NCLB and state standards and has been used with teachers required to integrate with the Common Core, all done in unique and engaging ways. It is backed with a variety of well-recognized and adopted educational philosophies, classroom management and assessment strategies. It promotes deeper understanding and transference of knowledge across the subjects. It is used for developing model educational programs to create functionally literate people by increasing the depth and breadth of proficiency in all students and educators and the communities they influence. It works by expanding a program’s current lesson plans into STEAM plans for more realistic discovery and innovation for all types of learners and support from and interaction with local and global community.

STEAM can help make good education better. The STEAM framework, like steam itself, can fit anywhere and take innumerable shapes, and, if used purposefully, can be a very powerful and enjoyable tool for teaching and learning any level of any topic. It delivers high quality team-based education to all students. Preparing children for a growing variety of careers is important to advance the global society and its economies. Careers past, current and potential are organized to be taught with STEAM. Students are taught to evaluate needs, wants and opportunities in order to be informed users, responders and innovators. It prepares students to be life-long learners in pursuit of college, skilled trade programs, potential yet unknown career paths and well-balanced lives. STEAM is a whole-learner, communityinvolved and influenced learning environment. It has a living-curriculum structure that is representative of the surrounding culture and aware and tolerant of all types of diversity and perspectives.

Classrooms

Embedded in the framework is a system to establish well-balanced teams among educators and students based on a variety of characteristics. All participants have ways they are advanced and are challenged. With this system, their skills are used for leading in some areas while other areas are strengthened through observing and assisting. Educators instruct within their specialty with co-planned thematic units that everyone contributes to in projects related to the required benchmark concepts and skills. There are times when various groups of educators co-teach overlapping subject areas and assignments. However, most of the time, educators still are able to work focused on their own schedule and tie to the theme when it is convenient in their plans. Special times are designated for working on projects, so that as new concepts are learned they can be applied and built upon. The classrooms and common areas become a network of specialty topics in a living and growing discovery place.

Educators

STEAM Educators report feeling rejuvenated by richer living work environments. They have the ability to use more diversification of teaching methods and be more of a facilitator to learners. It empowers educators to meet the guidelines in a variety of unique and engaging ways and to meaningfully crossreference concepts and vocabulary. They have the opportunity to teach collaboratively, exchange ideas, have easier preparations for substitutes and have more productive common planning times. The teachers report feeling the positive shift from ME to WE in the staff as well as with students. They state that through the structure of rubric-based portfolios and process work, they have a better (broader and deeper) understanding of what their students prove they know in different ways including what they can tangibly accomplish. Educators can better match their learning objectives and goals to the www.steamedu.com STEAMEducationProgramDescription c. 2015 variety of learners they encounter. They can cater the themes to those of interest to the local students and community.

Students

STEAM asks students to evaluate local to global career, hobby and life opportunities and developments in historical, current and potential contexts. Students are challenged to learn and apply the breadth and depth of content and skill sets across the disciplines through reality-based projects using up-to-date research from the fields. Students are asked to perpetually evaluate their points of interest, experiences and talents with ongoing portfolio development, which becomes useful for applying to extra-curricular and post-graduation pursuits.

Communities

STEAM promotes a structure of community and business partnerships with schools. Programs that are well-supported by their communities have a record of higher engagement among educators and all levels and types of students and families for better overall program sustainability. Our plans promote adding in ecological and cultural sustainability, too, including having rotating displays in the common areas of the schools and having community meetings and program information nights. Educators report parent engagement and donations are increasing.