Middle School (4-7)
Case Studies
Case Study 1: Kicking their way through capoeira
 Were the Class 4 girls in Ellie Gerdes’ physical education class dancing or fighting? It was hard to tell, though after watching them circle one another like laughing acrobats, it became apparent that this was no brawl.
It was capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art. What looked like fighting was actually a game: Capoeira’s participants are called players, and to excel they need grace, agility and rhythm.
"Capoeira increases strength and flexibility and improves the girls’ decision-making skills,” Ms. Gerdes said. Not to mention their sense of fun.
Achieving the right rhythm with a partner was an early challenge for the students, but as the class went on, each pair seemed to move as one. After forming a roda, the traditional circle in which capoeira players spar, the girls kicked, feinted and dodged with different partners, responding to each movement with one of their own.
Ms. Gerdes even joined in and executed an aù, a cartwheel that, according to the girls, is pretty much the coolest move ever, and the next thing they plan to master.
Case Study 2: Learning to speak by learning to sing
Students in Class 5, who are just beginning their studies in Chinese, French and Spanish, learned to speak their chosen language by learning to sing in it.
 "By singing songs, the girls have learned a lot of Chinese,” teacher Lin Wang said. "Each song we sing has a specific learning objective.” This was evident in a typical class: When Mr. Wang quizzed his students on the lyrics they had just sung, the girls could recite the Chinese words for colors and family members.
Mr. Wang makes use of traditional Chinese songs that he learned as a child. Because the songs’ lyrics and melodies are simple, beginning language students have no trouble learning them and becoming confident with the pronunciation of the lyrics. The girls also learned traditional Chinese drumming rhythms, and Mr. Wang often accompanied them on the erhu, a two-string bowed instrument that dates back to ancient China.
A Class 5 performance made clear that music offers a great introduction to a foreign language. Brandishing their voices as instruments, teacher Remedios Lopez-Polo’s Spanish students sang Las Vocales and Cabeza Cintura; Léonie Seltzer’s French students melodically recited La Fourmi, a poem by the Surrealist poet Robert Desnos; and students in the Chinese course sang The Greeting Song and Looking for a Friend.
Case Study 3: An imaginative construction of Reconstruction
 Teacher Carolyn Scott asked her Class 7 students, who have been studying the Civil War, “If you were president in 1865, what would you do to reconstruct the nation?”
Imagining themselves in Abraham Lincoln’s or Andrew Johnson’s shoes, the girls wrote out their plans, which were informed by their readings and discussions about the Civil War. They shared them with Ms. Scott and with one another, engendering a lively discussion about which policies might revive the United States and which might not.
High on every student’s list was providing monetary aid to freedmen, as were the introduction of racial equality and having the North help to rebuild destroyed Southern cities. Some students thought that former slave plantations could provide housing and paid work for freedmen, while others suggested that the plantations be divided up and given out to freedmen to farm on their own.
As their studies continued, the girls learned which of their ideas were adopted by the U.S. government and which weren’t feasible. Though they discovered that there was no panacea for the country, Ms. Scott’s assignment gave them the opportunity to at least imagine one.
Last updated 06.12.08
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