SPRING into READING

This month ARTCi artists Brunella Battista, Candice Halls-Howcroft, Lori Sherritt-Fleming and Tracie Stewart are the Artists in Residence at Brockton Preparatory School in North Vancouver.

Every year Brockton hosts a whole month of festivities that feature a tsunami of stories, a plethora of poems, and a colossal array of chapter books. This celebration of everything literary is known as “Spring Into Reading!”

This year, ARTCi proposed that the K-Grade 5 classes select a mentor text that everyone could read. Our artists would then offer arts-based workshops based on that text so students could connect deeply to the themes, language, images, and ideas behind the text and express their thoughts through the lenses of dance, visual and media arts.

Our mentor text is “We are Water Protectors” written by Carole Lindstrom, illustrated by Michaela Goade. This Caldecott Award Winning and New York Times Bestseller was inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption. Check out Carole reading her book here

All classes met with Candice last week to learn more about the teachings of the Medicine Wheel and about the gifts the Earth offers us and about the gifts we bring to the Earth. We learned about respect and connectivity.

Grades K and 1 are meeting with Lori to interpret the text through dance, movement, and poetry. Grades 2 and 3 are meeting with Tracie to create textile art and to weave the story into individual pieces demonstrating that everything we put into water, we put into ourselves.

Grades 4 and 5 are meeting with Brunella to create infographics that call others to action to be water protectors.

Look for more details, photos, and videos in the coming days. All of our workshops are online and can be delivered to classrooms across the world and with any mentor text. Let ARTCi help you Spring Into Reading!