Using+the+Arts+in+Education

 Music Visual Arts Drama Creative Movement and Dance Chart of Arts in Relation to Curriculum  The Fourth R (Arts) (information about why the arts are beneficial for students)

A national focus on the arts in education (read at least the executive summary)

[] This article quotes our own Tobie Sanders on the importance of arts in education.

[] Australia's national curriculum is centered around the arts and the arts are considered essential to learning.

The arts allow for creative expression, they involve multiple intelligences, they are engaging, they are motivational. In short, using the arts as a foundation for a lesson in any curricular topic is going to make that topic more interesting and it is going to deepen learning.

In order for you to use the arts, you should know a little about them. This page will help you to become familiar with the basic concepts behind music, visual arts, movement/dance, and drama.

If you believe that you are not capable of learning about the arts, now is the time to change your mind. New technology has made learning a lot more interesting and do-able in all areas, including the arts. You don't have to be brilliant in any of the arts to use them in your classroom, the same way mamas who sing lullabyes out of tune still manage to get their kids to sleep.

The information on the following pages has been designed with the novice in mind and how a teacher with very little knowledge about a particular art form can use it successfully in the classroom. back to top

 The following is a chart for how to use the arts for specific curricular needs.

Appalachian Culture Ballad Projects Blues Books that involve music Opera Persuasive Songs || Math and music Patterns || Social studies and music Appalachian Culture Ballad Projects Cigar Box Instruments Civil Rights Songs National Anthem Project Persuasive Songs Songs as Cultural Artifacts || Science and music Appalachian Culture Cigar Box Instruments Musical Instruments from Recycled Materials || Lesson two Lesson four Lesson five Lesson six Lesson seven Lesson eight Lesson thirteen Lesson fourteen Lesson sixteen Lesson seventeen Lesson eighteen Lesson nineteen Calligraphy Carnival poetry Claymation Comic Strips and Books Dream Flags Eight Page Book Making books || Lesson four Lesson five Lesson nine Lesson fourteen Lesson fifteen Lesson nineteen Lesson twenty Beading Celtic knots Quilting in the Classroom Tessellations Topography Symmetry || Lesson one Lesson two Lesson four Lesson five Lesson six Lesson eight Lesson nine Lesson fifteen Lesson sixteen Lesson seventeen Lesson eighteen Lesson nineteen Beading Pysanky Quilting in the Classroom || Lesson six Lesson seven Lesson nine Gakology Science of Tie Dye || Using movement to respond to children's literature || Patterns || Folk dancing || Seasons Ocean Whales Tundra and the Seasons || Envelope Puppets Readers Theater || Drama and Math || Drama and Social studiesPresidential Poetry || Drama and science || back to top
 * || Literacy || Math || Social Studies || Science ||
 * Music || Literacy and music
 * Visual arts || Lesson one
 * Movement and dance || Punctuation
 * Drama || Drama and literacy

 =Concepts of Music= Possible activities: create a lesson plan based on activities listed below. If you have access to kids, test your lesson on them and see how it works. Get them to critique it for you and write that up so you can remember the feedback as you create future lessons.

This page has resources and curricular connections below. How much music do you need to know? A lot of people feel they cannot incorporate music in their classrooms because they don't know "enough" about it to do so. Yet you can have a lot of music in your classroom even if you can't carry a tune in a bucket and don't know a sixteenth note from an augmented chord.

There are several levels of incorporation:  Listen to songs to identify textual elements (literacy, social studies) Play music to set a mood for class Play music to set a mood for a movement experience--e.g., Holtz's The Planets when learning about the solar system Play music for students to sing along with || Study or analyze music styles || Use black notes of the keyboard and write your own melodies (if you use the black notes only, you cannot make a bad sound). Learn to play an instrument Create a musical performance group Write an opera Opera Perform someone else's opera || Even with very little knowledge, you can have students working at all three levels. There are lessons on this wiki to support these levels.
 * Listening || Play music while working (individually or for whole class)
 * Interacting || Study or analyze song texts Songs as Cultural Artifacts, Persuasive Songs
 * Creating || Write new song texts using the melodies of familiar songs

That said, if you want to create your own learning experiences, you may want to learn some of the basics of music because that way you can find even more ways to connect the curriculum to music. When you know something about music, your connections become stronger and more meaningful to children. Below are some resources that will support this type of learning.

The web pages here were chosen because they are interesting, fun, and have good explanations. Browse through these to learn some of the basics of music.

 http://www.sfskids.org/templates/splash.asp http://www.musictheory.net/ http://www.ilearnmusic.com/ http://www.dsokids.com/ http://www.playmusic.org/

Games and activities for learning music http://www.classicsforkids.com/games/ http://www.creatingmusic.com/ http://www.funbrain.com/notes/

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Potential curricular connections with music:  Literacy: Writing songs, reading song texts, reading about music or musicians, creating songs to remember things such as spelling words (First Day of Christmas is great for spelling words: "on the first day of spelling, my teacher gave to me, G-L-A-D-E"). There are many examples of literacy connections on this wiki: Ballad Projects, Blues, Books That Involve Music, Persuasive Songs, Play Party Songs, and Songs as Cultural Artifacts. back to top

 In essence, music is audible math. Math connections include: patterns (form), pitch (cycles per second) and the mathematical relationships of intervals, time signatures, rhythm, types of notes (quarter, eighth, etc.). Here are some resources for understanding the math of music:

[] [] [] http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/uses-math/music/ []

Some of these concepts may be challenging, yet if you persist in working on understanding them, music will become even more beautiful to you because you will hear those numerical relationships. Also understanding this will help you to make strong connections between music and math. back to top

 Science: The science of music is acoustics (a form of physics). Musical Instruments from Recycled Materials is a lesson that engages with acoustics. Here are some websites with information about and animated illustrations of various concepts in acoustics: http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/ http://paws.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos.html http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/Flash/ back to top

 Social Studies: Every culture has produced some form of music and one interesting way to understand a culture is through the music it has produced (Songs as Cultural Artifacts). Many historical events involved music in one way or another (Persuasive Songs) and an interesting way of looking at history is through the music associated with it. back to top

 =Concepts of the Visual Arts= Activity: use the information in the power points to create a lesson that uses the visual arts as a way of teaching something in the standard curriculum (math, science, social studies, literacy).

Rather than reinventing the wheel, we are going to provide several resources with arts-related lessons and concepts that have connections to the regular curriculum. These are all power points created by the Cameron Museum in Wilmington, NC along with UNC at Greensboro. You can use these power points as a basis for a lesson.

 Cameron Museum in Wilmington, NC in cooperation with UNC at Greensboro Language Arts: narrative, story elements, main idea/details Social Studies: relationships, roles in society, cultural context Visual Art: shape, color, space, rhythm, repetition, art history back to top

 Cameron Museum Language Arts: character’s feelings, story elements, main idea/details Social Studies: roles in society, cultural context Visual Art: color, pattern, art history back to top

 Cameron Museum Language Arts: author’s purpose, poetry, descriptive language, parts of speech, reality and fantasy, compare and contrast Social Studies: symbols, myth Mathematics: symmetry, pattern Visual Art: composition, shape, color, space, folk art back to top

 Cameron Museum Visual Art and Social Studies: use of materials or resources Visual Art and Geometry: two and three dimensional shapes Visual Art and Language Art: artist’s purpose, narrative, descriptive language, main idea, compare and contrast, oral language, sequence, inference Science: properties of soil, natural resources, evidence back to top

 Cameron Museum Visual Art and Language Arts: setting, main idea and details, compare and contrast Social Studies: space, rural, suburban and urban Visual Art: space, shape, color, perspective, light Science: observation, identification, evidence, light, shadow, seasons back to top

 Cameron Museum Language Arts: descriptive language, imaginative narrative, story elements Science: weather, climate, seasons Visual Art: color, texture, space, light, shape, line, art vocabulary back to top

 Cameron Museum Language Arts: inference, descriptive language, character’s feelings Social Studies: homes and communities, disasters Visual Art: color, texture, light, feelings, art vocabulary back to top

 Social Studies: interdependence of people, resources,and the environment Visual Art: weaving, sculpture, qualities of art materials Science: natural resources, minerals, plants Mathematics: attributes, three dimensional shapes back to top

 Language Arts: descriptive language, details, oral language Visual Art: architecture, shape, color, space, artist’s purpose, serigraphy back to top

 Language Arts: descriptive language, oral language Mathematics: three dimensional shapes Visual Art: shape/form, simplification/abstraction, light and shadow, composition back to top

 Language Arts: setting, characters, details, fact and fiction, inference, compare and contrast, oral language Social Studies: location, occupations, agriculture, family Visual Art: painting, printmaking back to top

 Language Arts: oral language, descriptive language Social Studies: roles in society Visual Art: portraits, texture, background, color, detail, space back to top

 Language Arts: fact and fantasy, setting, character, narrative, mythology, main idea and details, oral language Social Studies: land forms, North Carolina history Visual Art: realism, abstraction, simplification, space, color back to top

 Language Arts: descriptive language, setting, oral language Social Studies: landforms, land use, climate Visual Art: color, line, shape, texture, space, value back to top

 Language Arts: descriptive language, oral language Mathematics: line, shape, symmetry Visual Art: color, line, shape, stained glass, mixed media back to top

 Mathematics: geometry Visual Art: texture, shape, line, space Language Arts: setting, descriptive language, oral language back to top

 =Concepts of Drama= Activity: choose a type of drama activity and create or find materials you can use (e.g., if you choose reader's theater, create a script and upload it).

Drama can be one of the most powerful tools a teacher can use in the classroom. It can be used to extend literacy experiences, but it also can be used across the curriculum to help students understand the experiences of other people and to allow students to try on adult roles and adult authority.

 Drama and Literacy: retell stories through acting them out, reader's theater, create drama around what happened to characters twenty years later, retell stories by creating "illustrations" or tableaux, create a puppet show around a story, create "interviews" of authors (kids play the authors), create newscast around stories (e.g., a newscast about The True Story of the Three Little Pigs), create infomercials to sell action figures from stories, create "reality" show using the story as a basis, create "talk show" of characters being interviewed by Oprah or someone like that. back to top

 Drama and Math: Act out a word problem, demonstrating through the interactions of characters how the problem eventually gets solved. Adapt a story to math, such as the Three Little Pigs do math--each pig has to figure out how many sticks/bricks or how much straw has to be used to create their houses. Create a story around sports figures where statistics play a role (player gets chosen for his/her statistics or cut from the team). Algebra was developed because of complex rules of inheritance in Medieval Muslim cultures; you could create a grieving family and a will that has to get read and acted upon. back to top

 Drama and Social Studies: Most cultures and historical periods have forms of story telling and/or drama. For example, in Indonesia there are elaborate shadow puppets. Focus some time learning about and participating in the types of dramas that would have been around. back to top

 Drama and Science: If you want students to observe something (such as an animal or plant), turn them into expert scientists who are going to help other people understand whatever is being observed. Stories from the history of science can be dramatized. When you read informational books you might find that there are the seeds of a story (conflict between people) that can be the basis of improvisatory drama. back to top

Here are three good drama activities

Envelope Puppets Reader's Theater Classroom Drama

Resources for drama http://www.childdrama.com/lessons.html (tons of ideas) back to top

 =Concepts of Movement and Dance= Possible activities: create a lesson plan that incorporates movement as a way of teaching a concept you want to teach. If you have access to kids, test your lesson on them and see how it works. Get them to critique it for you and write that up so you can remember the feedback as you create future lessons.

You can think of the body as one giant manipulative. It moves in four dimensions: up and down, forward and back, side to side, and across time. It can move with a range of energy, from very little to a whole lot. The body can move quickly or slowly. Therefore, the body can be used to represent just about anything you can think of.

All of these characteristics can be used in effective lessons that help students to remember the concepts you are teaching. Here are a couple of movement-based lessons I have been a part of creating and have taught:  []  [] back to top

Here are some more movement-based lessons:   Great music for this activity would be George Crumb's The Voice of the Whale

(for deaf and hard of hearing students but beneficial for all)  back to top

 Additionally, every culture has created some sort of dance tradition and learning these traditions can become a way of gaining insight into a culture. Here are some folk dance resources:

[] []

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 Some resources on creative movement: []

http://www.mindsinmotion.org/creative.html (has examples of science lessons) http://leapinglegs.blogspot.com/2010/05/exploring-science-through-movement.html (parts of a flower, life cycle; also whole blog has other ideas) http://www.columbia.k12.mo.us/tmp/ccollins/My%20Web%20Sites/Lesson%20IDeas.htm (movement across the curriculum)

[] You will have to register (free) in order to use these resources but they are worth it. This is from Kentucky Educational Television.

[] Lesson plans from the Kennedy Center (includes all the arts)

[] A set of resources from PBS back to top