Students and staff in the Sakinah Circle program at Grace Martin School presented “Stories of the Samawaat” on May 16. Through story, song, and some fabulous art, this was a culminating event of the year’s theme.
Samawaat is an Arabic term, plural of “samaa”, which means “the skies”, referring to the heavens, of which the first layer is the sky of this world that we see above us. Sakinah Circle’s thematic learning about the sky made it clear that everything in our vast cosmos is interconnected, connecting space, seasons, weather, the water cycle, aerodynamics and flight, navigation, the solar and lunar cycles, energy, power, the biosphere and human activity. Throughout the year, we made curriculum connections in every subject area; we focused on the sky in stories, poems, art, outdoor activities and healthy lifestyle.
This event confirmed, once more, how valuable such learning experiences are for individual students, how it gave them meaningful opportunities for public speaking, singing as a group, memorizing lines, rehearsing together, being an audience for each other, following directions and changes en route, and bringing it all together into one production.
The adage for the theme “Looking up to Learn” will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
