I visited several sites that I found to have some really interesting resources for Arts Integration.
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collection/strategies-arts-integration
This site caught my attention after reading the first line:
"The reason why arts integration holds so much potential for the classroom is the power of art to engage students in experiential learning, which is the process for making meaning directly from the learning experience as opposed to academic learning, the study of a subject without the direct learning from experiencing that subject. But there is a distinction between classrooms that use arts as a resource and classrooms that fully integrate art in the planning and implementation of curriculum."
They nailed exactly what we have been trying to get at! The site provides some good examples of art integrated lessons and units as well as some strategies on how to get started with Arts Integration in your classroom. We are all obviously familiar with Scholastic and it was nice to see their contribution.
http://artsintegration.perpich.mn.gov/
The Perpich Arts Integration Project is based out of Minnesota and is striving to promote Arts Integration in K-12 classrooms. They focus on professional development, workshops, creating integrated curriculum and aligning standards. It is interesting to see how another group goes about pursuing the same goal. They have a section of a few examples of integrated units spanning K-12. I particularly liked one on Scale and Proportion in Math and Art. Students created a sculpture and then used proportions to increase it's scale. They also feature a video library where you are able to see some of their work with Arts Integration in action.
http://www.faae.org/resources-for-educators
I also viewed the website for the Florida Alliance for Arts Education. Under the resources for educators section, I was able to find several Arts Integrated lesson and units that they have put together. The lesson format was not the UBD that we have been using, but it does feature the same backwards planning technique and use of essential questions. It was nice to see how they adapted a slightly different approach than the one that we have been utilizing. The site was also interesting. It looks like they have some great professional development opportunities for their teachers.
I really enjoyed seeing how other groups are approaching Arts Integration. I find it very helpful in my expanding my own understanding of what we are doing. It is nice to see how different paths can get us all to the same destination.
A site I looked at that fit our arts integration model was https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-ela-with-music . The teacher is working with 4th and 5th grade students in a poor neighborhood. Her ELA objective was to have the kids practice using comparisons in writing, in this case similes. She approached it by integrating visual arts on a SmartBoard and the music of Duke Ellington. The text that she opened the lesson with was a children's book about Duke and abstract visuals that matched the beat of the music they were listening to. At various times she also had them snapping their fingers or clapping, so she was engaging several parts of their brains simultaneously. The video was not specific about the arts standards being taught, but I don't think it would be too hard to make this a fully integrated lesson.
ReplyDeleteA second website I found interesting was http://www.artseveryday.org/CulturalOrg/detail.aspx?id=182 . The opening page is a general discussion of why integrating the arts is worth our time, and there was nothing too new for us there, but one the links from this page took me to http://thewalters.org/integrating-the-arts/ .This site has a fair number of well-organized subject areas like Islam, China, Mummies and Madonnas. For each of the subject areas, they have catalogued many images that would apply to the teaching of that subject by many different content areas. For instance, if I chose Islam, I could find images about literature and about visual art or music or dance. It would be up to the teacher to decide how to use the images. It also has a section with ready-made lesson plans. I found one about comparing monsters with the "outsider" in lit. using visual art in the making of monsters that I would like to use this year.
It surprised me that Scholastic had art integration lessons. I go to the site frequently and never noticed it. I liked your site: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collection/strategies-arts-integration. It has a great idea on how to incorporate warm and cool colors by taking a color walk outside. I think the students would love taking pictures writing about them, and then taking a gallery walk displaying all the pictures. What a great fun activity for our students! Good find!
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