Elementary Visual and Performing Arts Methods

• Enthusiasm for engaging and stretching all students through the arts • Desire to learn new research, theories, and methods related to the arts • Passion about the power of the arts to transform student learning • Flexibility to change schedules and materials and take advantage of teachable moments • Openness to experiment with creative variations on strategies • Collaborative planners willing to co-teach with artists • Creative problem solvers who seek diverse solutions to learning problems • Optimism about teaching and reaching all children through instruction that is differentiated using arts-based strategies • Humor to create a positive learning climate and to deal with problems • Artistry in which one-of-a-kind imprints are made on each child by the teacher's unique personality and style • Mentorship of students by sharing personal abilities and interests (e.g., teachers who play instruments, write poetry, paint, or dance), which causes students to choose to apprentice themselves to these "masters" • Relationships with students that form the core of classroom discipline • Courage/confidence to make mistakes and not be threatened by the opinions of nay sayers

AI embraces a developmental view of learning in which students are thought to mature through predictable physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and moral stages. Learning is a result of experiences, which differ for every person, in either actuality or in the perception of the experience. Indeed, learning is believed to be a consequence of thinking as reflected in each person's brain structure. Teachers also pay considerable attention to teaching in a culturally responsive manner. The degree of respect for diversity is a significant measure of the effectiveness of arts integration, as is the degree of increase in diverse thinking of teachers and students. Conformity, uniformity, and other marks of standardization are not marks of quality arts-based programs.

Offers increased possibilities for differentiated instruction because it adds communication options. Teachers have a greater repertoire of strategies to structure lessons so students are provided with appropriate challenges and they are taught how to create and express meanings in unique ways.

Constructivist proposals align well with central goals of AI that focus on causing students to be active meaning makers individually and in collaboration with others. Constructivist philosophy is supported by 30 years of psychological theory and research that has dissuaded educators from thinking of learning as rote memorization of discrete facts.

Effective communication depends on possessing multiple ways to understand, respond to, and express thoughts and feelings. This includes the language arts (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and the arts (literature, visual art, music, dance, and drama). At the heart of AI is teaching students how to be fully literate, which entails attaining proficiency in using the arts as basic communication tools. Thus, the arts become integral to the literacy curriculum and expand students' options for comprehension and expression of ideas and feelings throughout all curricular areas and life.

Meaning is created by each person based on his or her background experiences. This need to make sense appears in infancy and the "explanatory drive" persists throughout life. Arts-based lessons tap into individual interests and backgrounds, which motivates students. Arts-based lessons employ creative problem solving which provides students with the thinking repertoire to act on the human predisposition to create sense. The inquiry-based creative problem-solving (CPS) process is used to construct meaning across disciplines and assumes there are many right answers to problems so students feel encouraged to seek solutions that are distinctive in nature. Arts-based lessons culminate in externalized understandings that students show through mime, sculpture, and other arts media, includin

Learners are involved in important and purposeful work that contributes to their own happiness and the happiness of others. Relevance is increased by tapping student interests, connecting to their background experiences, and engaging them in hands-on, heads-on, hearts-on inquiry. Arts integration extends meaningfulness by focusing on teaching students to use problem-solving skills needed in real life, along with how to use diverse materials, tools, and techniques connected to the real world. Meaningfulness is extended further when learning is structured around projects that provide authentic contexts for problem solving and products that will be shared with audiences.

AI is all about the integration of these multiple mind and body systems. Teachers orchestrate experiences that are thought provoking, aesthetic, concrete, and physically engaging. Teachers employ the power of emotion to boost learning by acknowledging that every thought, decision, and response are accompanied and often determined by emotion. Arts-based teaching activates all the perceptual senses. As a result, making and doing the arts changes how we think and how we feel because they use alternative channels for perception and expression, including moving and touching. Image-based thinking, rather than word-based, allows thinking without words. Visual, sound, emotional, and physical images move through our minds and bodies and are projected using dance, drama, music, and art. Teaching strategies such as arts-based warm-ups, open questions, and descriptive feedback invite cognitive, affective, and physical engagement.

Students must learn how isolated skills and individual concepts add up to big understandings. They can do so when taught how to listen to a whole song or view a whole painting and be open to cognitive and emotional responses. The whole experience comes into focus as they notice details. The details, in turn, have meaning because they are part of the whole, just as letters are meaningless until they are put into words, which also need greater context to actually make sense.

Arts integration seeks to teach students to make novel links among disparate ideas. Hooking to previous experience is vital, so teachers often begin lessons with brainstorming what students already know about a topic. During lessons students are drawn to significant details by prompting them to take time to zoom in and then zoom out to find patterns. Asking and coaching is valued over telling. Specific arts elements and concepts (details) are explicitly taught as anchors so students have specific tools to transform their ideas. Students are taught to use creative problem solving, which includes synthesizing patterns to arrive at new perspectives and products. This kind of transformation yields deep understanding. Meaningful work with artists and arts content and materials also causes students to be transformed. Over time they build a reservoir of knowledge and skills to work in new ways. Many AI projects are yoked to multiple intelligences theory for this purpose.

The arts are about expanding ways to understand, respond, and express meaning independently. Arts-based teaching focuses on explicit teaching of arts concepts and skills that provide students expanded communication options. Teachers move students toward independence by explicitly teaching problem-solving strategies, scaffolding practice, and providing time to work independently, with feedback. Students also need to understand that independence is gained through hard work. Artists provide significant role models of hardworking people who persist at overcoming obstacles to independence. Constructivist views of learning assume a developmental perspective, which guides lesson planning, and instruction that embraces learner diversity. A main goal is to expand each student's capacity to independently problem solve, enabling them to create new meanings throughout their lives. Teachers emphasize the development of arts knowledge and creative problem-solving skills so learners can increasingly create meaning with more independence.

Concentration involves sustained attention and is best achieved through deep engagement in creative problem solving ("flow" is the most engaged state). Arts-based learning occurs in contexts set up to maximize attention through aesthetic stimulation. Teachers also use arts-based strategies to capture students' focus, sustain concentration, and give time for incubation, which allows unconscious integration of ideas. At AI lessons routinely include conscious reflection on work and self-evaluation against specific criteria, often set out in rubrics.

Arts integration minimizes extrinsic reinforcers such as stickers and praise, because they decrease interest in learning for its own sake. These external controls are not needed when students are motivated by arts engagement. However, learners must believe they are capable of creative problem solving and be competent in using it. If problems are too difficult or students lack knowledge or skill to participate, they can become overly frustrated or bored. Arts integration relies on noncompetitive social interaction in which groups work to solve problems and share ideas, which may result in individual products. Competitive practices are minimized because they can threaten and cause students to lose hope or give up.

Learning to learn from and work with others is essential to success in the classroom and the workplace, where cooperation is needed to solve problems and create new products. Healthy personal relationships are built on cooperation and respect.. The arts provide multiple opportunities for students to learn important social skills through choirs, ensembles, and clubs. In each of these arenas, students must tackle inevitable problems that arise when two or more people assemble. Audiences are a social force that can cause shy and reluctant students to blossom. Students learn how to take on the role of an audience member, too, which increases their social adeptness and capacity to enjoy, appreciate, and gain aesthetic satisfaction.

Arts integration emphasizes creating an aesthetic learning ecology in which sights, sounds, and smells are used to stimulate the senses. The psychological feel of a classroom also affects student success. Students will not take risks if they do not feel that it is physically and psychologically safe to make mistakes. The teacher's personality, beliefs, and teaching approach are the greatest determiners of climate. Caine and Caine (2005) recommend that the classroom be low threat and high challenge, which creates a "relaxed alertness"—an optimal state in which fear and pleasure centers of the brain are moderated.

AI programs share the goal of integrating multiple art forms throughout the curriculum. Overlapping concepts and skills are found among arts and academic areas

Quality arts integration rests on good teaching. Research confirms that the effects of AI on learning depend on the length and specific nature of arts integration. The pedagogy of quality arts integration is flexible, but draws on three basic sources: (1) general, research-based, best teaching practices, (2) general practices that relate to the arts, and (3) practices peculiar to each art form. Teachers grow their repertoire of best practices over time when they have opportunities to collaborate with other teachers and arts specialists.

Six Ts of effective teaching: * Talk -- Focused conversation among students increases learning. Arts integrated classrooms are not dominated by teacher talk. Instead, teachers use mini-lessons to introduce and demonstrate, and students are quickly set to work to solve problems. They learn to take turns, share ideas, and actively listen to others as they brainstorm solutions. Students learn to question, clarify, and reflect. Through drama, students learn to be comfortable improvising and controlling their voices and bodies. They learn to subdue their own volume as background music is played. Most of all, students learn that voicing their own ideas is valued.* Task -- The major task is to actively engage students in constructing meaning from diverse texts relevant in today's world. This communication task has three parts: creating understanding (comprehension), responding, and expressing ideas and feelings. Meaning construction is accomplished using the creative problem-solving process, associated with the arts, and aligned with the reading-writing processes and inquiry used in science and social studies. The goal is to engage students in sustained inquiry and for them to learn self-monitoring. Specific arts content, skills, and materials are taught for use during creative problem solving. These expand the communication possibilities and enable students to transform ideas and feel a sense of ownership about the products they create. *Texts.-- Texts are no longer conceived as traditional printed material, such as textbooks. A 21st-century concept of "text" includes paintings, sculpture, architecture, songs, musical pieces, and dances. Texts can also reflect any genre ranging from informational to poetic. Students need to be taught to make sense of all types and forms of texts in today's world that record ideas, values, and emotions. *Time.-- Differentiation to meet diverse student needs requires that time be flexible. In general, different students need different amounts of time to learn the same thing. Time is an important variable. For example, the creative problem-solving process is central to arts integration, but teachers must vary instructional time to accommodate this process. Incubation time is needed for students to take a recess from a piece of writing or visual art project so they can return with a fresh perspective. One prominent feature of AI is long-term projects that deepen understanding through higher order thinking used in creative problem solving. These take time, but the result is stunning exhibits and performances that show how students can synthesize learning, when time is made available for meaningful work. *Transfer.-- The arts promote curiosity, inquiry, persistence, experimentation, synthesis, and flexible thinking—all of which are important beyond the school walls and critical to 21st-century job success. Pedagogical issues related to the potential of transfer of arts learning depend on how explicit the teacher is about common links between learning in the arts and other subjects.. Ideally, transfer goes back and forth. Students who understand that written composition shares much with the composition process in visual art are likely to use skills from each to enrich both . *Tests--. The arts have a long history of using nontraditional ways to show achievement—primarily portfolios, performances, and exhibitions. In arts integration these assessment tools are fully employed. Instead of relying on paper tests, students "show they know." They externalize learning by creating dance, drama, visual art, music, and poetry responses that synthesize ideas. Portfolios of work, rubrics, and self-evaluation are common and combine with performances and exhibits to do more than gauge what was learned.

AI envisions teachers in the following roles to meet cognitive, emotional, and physical needs of students: • Specialists and generalists • Mentors and models • Collaborators in co-planning and co-teaching • Facilitators and coaches • Managers, directors, and guides • Talent scouts • Co-learners with students • Motivators • Assessors and evaluators