The Arguments for Arts Integration Mount Up

Here is a great blog post on the subject of grading students:

http://smartblogs.com/education/2013/04/09/ungraded-students/

Isn’t it interesting, that every time educational researchers and practitioners make a discovery about best practices in learning, they are completely consistent and natural outcomes of arts integration strategies?

Article on Arts Integration and the Common Core Standards

Susan Riley has published a very interesting blog post on enhancing the Common Core State Standards with Arts Integration techniques. Check it out at the link below or at Education Closet’s Facebook page:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/core-practices-arts-integration-susan-riley?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=ccssarts

Tips and Tricks for Arts-Integrated Lesson Design

Scientific Thought in Motion: Dance and Science Integration
Note: This post was originally written as part of a course in arts integration for teachers. The focus was on integrating Dance and Science, but these ideas actually apply to all kinds of integration planning.

Start with Big Ideas
In the art form, an excellent place to begin is with the elements of that form. In the case of dance, we identify Body, Energy, Space, and Time as the primary elements. Each has several sub-elements, and those can help us find connections to the “big ideas” in the connected curriculum — in this case, science.

Let’s take an example. As I scan through the big science ideas about systems of the human body, I see immediate dance connections with shape, size, pathway, symmetry, energy, speed, rhythm, and (of course) body.

Investigate

Once I have a sense that this is a rich playing field, I need to know more about the details of the science, and I also need to know how to access student prior knowledge — including any misconceptions they may have. (When I ask a group to create a human heart in movement as a short challenge task, I very often see them trying to duplicate the shape of the valentine heart rather than the complex, four-chambered organ we actually possess.)

I also have to devise a strategy to use one of the dance connections to help illuminate the science idea. That same strategy should also shed light on a dance element or dance as communication. So I have to narrow it down.

Create
Now you get to engage more deeply in the creative process of lesson design.

Let’s say I want to narrow down my lesson to pathway in dance, and the flow of blood through the heart in science. My approach to teaching this lesson might start with having my dancers use the locomotor movement of walking to travel through the room in curving pathways. I could then ask them to layer in different energies, such as flowing, constricting, absorbing, and releasing. They can imagine themselves as red blood cells, picking up oxygen from the lungs and delivering it to all parts of the body.

Gradually I let the story build. This is evolving objectives. We might add in the idea of absorbing carbon dioxide from the body and releasing it in the lungs, making a cycle in action. Then we differentiate between veins and arteries (direction of flow relative to the heart).

The last step in the story would be to show a short video of blood flow in the heart, and have students work in small groups to create a model of the heart in motion. This could be a five-minute challenge.



Shape the Lesson
Everything above is the middle of the lesson, the learning experience. We still have to add a beginning (some sort of introduction, anticipatory set, or other engaging “grabber” to set the stage), and we need an ending in which students have a chance to reflect on their learning and make connections to other topics. These are critical to the success of the lesson if we are aiming at deeper learning.

Some ways of beginning a lesson are to don a bit of costume (such as a lab coat), bring in a model or specimen for students to discover, or show a short video with engaging content related to the topic.

• Tip: Never, ever begin an arts-integrated lesson with the words, “Today we’re going to talk about…” I’m sure you can deduce why!

For the ending of the lesson, be sure to leave at least five minutes to pose reflection questions and preview any further lessons if this is an integrated unit. Some good reflection-starters are:

• What surprises did you have in this lesson?
• What questions do you have now?
• Where could we go next with these ideas?
• Do you see any connections to other things we are learning?

Test and Revise
OK, planning time is over. Time to field-test the plan. As you lead the lesson, don’t be afraid to have your outline in hand and refer to it frequently. You may not be fluent in your language the first time out, but as long as you have a “cheat sheet” of important vocabulary and steps of the lesson, you should be able to keep everyone engaged.

I try to notice hesitance on the part of the students to move, which usually indicates I have not given them enough information (or enough connections with meat on their bones) for them to know what to do. I may have to re-phrase or re-image what I want.

I also am thinking about pacing. I know if I talk too long, I will start losing students. If I go too quickly, they won’t have time to really put intention and meaning into their movement. I may realize that I won’t be able to teach the entire lesson as I envisioned it. The students may need more time to just play with the movement in order to enlarge their movement vocabulary. We might not get to exploring the actual heart chambers until the next lesson, which is fine. Smaller bites are almost always good!

Evaluate and Refine
After a few revisions, you may find the lesson plan works very well and also serves as a template or jumping-off place for additional lessons. The fun part is that each lesson you lead increases your skill and facility at the planning process, and you begin to develop effective shortcuts. Then you are ready to write a new and improved “tips & tricks” post of your own!

Photos from CETA “Scientific Thought in Motion” course session at Kensington Parkwood Elementary School, Maryland, USA: 12/6/2012.

 

Postscript:

I found this article online just about the same time I posted this entry. Here’s an interesting quote from “The Eight Aspects of Teacher Learning” on a site called Powerful Learning Practice (http://plpnetwork.com/2012/12/20/7-aspects-teacher-learning/):

By Sister Geralyn Schmidt

Good teachers design learning

Recently, when I perused my twitter feed, I came upon a blog post titled Teacher as Learning Designer. Andrew Miller, the author, states: “If you are a teacher and you are trying to explain what you do, say, ‘I am a learning designer!’ Teachers need to be empowered with a variety of instructional designs to meet the needs of all students. They need to be honored for their expertise to create creative and engaging learning environments. We can re-frame the concept of “teaching” to truly encapsulate all that teachers can and should do!”

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 26,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Cognitive Dissonance Department Report

As one of a continuing series of looks at the insanity of what we do versus what we think, consider these two headlines from the past week in education news:

I clicked on this article via an ASCD newsletter on Monday, heartened by the solid evidence cited. It seems like several times a week I look at or see summaries of articles such as: “Arts Education – A Necessity, not a Luxury | The White House,” “Combining Exercise with School Lessons Could Boost Brain Power,” “PhysEd and Recess Boost Scores,” and “Student Fitness Linked to Higher Test Scores.”

Yet, the very next day, a click brought me to this story:

In this distressing article we learn, among other facts from a US Department of Education report, that:

“Fewer public elementary schools are offering visual arts, dance and drama classes than a decade ago, a decline many attribute to budget cuts and an increased focus on math and reading. The percentage of elementary schools with a visual arts class declined from 87 to 83 percent. In drama, the drop was larger: From 20 percent to 4 percent in the 2009-10 school year.”

And at last report, dance was only at 7 percent to start with, so no need to wonder if there’s more of it. Music is hanging in there, more as a result of stubborn and entrenched music educators rather than a general acknowledgement that all children should study it as part of their study of all the arts.

At least one commentator has noticed the vast disconnect between what we know about good teaching and learning, and what we do about it as a matter of public policy. For her slant on the subject, check out this PDF of the Hechinger Ed blog post.

There is a massive movement afoot among today’s US citizenry to steadfastly ignore facts in front of our faces in favor of clinging to beliefs that have no basis. It is nowhere more obvious than in education.

Don’t let school boards and other politicians distort the truth so they can hang onto an obviously fractured status quo. Demand that education policy adapt to what we know is true about teaching and learning: that the arts are central to transforming public, equal-access education for all children.

B.E.S.T.: Elements of Dance Video

After much truly helpful critical feedback on earlier versions of this video, I think it’s ready for publishing and moving on. As we say about all kinds of art: it’s never finished, you just stop working on it.

The video is on my YouTube channel in mobile format (480×360 resolution) by clicking here.

The purpose of this video is to introduce the elements of dance as a way of talking about and creating dances. It is suitable for classrooms of all ages, so teachers are welcome to link to the movie and show it in class. A higher-resolution version is available, if you send me an email request.

For anyone who is interested in the metamorphosis of this particular creative project, here’s the short version:

In my 3-hour workshops for teachers as well as in my residency work with children, there comes a moment when we need to organize our thinking about dance. We need a common language, both to talk about what we are seeing when we watch, and also to give us ideas about how to approach movement invention aimed at communication.

Writing dance curriculum with Linda Muir in Kansas City back in the 1980s, I helped create this mnemonic structure (B-E-S-T). I was doing Artists-in-Education residencies at the time, and needed a clear and concise way to help my students see myriad possibilities for meaning and craft when making and watching dances.

Over the years, my wife and dance partner for life, Kathleen Kingsley, made many keen suggestions for the elements and sub-elements, and how to talk about them. Kimberli Boyd, a fabulous dancer and teaching dance artist, put the lovely “what, how, where, and when” to the framework, really encapsulating the ideas while opening them up beautifully. So it’s not my solo creation, but it’s one I’ve become fascinated in exploring.

In  my workshops for teachers, my method is to lead a participatory, classroom-style lesson before talking much about dance or its elements. In the old days, I then stepped to a prepared flip chart page and guided a discussion about the elements of dance in relation to the experience teachers just had. Lots of talk, and my handwriting and drawing skills are not the best.

In the last five years, I’ve begun using my laptop to provide visuals during the workshops, and have put together PowerPoint-style presentations to accompany our sit-down reflection stops. The elements discussion didn’t really change, however. I was still using words (now on screen, with a few pictures) and leading the discussion through a necessary but not particularly engaging set of steps.

Finally, I started to animate and record the presentation, figuring that I could then let that run and ask the teachers or students to reflect in pair-share mode afterward. Everyone’s voice would then get to be heard by someone, and the discussion after the pair-share would be more focused. That’s my theory, anyway. I am going to test it for the first time this month with an unsuspecting group of teachers.

The first video version was pretty much just a recorded slide show with music. Not too exciting yet. Then, on suggestions from critical friends, I added narration. My Keynote presentation software skills expanded to allow me to use video inserts on the slides, adding some much-needed movement to the subject. But the product was still too text-heavy. There was too much information, with lots of words on screen, more words being said in voice-over, and dance videos vying with still pictures for attention.

Expanding the "brand"

Melanie Layne, a brilliant and insightful teaching artist, made the invaluable suggestion to carry through the BEST logo “branding.” I had put it only in two small places and one large one. You’ll see what I did with the idea if you watch the video.

That was the last blueberry for this pie, so I mixed a brand-new product and am leaving it alone for a while. It needs to get a workout in workshops and classrooms, and I need to let it soak in my right brain for a while again before revisiting it.

If that’s TMI, you’ve already clicked away. Thanks for sticking with me, everyone else. Enjoy!

 

Artists or Teachers?

One of the Big Issue Questions that come up when we are talking about arts integration is, “Doesn’t this dilute the art form? Aren’t we using an art form as a crutch to teach something, rather than teaching ‘art for art’s sake?’”

Physics camp students making a conveyor belt. How do you think this experience will affect their understanding of such a machine?

Here’s a quote from a recent article that might make Artists (with a capital A) wince: “We’re suggesting that teachers put music in their arsenal of tools for teaching math,” Courey said. “It’s fun, it doesn’t cost a lot, and it keeps music in the classroom.” San Francisco State University professor Susan Courey helped author a study of students studying fractions with and without targeted music lessons focused on the math concept. The music students did 50% better on a fractions test after six weeks. Click here for a link to the article.

Phrased in that way, this sentiment could make True Artists think that music is being marginalized into just another way to teach mathematics. Here are the fears:

1. Schools will stop teaching music as an art form or special class. This will not only drastically reduce the emergence of musical talent, but it will put a lot of teaching musicians out of work.

2 Classroom teachers don’t know how to teach music. They risk alienating children who might otherwise like music if they didn’t have to use it in math class, and they might teach music incorrectly, making the music specialist’s job that much harder.

3. If music can be used for prosaic purposes, it loses some of its luster as a “fine art.”

Of course, "fine art" must have monstrous palaces for its enjoyment. And we must exclude the "unwashed" from entrance.

All perfectly valid fears, in the sense that our emotions are all valid. Yet a closer look at the situation should let us put those fears to rest, when we put arts integration into practice in appropriate settings with proven strategies and plenty of caveats. Let’s go through these one by one.

1. Schools and districts cut music and visual art from their programs at the drop of a budget slash. It is perfectly reasonable to think that, if schools begin to see teachers using music in the classroom, they will be more likely to cut the music specialist when dollars are tight, in hopes that the classroom teachers will still be imparting some music to their students.

In reality, most school districts are coming to understand the power of regular arts teaching when it comes to improving attendance, student engagement, and even student test scores. Over and over again studies are showing that children who study the arts also do better when it comes to making sense of the curriculum. I have been working with numerous districts around the country who have a strong preference for continuing arts education, many times over and above packaged reading and math curricula. In the trenches, the arts are gaining increasing, not decreasing, respect.

2. Since we don’t insist that pre-service teachers have a grounding in all the art forms, and learn how to integrate those arts into their curriculum, we are wise to worry about putting arts instruction into the hands of inadequately prepared teachers. But here is where we circle back to issue #1 above. Expecting teachers to explore, experience, and integrate an art form into their teaching is a powerful way to bring new audiences and new practitioners to the arts.

When teachers and their students begin to understand how energizing, lively, and expressive the arts are, they not only transform their teaching and learning, but they become lifelong arts devotees. Children who have made up their own dances about the life of plants are both more likely to be curious about and appreciative of botany in later life, but also to become more knowledgeable and confident audiences for dance of all types.

You cannot integrate an art form into the classroom without learning, and teaching, something important about that art form. That just enlarges the community of artists and audiences. At the same time, it helps schools and teachers show children how to learn through creative yet rigorous play.

3. This is a much older and much bigger issue that we can’t resolve here, but we have to acknowledge this “background noise” to any discussion of arts integration. There are visual artists who think of public art as “vulgar” or “pandering.” There are composers who sneer at music written for film, and choreographers who think any dance that audiences immediately connect with is “shallow.” There are playwrights who can’t stand the idea of a play with a “message.” This idea that there is something called “pure art” is one that has staying power.

Yet, humanity is not in unanimity on this. Many primal or aboriginal cultures, possessed of incredible artistic skills and a long history of beautiful products (by modern standards), have no word that means “art.” Behind the name of art is “artifice,” as in something constructed that is neither natural nor essential. When art is woven into our daily lives, it becomes a part of our language and our very being. Familiarity, however, does not necessarily imply contempt.

Sure, if everyone understands music or dance in a deeper way, then it will be harder to impress audiences with mere technique, no matter how prodigious. Consumers of the arts will require meaning, connections to their lives. They will want artists to descend from their ivory studios and engage in the messy, conflict-filled reality we all share, to make sure that artists retain their connections to their human-ness.

Ideally, teachers will become more like artists, thinking flexibly and interdependently, able to weave artistic principles in and through discussions and explorations of all subjects. Conversely, artists will begin to think of education as one of the crucial tasks they all must undertake. The more deeply we understand and practice our art forms, the more we are responsible to share that knowledge and that perspective with the world.

The cycle is recursive, and regenerative. We just have to be willing to step onto the moving spiral staircase.