For the Love of the Arts and Learning

From the desk of Leigh Ann . . .

“With a subject matter as broad as life itself, the arts easily relate to aspects of almost everything else that is taught.”  – Charles Fowler

I love to draw.  Even when I am reading, I paint pictures in my mind of characters, setting, and events.  Almost everyone has at least one form of the arts that helps bring meaning to their world.  Music, dance, drama, and the visual arts can help us connect with and better understand the world around us.  Brain-based research even shows that integrating the arts into our teaching practices improves comprehension and long-term retention.  Arts integration is incredibly successful, but is often overlooked with the time constraints of daily classroom schedules.  Weaving the arts into content study can open the door to meeting the unique social, emotional, and intellectual needs of our students and proves to be time well spent.  Here are a few quick ideas just to get you started:

• Create or use a song that teaches a specific skill.  My kindergartners explored 3-D shapes by rapping.  Youtube and Teachertube have wonderful examples.

• Use movement.  This division dance is a great way to teach the steps to a long division problem.
• Create Models – A social studies class made trading cards that illustrated and told the highlights of specific battles and people of the Civil War.

Robert E. Lee  – Born to Lead

• Illustrate – Create comic strips that show the sequence of events in a story.  Paint pictures of characters based on the descriptions from texts.

• Create skits to dramatize science concept.  – A group of kindergartners acting out a plant’s life cycle is a fun sight to behold.

The arts are naturally engaging, provide relevance to learning, and allow us to focus on the process as well as the product.  We might be a little nervous about our own artistic abilities, but we can effectively facilitate lessons that include authentic activities that will stimulate our students’ thinking.  Collaborate with other teachers and share your talents and ideas to create meaningful and engaging lessons that will inspire.  John Steinbeck said, “Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”  You are helping to create a masterpiece!