Arts Integration and Online Learning: Frindle, Dinosaurs, and Chalk Art

Arts Integration and Online Learning Go Hand in Hand

by Laura Giles

Arts integration is continuing, even during these months of digital learning. Across Utah, teachers are integrating the arts with other curricular areas to keep their students engaged, spark creativity, deepen learning and make home education enjoyable.


FUN WITH FRINDLE

Lori Nickerson, a second-grade teacher at Westland Elementary in Jordan School District, has been reading “Frindle” by Andrew Clements to her students. Class members culminated this literature experience by joining a Frindle Fair through Google Meet. At the fair, each student showed how he or she created a project to demonstrate understanding of the story.

The students were encouraged to incorporate as much art into their projects as possible. Some of these projects were dioramas, games and even a flipbook presentation, using media arts.

Nickerson often integrates drama and literary arts by asking the students to act out parts of the story that she is reading online. They also make facial expressions to represent characters. Music, math, and dance are other areas of the curriculum that Nickerson has integrated during the weeks of online learning.

DANCE LIKE RAIN and DRAW NEW DINOSAURS

Kelleen Leslie teaches fourth grade at Blackridge Elementary in Jordan School District. “I am trying to include art in my online classroom as much as I can, but it can be daunting,” Leslie said.

Leslie does the “Brain Dance” with her students through Zoom meetings as well as doing happy dances together periodically. While learning about rocks and minerals, the students were tasked with creating their own dances to demonstrate how weathering and erosion occur.

Leslie’s students have also created visual artworks using things from nature. During the weeks of online learning, their study of fossils included creating a new dinosaur and drawing what it would look like.

A first grader from Orem Elementary School sits by the chalk mosaic
that she created before writing a "how to" nonfiction piece about
how to create this artwork, integrating literary arts and visual arts. 

HOW TO MAKE ART...FROM ANYTHING!

The first-grade students at Orem Elementary School in Alpine School District were learning about writing nonfiction “how to” pieces during the first couple of weeks of online school. They were asked to create an artwork of their choosing. Keeping in mind that not all students have the same materials at their homes, class members were invited to use any materials they liked, including found items, such as rocks. Then, students were to write a how-to piece, describing step-by-step how to create their particular artwork.

A large variety of artworks emerged from this assignment: paintings, realistic and abstract drawing, a rock sculpture, a Lego sculpture, and chalk mosaic art, among others. The writing that resulted from this activity was more detailed than usual and the students proudly showed off their writing and art with photos to their teachers.

Rather than filling out a worksheet about the life cycles of plants and animals, the first graders at Orem Elementary had the opportunity to choose one of the life cycles that they had learned about via online learning. Then, each student drew and wrote about it on a blank piece of paper. The goal was to encourage each student to use their own creativity and the knowledge they had gained to create something meaningful to them while demonstrating understanding of life cycles.

After learning about life cycles through digital learning,
a first grader at Orem Elementary drew, colored and labeled a diagram
of a butterfly life cycle, integrating science, writing and art. 

These are just a few examples of the many ways that arts integration is living on, even during these days of online teaching. Teachers are discovering that the arts are not just for in-person learning. Students are discovering that they can create, even while at home.

Laura Giles is a lover of all things art, a first-grade teacher in Alpine School District, a writer for The Daily Herald newspaper, an Arts Leadership Academy graduate and has earned the Arts Integration Endorsement from Brigham Young University. She can be reached at LauraCGiles@gmail.com.

Read More »

Authentic Experiences with the Visual Arts: An Interview with Tara Carpenter

Tara Carpenter, professor in BYU's Department of Art Education, shares her ideas on how to help future teachers integrate visual arts into their classrooms.

Carpenter has taught at BYU for the past three years. She teaches art for elementary teachers (VAEDU 326). The class is designed to help pre-service teachers understand visual arts and develop their own skills. Her teaching style focuses on providing authentic experiences to teachers. She believes that if teachers have real experiences with art they will feel more motivated to teach it. This year she has done just that!

Carpenter helped develop and pilot a new program that instructs elementary education majors how to teach visual arts to children: JUMP ST(ART). JUMPST(ART) is offered as an 8-week after-school class in the Fall and Winter semesters where each session is 50 minutes long.  In the summer, it is offered as a one-week camp for K-6 students where each session is two hours long.  For the children, it is an incredible out-of-school experience with creative projects that increase their artistic skills. For Tara's students, it is an opportunity to experience what teaching art in a real classroom feels like. These elementary education majors benefit from authentic experiences of creatively writing lesson plans that integrate core standards, while also adjusting for age-appropriateness, managing students (and sometimes messy projects), and enabling their students to have increased interest in the arts because of powerful art instruction.

Last summer Carpenter spent the first week and a half of the month-long term with her class going over such topics as the development of art with children and writing lesson plans. With only five pre-service teachers in the class, they were each required to create a number of lesson plans that could be used for the upcoming art camp. As a class, students collaborated in testing the lessons with one another and planning for over fifty elementary school students, all in different grade levels and with various artistic skills.

After the experience, Professor Carpenter's students felt empowered and assured in their abilities to teach visual arts in the future. "I feel confident now that I realize art doesn't have to be a cookie cutter, one-way thing," said Lauren Snow, one of Carpenter's students. Snow and the other students felt more likely to integrate art in their teaching because of JUMP ST(ART).

To learn more about this fabulous new program, whether you are an elementary education major, current teacher, or a parent looking for art experiences for your children, please visit the program website. Carpenter also coordinates programming for secondary (ages 13-18) and continuing education students of all ages.  Registration for summer K-12 camps is open now. Check it out at:

http://www.byu-jumpstart.com/

These pictures speak for themselves to show how successful this JUMP ST(ART) endeavor is:

Photos used with permission, courtesy of JUMP ST(ART). 

Read More »

Feature Teacher: Kelleen Leslie

Kelleen Leslie has been teaching for seven years, exclusively in the fourth grade. She is currently teaching in Utah's Jordan School District and serves on the district's arts committee. 

Kelleen attended the BYU ARTS Partnership's Arts Academy her second year teaching, had a BYU Arts Bridge scholar the year after that, and attends the partnership's ARTS Express, a two-day conference, during the summer each year.

In addition, she attended a week-long teacher seminar at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. where she further enhanced her skill set in teaching with the arts. When she began teaching she wanted to gather and embrace all the quality educational resources she could, and she has certainly done that.

Why the Arts for Kelleen?

"Kids will learn better and retain better and have a lot more fun if you integrate the arts,” Kelleen says. Her training in arts integration has “made all the difference. It’s a lot more fun, and that’s the way kids learn.”

She has certainly felt the pressure to stop integrating the arts and start drilling test-focused curriculum into her students. She said teachers are bombarded with “just do testing." However, Kelleen believes that if her students are not having fun in the classroom, if they don't want to be in school, there's a problem right from the start. She says the arts help with that.

How Kelleen Implements the Arts

Kelleen starts her day every day with the brain dance, and when she makes her curriculum map, she makes sure to work some form of art into her unit. "It may be 5 minutes of something; it may be small,"she said, but having it planned means she makes sure to fit it in. Her students' learning is filled with arts integration.

Although she was a former theater major, Kelleen claims she has little talent in the arts. Whether or not that is true, she says she doesn't need much talent in order to integrate the arts in her class. She says she doesn't have to do the painting, the choreographing, or the dancing. What she has to do is tie the artistic activity into the fourth grade curriculum and provide the opportunity and support her students' needs to create something. 

One of the ways Kelleen integrates the arts with her students is to work with masterpieces available through the National Gallery of Art loan program. She displays one work of art every week or as an introduction to a lesson. After she allows the students a few minutes to look at the art, she has every student tell the class one item they noticed. After every student has had a turn, she has them go again. This is when they really begin to notice things. 

The skills in observation honed during this short and simple exercise help the students with their writing, reading, and art, and the students love it. 

Kelleen also incorporates dance, drama, and music. For one dance and science lesson, she has the students choreograph and dance the water cycle as she reads a poem describing it. While students do this activity, they internalize the process as they come up with movements, express them while practicing together, and perform them for their classmates. 

At the same time they practice the skill of collaboration, which is a very practical skill. They work together to choreograph, perform, and act as a respectful audience while other groups perform. Collaboration and social skills gained in this process may be just as important as the understanding gained about the water cycle. 

Another arts integration activity Kelleen did with her class last year involved weathering and erosion. After testing at the end of the year, one of her students came up to her and said something to the effect of, "Mrs. Leslie, I couldn't remember the difference between weathering and erosion, and then I did the dance we did in my head and remembered exactly what it was." The lesson gave her quick access to the information she needed when she needed it. 

Success!

Principal Support

Kelleen says she owes a lot of where she is today as a teacher who integrates the arts to the support of her principals. It was her first principal who signed her up for Arts Academy and the same principal who encouraged her to apply to the National Gallery of Art Teacher Institute.  In addition, her current principal encourages her to use the arts because it’s “her.” He looks to her for ideas for things the school should do to integrate the arts to improve student learning.

Student Success

When I asked Kelleen if her students were successful, she said "Yes." She said her students love being in school, are creative, are self-directed learners, learn about themselves, have self-esteem, and learn math, science, social studies, and language arts through means other than packets and worksheets. One mother came back to visit when her daughter was in high school, years after having Kelleen for a teacher. She said to Kelleen, "my daughter was at a time in her life when she really needed a teacher like you." Kelleen knew she created a positive school environment where kids like to learn and grow.

For one student in particular the presence of the arts in his school day made a significant difference. This student was on a first grade reading and math level while in her fourth grade class and had a learning disability Kelleen believed would prevent him from catching up with the other students during his years in school. When he did the arts; however, "He became an equal with all the other fourth graders," and Kelleen "saw him just shine." The increase in his confidence was noticeable, and Kelleen credits her integration of the arts.

Kelleen gets ready in the morning looking forward to being in her classroom, teaching her kids. She sees the difference in the learning and developmental experience her students have in her classroom where the arts are present compared to the classrooms where testing is the overwhelming focus. The feeling is happy and the students are confident. They are learning and growing together while working hard and enjoying school.

Read More »