South Windsor students in ‘Room 14’ become stars

By Catherine Collins
For the Journal Inquirer

Published: Thursday, June 25, 2009 11:59 AM EDT

SOUTH WINDSOR — Last spring, room 14 at Wapping Elementary School became much more than just a classroom — it became a stage.

Bryan Giansanti’s fourth-grade class created a short film as its end of the year project. The 10-minute movie, “Room 14,” tells the story of three students who are inadvertently transported back in time to the colonial era.

The students, with the help of Giansanti and Riva Marker, a producer of feature films, scripted, filmed, edited, and acted in the short film. The class tried out for parts in casting auditions, gathered props and costumes, and participated in rehearsals.

“It was a lot to take in at once,” student Molly DeRosa said.

Divided into four groups for each act, the class invented the plot for the movie and worked together on writing and editing the script.

“There were a lot of different ideas, and we mixed all the ideas together,” said student Caitlyn Szoka, recalling the collaboration that took place.

Still hanging on the front wall in room 14 at the end of the school year was the storyboard depicting the four acts of the movie illustrated, frame by frame, by the students.

“This was helpful for them to visualize what happens from scene to scene,” Giansanti said.

The class had only one day to shoot the movie, and it took almost five hours to complete the 10-minute film.

“For me, it was nerve wracking because I might forget my lines. But while we were filming, we had a lot of laughs. Most of all, we had fun,” said student Angelica Ruiz, who played a colonial era woman.

It is clear in both the film and among the students who made it that laughter and enjoyment, in addition to hard work and creativity, were crucial ingredients to the project.

Room 14 has a welcoming, fun, and amiable atmosphere any visitor can instantly sense. It is this feeling of friendship that allowed the movie to come out so well.

“It took a lot of teamwork to make this successful,” said Giansanti, emphasizing that the work of students both on and off stage was essential to the final product.

Last year was the first at Wapping Elementary School for Giansanti, who has previous experience in entertainment and on Broadway.

He and Marker grew up together in South Windsor, and she returned to help film and edit the class project “out of the kindness of her heart,” Giansanti said.

Marker co-founded Rosemark Pictures in the fall of 2008. She has overseen post production on 11 feature films as head of post production with Plum Pictures, and has worked on numerous other independent films.

Tribes:

Tribes is a way of learning and existing within any given community.  Tribes is:

1.  Mutual Respect

2.  Attentive Listening

3.  Appreciations/No Put-downs

4.  The right to pass/participate

Students achieve because they:

• feel included and appreciated by peers and teachers

• are respected for their different abilities, cultures, gender, interests and dreams

• are actively involved in their own learning

• have positive expectations from others that they will succeed.

The clear purpose of the Tribes process is to assure the healthy development of every child so that each one has the knowledge, skills and resiliency to be successful in a rapidly changing world.

Students learn a set of collaborative skills so they can work well together in long-term groups (tribes). The focus is on how to:

• help each other work on tasks
• set goals and solve problems
• monitor and assess progress
• celebrate achievements.

The learning of academic material and self-responsible behavior is assured because teachers utilize methods based upon brain-compatible learning, multiple intelligences, cooperative learning and social development research. The teachers and administrators in a Tribes school or district also work together in supportive groups. They too enjoy the participatory democratic process and creative collegiality.

For more information on Tribes, please visit the following webite or contact me. 

http://www.tribes.com/index.html

 Literacy Workshop

Literacy Workshop in Room 14 consists of:

Writer's Workshop - an environment where students learn and practice the writing process as they progress through the various stages.  Also, students acquire skills necessary in order to become a solid writer by teacher and peer conferencing, editing and revising, publishing and sharing their work.  Students will be accountable for recording reflection entries in their Writing Notebooks.

Reader's Workshop - very similar environment to the Writer's Workshop model however focusing on reading skills.  Some of the components of Reader's Workshop include:  Guided Reading where students work on skills and strategies in small group format at their current instructional reading level.  I believe it is essential that Guided Reading happen daily.  Students will be accountable for three Reading Response Journal entries a week.  Turn and Talk is also a daily activity that involves students discussing a shared book that I will read aloud.  Students are able to share ideas, predictions, inferences, connections, etc. during this time.

Turn & Talk/Shared Reading.

Words Their Way is a word study program that is based on various word sorts.  Students will receive a sort every week.  Each day they will sort their words and have activities where they will be able to utilize those new skills and vocabulary.  Again, students record and reflect on their learning in their W.T.W.  Specifically, students should be looking at how their sorts are grouped by sound, pattern and meaning. 

Math/Math Workshop:

In Math/Math Workshop students will be learning many skills that will be essential to both the CMT's as well as everyday life.  The Math Workshop format is one that is based around learning at one's instructional level.  At Wapping School and in South Windsor the math program is Everyday Math(http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/). 

Current Textbook Correlation:  Chapter 8 (Area & Perimeter)

During workshop students will work cooperatively while stopping to reflect on their learning.  Students will make connections to their learning in their Math Notebooks.  This is the time and place for students to really apply the material learned and demonstrate higher ordered thinking as well as make their learning meaningful. 

Social Studies/Geography/Health:

In fourth grade students get to experience switching classes for Science, Social Studies, and Geography.

Students will visit with me for Science:

Water Cycle

Food Chains & Webs

Electricity & Magnetism (current)

...with Mrs. Noble for Social Studies:

Jamestown, Roanoke, Plymouth

13 colonies

The Revolutionary War (current)

...with Mrs. Davies for:

Maps & Globes

the state of CT

health (current)