Incorporating art in your classroom curriculum can enhance student outcomes in many areas including communication, interpretation, inference, visual literacy, and knowledge acquisition.
That's part of the description for the summer residency program at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It has within it the goal to synthesize parts of the curricula where possible, which has always been one of my constant goals in teaching.
The description above, however, is a broad one. In reality, we might include subject areas in it. While Crystal Bridges appears to focus on art as a tool for storytelling, reading, writing, and discussion, we should easily see application in other subjects, as well: geometry and problem solving in math, the scientific process, and certainly history.
For the past couple of years, I have used two important questions to guide many lessons across the board. These two questions have simplified my approach to many aspects of communicating, reflection, and discussion with students both individually and classwide. I have even used them effectively in adult Bible lessons at the churches where I preach in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. The questions are What do you notice? and What do you wonder? I suspect that these two questions can also guide discussion of particular pieces of art and will be useful in our professional development, next week.
At any rate, I am anxious to acquire new insight in the coming days and add it to my own methods, expectations, and content for years to come.
The description above, however, is a broad one. In reality, we might include subject areas in it. While Crystal Bridges appears to focus on art as a tool for storytelling, reading, writing, and discussion, we should easily see application in other subjects, as well: geometry and problem solving in math, the scientific process, and certainly history.
For the past couple of years, I have used two important questions to guide many lessons across the board. These two questions have simplified my approach to many aspects of communicating, reflection, and discussion with students both individually and classwide. I have even used them effectively in adult Bible lessons at the churches where I preach in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. The questions are What do you notice? and What do you wonder? I suspect that these two questions can also guide discussion of particular pieces of art and will be useful in our professional development, next week.
At any rate, I am anxious to acquire new insight in the coming days and add it to my own methods, expectations, and content for years to come.
For more about the Crystal Bridges summer residency for teachers, please refer to my set of posts on the subject.
