With his face aglow by the eerie blue and red lights, second grader Camden Lingenfelder faces his fellow classmates, all assembled quietly on the ground in the dark classroom before him.
Some creepy sound effects play in the background as Lingenfelder gets into character, deepening his voice for dramatic effect to begin his quick performance.
“On a daaaark and stormy night…” he begins, waggling his fingers to heighten the fright.
His classmates quickly support him with a short quiet chorus of “ooooohs.”
Lingenfelder continues, holding up three fingers on one hand, “There were THREE ghosts haunting Howe Hall AIMS. And THEN —”
“Dun-dun-DUUUN!” the rest of class interjected.
Lingenfelder does a little sway and flashes three fingers on the other hand to proceed with the story. “Three more ghosts came floating through the walls. In the end, there were SIX ghosts haunting Howe Hall Aims…”
Spreading his arms and looking to the ceiling, Lingenfelder lets out a “Muwahahaha!” to finish the tale.
Not many spooky stories include a math problem, but it is a way these second graders are currently retaining their math lessons in Angela Rogers’ theater class at Howe Hall AIMS.
The week of Sept. 14 is National Arts in Education Week. Howe Hall AIMS is an arts-infused magnet school, meaning the students participate weekly in classes for dance, drama, music, physical education and visual art. In addition, the fine arts and classroom teachers deliver arts infused lessons utilizing a team-teaching approach. These lessons are based on state standards but are taught through the eyes of an artist.
Last year’s arts-infused lessons were particularly impactful, as 2025 test score data shows Howe Hall AIMS made some really big academic gains. The school experienced more than 11 percent growth in SC Ready English/language arts scores, 18 percent growth in math and more than 14 percent growth in science.
Principal Ashley McAlister said these lessons give the students core memories while exercising different parts of the brain to help them retain information.
“The infusion model just allows children a different way to exhibit their understanding,” she said.
After learning about this year’s test results, McAlister is feeling very encouraged by her school’s ongoing academic achievements. She said the school made math a big focus last year and presented many arts-infused opportunities in that particular subject area. The school even did an entire second grade show that focused on math standards.
The aforementioned spooky math story is a great example of an integrated lesson: students had to follow a prompt, give the number of characters and use the temporal words “and then” (which they are working on in storytelling as part of English/language arts standards). After each mini performance, Angela Rogers did a quick recap with the class to make sure they understood the given math equation.
Rogers said it was an opportunity for them to take something they are familiar with – which is spooky stories – and add math into it.
As a fine arts teacher, Rogers said she was excited to learn about the increase in test scores.
“It’s awesome to see that the kids are able to show what they know on the test, and it’s cool that we have been very intentional about our lesson plans – especially our infusion lesson plans,” she said. “It comes down to the students are engaging both parts of their brain at the same time. They’re having to think about two separate things at the same time and synthesize – which is the highest level of learning.”
Dance teacher Kim Steele also recently demonstrated an integrated lesson that involved math and dance. She had second graders work through math word problems while learning both “locomotor” and “nonlocomotory” movements; students enjoyed moving about the classroom while going over math word problems.
“Word problems are important for students,” she said. “With reading and then incorporating the math and the dance, they’re having to search for those clues, and figure out, ‘How can I solve this?’”
Steele said she was pretty heavy on her math infusion lessons last year for all the grade levels, and was happy to hear about the increase in scores – particularly math.
“We have always excelled in English/language arts, and it was really great to boost those math scores,” she said.
McAlister credited the staff for working hard last year to ensure they were “very intentional” with the school’s arts program.
“I’m very excited about the opportunities that our teachers gave our kids, and that our kids can showcase what they learned,” McAlister said. “It’s very rewarding to know that our hard work paid off…We know that including the arts does increase student achievement. We’ve seen it.”
