Engaging Students
Through the Arts
“Since arts experiences offer other modes and
ways of experiencing and learning, children
will have opportunities to think and feel as
they explore, problem solve, express,
interpret and evaluate the process and the
results. To watch a child completely engaged
in an arts experience is to recognize that the
brain is on, driven by the aesthetic and
emotional imperative to make meaning, to
say something, to represent what matters."
David Booth and Masayuki Hachiya
Read and Share
In your classrooms, under what
conditions have you witnessed a
child “completely engaged in an
arts experience”?
Read and Share
What are some of the barriers
to using the ARTS as an
instructional strategy? As a
teacher? For your Students?
Today we will….
• Look at Engaging students through the arts in
all subject areas
• What does Learning Through the Arts really
mean?
• Look at some resources to support planning
and inquiry for learning through the arts
• Digging Deeper into Integrating
the Arts into your TLCP
Overall Focus of the Revision
in the ARTS – Elementary (2009)
• Arts as meaning making
• Arts for exploration of feelings and
ideas
• Arts for communication
Learning Continuums
Expectations for Primary Grades - The arts program for Grades 1
to 3 focuses on the foundational knowledge and skills
students need in order to learn through and about the arts.
Expectations for Junior Grades - The expectations for Grades 4 to
6 focus on the development of students’ knowledge and skills
in the arts and their ability to use the arts to understand,
explore, and communicate feelings and ideas from and about
their multicultural, multimedia environment.
Expectations for Intermediate Grades - The expectations for
Grades 7 and 8 focus on the consolidation of students’
knowledge, skills, and strategies in the arts and their ability to
use the arts independently and effectively to enhance their
learning in school and to communicate feelings and ideas
about their multicultural, multimedia world.
Engaging Students
Through the Arts
Student engagement is central to
learning. Those students who are
fully engaged are ready to learn in
every way – physically, socially
emotionally and intellectually.
Knowing our students – Tiered
Approach to Instruction
Engaging Students
Through the Arts
The ARTS play a vital role in ensuring that
students remain engaged by encouraging
them to learn in physical and embodied ways,
by inviting them to collaborate with peers, by
requiring them to respond emotionally and by
calling upon their cognitive capacities as they
learn in, through and about the arts.
What the Arts Teach and How it Shows
•
The ARTS teach Creative and Critical thinking
•
The ARTS teach children that problems and questions can have more than one
solution
•
The ARTS celebrate multiple perspectives
•
The ARTS teach children that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are
seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity
•
The ARTS makes vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers
exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of
our cognition
•
The ARTS help children learn to say what cannot
be said
Thinking about Integration....
• Elementary generalist teachers address
hundreds of expectations in each grade, in
very diverse curriculums
• Various initiatives mandated by the Ministry,
school board and each school
• Day to day stresses = not enough hours in the
day!
• Some of the reasons WHY we need to
integrate…
Thinking about integration....
• MORE IMPORTANTLY, brain research shows
that people learn better in an integrated style.
• When one learns a fact, the brain fits it into
the bigger picture of knowledge.
• We always try to make sense of new
information in this way
• The majority of our students are visual and
kinesthetic learners and are more engaged
through active hands on learning
Thinking about integration....
• Each subject has a unique set of content knowledge
and fundamental skills that students must grasp and be
able to use. eg. Decoding of words, math computation,
dance elements, historical time periods, scientific facts,
etc.
• The development of skills and knowledge in all subject
areas is often enhanced by learning in other subject
areas and in particular through the arts.
• These skills can be taught within an integrated unit,
contextualizing the skills for the learner, and therefore
increasing their motivation to learn them.
Thinking about integration....
the ARTS
• There are an endless amount of Arts strategies
for teaching ALL curriculum subjects
• Any idea, piece of knowledge, critical skill can be
explored through the Arts.
• Making broader connections for learning to BIG
ideas through the Arts.
• Getting kids thinking creatively, critically, seeking
solutions and solving problems – 21st C learning
• Gives students multiple ways to COMMUNICATE
and DEMONSTRATE their learning
What does learning Through the
ARTS really mean?
• Video – Arts Integration for deeper learning in
Middle School
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbKUF2z
byw
• Critical Literacy through the Arts – some
strategies…
Engaging Students Learning
Through the Arts - Resources
http://www.code.on.ca
http://www.oaea.ca/index.html
Ontario Music Educators Association
http://www.omea.on.ca/
Engaging Students
Through the Arts - Resources
http://resources.curriculum.org/arts/
http://my.hwdsb.on.ca/default.aspx
HWDSB Arts Strategy
HWDSB has implemented a system wide ARTS
Strategy which emphasizes:
• Our commitments to Students, Staff and Community
in the ARTS
• Quality ARTS instruction in each arts subject area,
Equity of access, AND integrating the Arts into ALL
subject areas as a highly effective instructional
strategy to support student acheivement and
student engagement
Making Connections: SEF/SIP/TLCP
• Fitting your ARTS programs into the
school-wide goal
• The Arts are specific subjects and
disciplines to be taught and learned as
valuable unto themselves
Making Connections: SEF/SIP/TLCP
However …
• There are endless connections and
opportunities to make learning meaningful,
deeper and richer for students and provide
teachers with high yield strategies for
instruction and assessment through the ARTS
in ALL subject areas.
• Arts activities do not have to be extravagant
to be relevant.
Making Connections: SEF/SIP/TLCP
And….
• The Arts deepen understanding of “BIG Ideas”,
provide student experiential learning, provide
choice and differentiation, increase
engagement and motivation, and provide
hands-on learning for students by Learning
through the Arts
Three ways of Seeing the Arts in a
TLCP – Ideas that Matter…
• Integration of the Arts in the Literacy and/or
Numeracy TLCP – arts strategies for
instruction
• Forming Partnerships between the Arts
Specialist teacher and a teacher of another
curriculum subject area
• The Arts as specific subjects and disciplines to
be taught and learned as valuable unto
themselves – An ARTS TLCP
Literacy in the Arts
• For many students the Arts are the doorway
in….
or
• The way they can best communicate or
demonstrate their thinking in any subject….
• Opportunities need to be provided to allow all
children to learn how they learn best and to
be and feel successful – the arts provide
endless ways to do this
The Artist Within…
“Until recently, the abilities that led to success in
school, work and business were characteristic of
the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of
linear, logical, analytical talents….Today, those
capabilities are still necessary, but they are no
longer sufficient. In a world upended by
outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with
choices, the abilities that matter most now are
closer in spirit to the specialties of the right
hemisphere—artistry, empathy, seeing the big
picture, and pursuing the transcendent.” ~Dan Pink
Literacy in the Arts
• A place to start…many teachers begin by creating
an arts based culminating task… asking students
to create a poster, write a script, or create a song
list to demonstrate learning.
• It is important that students are given
opportunity to explore and experiment within an
art form, have explicit instruction in the arts form
and scaffold the learning within the arts form for
this to be authentic and successful learning for
students.
Literacy in the Arts
• Next steps….
• Moving into instruction focusing on engaging
daily learning and activities, providing choice
in how students demonstrate their learning,
and engaging students in creative and critical
thinking instruction through the Arts to
support all subject areas…
Literacy in the Arts
• Literacy is far more than being able to read
and write. Because meaning is the core of
literacy, it is the ability to decode and encode
and think critically in any of the forms
through which meaning is conveyed.
• The ARTS are Meaning Makers!
Literacy in the Arts
• By incorporating daily arts strategies that enhance literacy
learning, including integrated practices of making and
appreciating, experiential learning, and connecting to BIG
IDEAs through the arts, students have a broader realm to gain
comprehension.
• By using skills and ways of learning particular to the arts:
visual literacy, aural literacy, kinesthetic literacy, critical
literacy, musical literacy, social and cultural literacies, students
have a far deeper understanding and depth of knowledge
from which to demonstrate robust thinking and all that is
required for meaningful assessment in a LITERACY classroom.
• Students are actively engaged in their learning, and their
thinking is far deeper and meaningful to overall learning – as a
result achievement AND engagement go up!
Learning through the Arts
• We all have a contribution to make to arts
education and there are many ways to bring the
arts into the classroom
• Ideally, the arts should be both integrated
throughout the curriculum and taught as
separate curriculum subjects.
• The arts should be part of children’s daily school
experiences as a key strategy to support student
achievement and engagement
• Some practical ideas….lets explore together….
Finding something to try…
• Critical Literacy Concepts and Strategies
• Visual Literacy Concepts and Strategies
• Kinesthetic Learning Concepts and Strategies
– movement and body
• Musical Literacy Concepts and Strategies
TLCP Planning Support
I am happy to help!
Karen Wilkins Arts Consultant K – 12
Think about this…
Inside each of us is an artist.....that's what an
artist is, a child who has never lost the gift of
looking at life with curiosity and wonder. Art
is not the exclusive possession of those who
can draw, write poems, act, make music or
design buildings. It belongs to all those who
can see their way through all things with
imagination. (Arthur Lismer)