Owl Moon Arts Integration Projects

During the first quarter, our first writing unit of the year focused on "small moments" narrative writing.  During this unit, we frequently revisited our mentor text, Owl Moon, looking for ideas and inspiration.  We learned how the author, Jane Yolen, used repetition, comparisons, and descriptions in her writing as she stretched out her story.  After reading the story aloud, students worked in small groups to place sticky notes on sentences or phrases that they thought were examples of good writing. Then, each student chose a few phrases and wrote about why he or she thought they were interesting.
We selected six of these phrases and created a movement phrase/dance that showed our ideas about what each descriptions means.  Students made choices about how to represent each movement through dance rather than acting it out.  They also had to make decisions about whether to move in unison or around the circle one by one, how to add different levels, and how many times to repeat a movement.

Once we had finished putting together each movement, we practiced our dance while listening to George Winston's song "December", which matched the mood of the story very well.  The phrases we chose were:

"The trees stood still like giant statues"

"The moon was so bright the sky seemed to shine."

"Somewhere behind us, a train whistle blew, long and low, like a sad, sad song."

"It was as quiet as a dream."

"The moon made his face into a silver mask."

"For one minute, three minutes, maybe even a hundred minutes, we stared at one another."

"Then the owl pumped its great wings and lifted off the branch like a shadow without sound."

On another day, students picked a sentence or scene from Owl Moon to use as inspiration as they drew and painted an illustration of their own.  It was interesting to hear students describe the important details from the book that they wanted to include in their illustrations.  Often there were similarities between the details in their illustrations and in our dance.

Throughout this unit, we have been inspired by the writing choices Jane Yolen and other authors make.  It has been exciting to see students trying out these "craft" moves, such as making comparisons, to lift the level of their own writing!