I once had a discussion with a 5th grade teacher about his frustrations that he no longer had time for the arts in his classroom because he was required to spend so much time on math, science and language. Fortunately, the Elementary Education program at my University has placed a large emphasis on arts integration in our lesson planning, and I was able to share a solution to this dilemma.
Integration (in context of lesson planning) is the idea that subjects do not have to stand alone in instruction, but can be taught together with greater benefit to the learner. For example: You are working on writing creative narratives in language arts, and learning about Greece in social studies, it may be a great idea to read Greek mythology and have students write their own myths. Arts integration takes this one step further--using art, music, theater and or dance to teach and reinforce core subject matter. An arts integration in this example could be a play about a Greek myth that your students practice and perform.
I have seen some extremely well executed arts integration lessons--and you probably do a lot of these without realizing that what you are doing is 'arts integration'. Students learning about the water cycle created dances to demonstrate different stages and states of water. Students learning phonics sang songs to remember letters and the corresponding sounds. Students learning about graphing points on an axis "mapped" the stars in Van Gogh's famous work.
There are so many possible applications of art integration lessons. Almost anything can be taught with a clever song, dance gets students out of their chairs and moving, theater practices reading skills, art offers endless opportunities for social studies connections... and you don't have to be an artist, musician or performer to integrate these activities!
Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences suggests eight learning styles through which people make sense of new information, and each of us have different strengths among those. Look at all the ways that the arts can help us to reach diverse learners in our classrooms.
- Dance reaches bodily-kinesthetic, musical, visual-spacial, intrapersonal and interpersonal learners.
- Music reaches musical, linguistic, logical-mathematical, intrapersonal, and interpersonal learners.
- Theatre reaches linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, visual-spatial, intrapersonal and interpersonal learners.
- Art reaches visual-spatial, naturalist, bodily linguistic and intrapersonal learners.
In case I haven't convinced you yet... please read 10 Lessons the Arts Teach. Arts are a valuable part of education and learning--and it's up to us to keep arts in our classrooms!
I would love to hear how you integrate arts in your lessons!
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