University of Louisville Magazine

SUMMER 2016

The University of Louisville Alumni Magazine: for alumni, faculty, staff, students and anyone that is a UofL Cardinal fan.

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4 2 | L O U I S V I L L E . E D U COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT An artful approach to Anne Frank's diary ABOVE: Using construction paper, middle school students created icons from selected words in Anne Frank's diary. The icons are meant to invoke the emotion Anne Frank may have been feeling as she wrote. LEFT: UofL and Noe Middle School students come together to examine and contemplate artwork and images related to the study of Anne Frank's diary. At some point, most adolescents will study Anne Frank's diary. But when it comes to really engaging students — helping them grasp the social, historical and personal importance of the book — is there a better way to teach? CEHD faculty members James Chisholm and Kathryn Whitmore think so and are studying an "ArtsLiteracy" model — combining arts and literacy — for teaching the diff cult text. They've published their f ndings in national and international journals and are developing a book slated to appear in 2017. Chisholm and Whitmore, along with doctoral students Ashley Shelton and Irina McGrath, are completing their second year of data collection. Their study is supported by the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence (JHFE) and the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. The model incorporates art, music and drama in the teaching of the Anne Frank story. JHFE awarded the researchers a $58,000 grant to publish their work. "This model is really about helping adolescents see, feel and understand the Anne Frank story on a deeper, more empathetic level," said Chisholm. "A good example is a strategy in which students were asked to read a passage from Anne's diary, choose a word that exemplif ed the emotion, and then turn that word into a visual icon." Words from the diary such as "lonely," "outside," "courage" and "family" were transformed into icons and displayed as backdrops during an Anne Frank performance. "Some of the icons were haunting," said Chisholm. The CEHD researchers found that arts-based methods increased students' content learning and empathy. Middle school students made powerful connections between historical events related to the Holocaust and issues of justice and fairness in their contemporary lives.

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