Education
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Macha Monkey in Seattle Schools
Monkey Works: empowering students to create a playMonkey Works is a two-month playwriting and performance residency for 4th and 5th graders that integrates theatre arts with a social studies topic. Past topics have included land rights, suffrage, immigration, labor, and the U.S. election process.
Thanks to generous underwriting from the Washington State Arts Commission and past support from King County Arts Commission, Monkey Works was created over a period of five years with Charlene Smith-Brown, a classroom teacher at Seattle’s Hawthorne Elementary School.
2009 marks the first year that Macha Monkey has tested its curriculum with a second pilot school – Thornton Creek at Decatur. In partnership with Powerful Schools, Macha Monkey aims to bring the program to additional Seattle schools in 2010. If you would like to discuss bringing Monkey Works to a school near you, contact Co-Artistic Director and Education Director Desiree Prewitt at 206.604.6255.
What distinguishes Monkey Works as an educational experience?
- Cooperative learning – Monkey Works scholars collaborate to write their play as a group
- Student agency – through journaling, students explore issues of identity and everyone contributes to the final play script
- Media literacy and reading fluency – these key skills are improved by Monkey Works through current events and historical research and repeated oral practice
- Respect for students’ past experiences – cross-cultural competency and reflective practice are cornerstones of Macha Monkey Teaching Artist training
- Native language incorporation, English learning through family involvement – all students receive interview assignments to involve their own households in the playwriting process; Macha Monkey includes native tongues in a Monkey Works script when English is new to a student, a proven method for language learning
- Dialogue – students learn to put themselves in another’s shoes, meeting important OSPI writing benchmarks at the same time
- Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence – theatre helps students excel in many areas, and brings out talents that aren’t often discovered in the classroom
Find out more
The public is invited to a free informational evening about Monkey Works on March 26, 2009. Come see Steve Chavez’s fourth graders perform their play about suffrage this month, and learn more about this program!
Where? Thornton Creek Elementary School, 7711 43rd Ave. NE, Seattle, 98115
When? Thursday, March 26, 2009, 6:30pm
Questions? Contact Desiree Prewitt at 206.604.6255 for additional details about Monkey Works: empowering students to create a play.
Macha Monkey Adult Education
Fights of SpringFor three years, Macha Monkey has partnered with the University of Washington every spring to present a movement and stage combat workshop. The Fights of Spring program is currently on hiatus. To find out more about past offerings, check out the information from Fights of Spring 2008.
For more information about Fights of Spring, please contact Macha Monkey Board Member Molly Boettcher at 425.941.4140.
PAST EVENTS
Monkey Works 2003-present:
