Integrating Art Into the Classroom

In the school world, where so much focus is put on reading and math, art seems to be the last thing on a lot of teachers’ minds. Integrating it into the curriculum seems to be the only way to fit it into the day but the questions are why, when we have so much more to do? And how?

The first question is answered in Emphasis Art. In chapter six it discusses three domains that when all in place help students to remember what they learned. The three domains are cognitive (facts), psychomotor (body movement) and affective (emotions) (C. Wachowiak, 2010, p. 69).When art is integrated into a subject, they will be experiencing all three domains. This means they are going to better retain the information! C. Porter, an arts educator, said, “Educators who integrate the arts into their classroom's core curriculum find inspiration for new teaching methods and experience deeper learning from their students” (C. Porter)

Incorporating art into social studies is something quite easy. A lot of the time we can use art in order to understand a person’s culture. The art has a cultural meaning (Art and Visual Culture). Using this, along with other strategies, students will be able to visualize what a past culture was like. It also helps us see how others perceived their own world. This always brings to mind political cartoons. While they are considered art, they tell a lot about the artists own beliefs and what is going on in their world.

Other subtracts also integrate with art, making all types of learning very engaging for students. For math, I am teaching students strategies to figure out multiplication problems. One of the strategies we use is drawing pictures. This visual concept helps them more than anything. I also found many lesson plans where art and language arts are integrated. One example was of the story of the gingerbread man. After reading the story, students were instructed to use paint to make a gingerbread house as well as gingerbread men (Zakowski, 2003)

Integrating art in the classroom is painless and productive. It’s something I hope to do as much as possible.

References

Art and Visual Culture. Retrieved from http://www.students.sbc.edu/lollis04/ArtandVisualCulture9.htm

Porter, C., Bringing Arts Into the Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.neohiofamily.com/articles/index.php?view=viewarticle&id=256

Wachowiak, C., (2010) Emphasis Art. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Zakowski, (2003). Gingerbread Man. Retrieved from http://cfschools.net/schools/ch/heazak/ginger/ginger.html