About SPARK

What Is the Spark Creative Arts Curriculum?

The SPARK Creative Arts Curriculum is a literacy-based, culturally sensitive classroom curriculum that provides opportunities for preschool children to achieve developmental and school readiness skills by actively attending to stories and by participating in activities based on the arts: music, art, and make-believe. SPARK is a child-centered curriculum in which children learn by using open-ended materials as they engage in hands on creative arts activities. SPARK has two major educational focuses: (1) it introduces general early childhood concepts and skills through multi-sensory activities, and (2) it enables teachers to address children's individual goals. The curriculum may be used in inclusive classrooms to meet the learning needs of children who are functioning at a variety of levels.

The premise upon which SPARK is based is that children learn when they are actively engaged in activities that hold their interest. Children also benefit from direct attention of adults who are focusing on their individual goals as the children take part in engaging activities. Children's stories and activities centered on the arts have the potential to be highly engaging to young children, both those with disabilities and children who are typical in their development. The goal of the SPARK curriculum is to teach developmental skills through stories, music, art, and make-believe; not to teach children to become better musicians, artists or performers. Teachers do not need to be skilled in the arts in order to use the SPARK Curriculum. The SPARK Curriculum provides an opportunity to enjoy the arts with the children as they utilize the teaching potential that is inherent in quality children's literature and the arts.

In order to ensure that the curriculum is culturally diverse, SPARK stories and music are drawn from a variety of cultures: African, African-American, Euro-American, Cuban, Japanese-American, and Native-American.

Who Is Spark for?

The SPARK Curriculum is designed to be used in self-contained classrooms that serve the needs of preschool children with mild to moderate disabilities or inclusive classrooms that serve both the needs of preschool children with mild to moderate disabilities and young children who are typically developing.

Why Use Creative Arts Activities?

Literature, music, art, and make believe offer many opportunities for learning to take place because these activities have the potential to be highly interesting to young children. Children typically enjoy painting, creating structures, pretending, singing, experimenting with sounds, and moving to rhythmic beats. SPARK capitalizes on the inherent interest of children in the arts by providing activities that promote early childhood developmental skills in a wide range of learning areas: fine motor, gross motor, language, cognitive, and social. Each area of the arts promotes these developmental skills in different ways and to different degrees. Children's involvement in the activity provides an excellent opportunity for teachers to promote the child's developmental skills while the child is engaged.

How Is the Spark Curriculum Used in the Classroom?

The SPARK Curriculum takes approximately one hour of the school day, five days a week. Day 5 is an optional day in order to accommodate programs in which children are in attendance four days a week, and to allow for other priorities in a busy school week. The SPARK activities may be substituted for story time, music, fine motor, and make-believe sessions in a typical early childhood program. SPARK also includes many opportunities for children to engage in gross motor activities. Teachers are encouraged to leave SPARK centers open and to stress the theme of the day throughout the day.

There are 20 units in the published SPARK Curriculum: 80 story telling activities, 80 art activities, 80 music activities, 80 make-believe activities, and 20 summary activities to bring closure to the units. An additional 7 units are available through the SPARK Outreach Project: 28 story telling activities, 28 art activities, 28 music activities, 28 make-believe activities, and 7 summary activities. Each unit takes one week to complete and is based on a story that the teacher reads to the children every day of the week. The weekly unit focuses on concepts that are drawn from the story; each concept is featured on a different day of the week and reviewed throughout the week. It is important for the teacher to read (or tell) the unit story every day. Repetition of the story helps children become more aware of the language patterns used in the story, the general themes contained in the story, become involved in discussion, relate the story to their own experience, develop recall skills, and learn to predict what will happen next. (Click on Resources for an example of a SPARK story unit)

The format with which teachers are most familiar has been retained: story time followed by small groups. Following the story, children choose a center to attend. Each center features a small-group music, art, or make-believe activity that reinforces the concepts introduced in the story. A basic strategy of the SPARK Model is for an adult to be present in the center throughout the small group activity. The adult is encouraged to promote children's individual and general goals, discuss the activity with the children, praise their efforts, and model the skills used in the activity. Because of the adult's involvement, the time children are engaged in the activity is extended and opportunities for learning increased.

An example of a typical teaching schedule in many preschool classrooms may include the following activities:

A comparison of these schedules suggests that adding SPARK to the daily schedule simplifies the day and makes it more efficient.

How Do Teachers Learn To Use Spark?

If chosen as a SPARK Outreach Site:

Teachers are trained to implement SPARK through a series of workshops. The workshops will focus on: (1) the use of the SPARK Curriculum, (2) suggested teaching strategies to maximize teaching efforts, (3) implementation of SPARK art, music and make-believe center activities, and (4) a special training session for administrators to support staff in the use of SPARK. Additional story units, story card units, audio-tapes and pictures not included in the published version will be provided to outreach sites. Training is offered at no cost to outreach sties.

If you are not a SPARK Outreach Site:

The SPARK Curriculum can be purchased through Redleaf Press. The SPARK Curriculum Implementation Guide provides information for staff training. In addition, the SPARK Outreach staff will be offering Training of Trainers Workshops to support programs in training their staff in the use of the SPARK Curriculum.

To see a sample item from the curriculum, view the Abiyoyo page (PDF file; download free Adobe Acrobat Reader).

What If the Activities as Written Do Not Meet the Needs of Individual Children in the Room?

It is expected that teachers will adapt the SPARK activities to meet the needs of children in their class. Opportunities for teachers to brainstorm ways to adapt activities to meet individual needs are interspersed throughout inservice training sessions.

Summary

Expressive arts activities provide opportunities for all children to succeed at their individual developmental level. As preschool programs move toward inclusion, it is critical that the curriculum used in inclusive classrooms provides opportunities for teachers to promote the learning needs of children at a variety of levels. The SPARK Curriculum has been used both in self-contained and in inclusive settings and found to be highly successful in engaging children of widely differing skill levels and enabling teachers to address each child's developmental needs.

An administrator of an implementing program said, "We've been searching for a curriculum for over six years. This is the best thing I've seen, it just fits our needs."

For more information about the SPARK Model contact:

Tweety Yates, SPARK Project
61 Children's Research Center
51 Gerty Drive, Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: 217/333-4123, Fax: 217/244-7732
Email: t-felner@uiuc.edu
Web: http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/coe/sped/spark