Fair Arts IMPACT Alternative Elementary School

Curriculum Unit: Talking Walls

Fair Arts Impact Elementary is an urban, low socio-economic, alternative school in the Columbus Public School District. IMPACT is an acronym for Inter disciplinary Model Programs in the Arts for Children and Teachers. The structure of the Arts Impact Program at Fair provides an opportunity for teachers to work as a team planning, implementing, and reflecting upon instruction. The Fair program is designed to decrease fragmentation of learning by relating each of the arts, dance, drama, music, and visual arts,to one another and to other disciplines through curricular integration. Students experience learning through the arts as well as learning in the arts.

Fair also has a strong history of being involved with its community. The school has worked with the Martin Luther King Arts Center, the Kwanzaa Playground project, the Columbus Junior Theater, and the Central Community House. It has received support from individual community members, such as artists, church leaders and community leaders, and from leaders in local industry.

For the first year the Fair's Arts Partner School Plan focused on the development of integrated comprehensive arts curriculum centered around the concepts presented by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte by Seurat. The Fair faculty was involved in professional development activities that explored the "big ideas" or concepts that Seurat's painting presents. They chose the concept of personal voice to focus on and used it to connect the comprehensive arts curriculum to their reading curriculum. They worked collaboratively to design and implement integrated curriculum that will enable their students to make connections between personal voice as expressed by a visual artist and their own.

Fair Demographic Information:

Grade Level
Total Number of Students
Percent on Free or Reduced Lunch
Student Demographics
Total Number of Faculty
Faculty Demographics
Urban, Suburban, or Rural
K-5
371
95%
95% African-American,
5% Other
23

50% African-American,
50% Caucasian
Urban
OPVA | TETAC | Schools Curriculum Units | Announcements | Resources