Teaching Through The Arts

I love learning new terms and putting language to concepts; it helps me to learn it better and also helps me to explain it to others better. Allowing students to move so they can learn and think has been a constant theme in this blog, and the term "embodied cognition," thinking with and through our bodies from the article "The Body Learns"   by Annie Murphy Paul on Slate.com discusses the importance of getting the body involved in the learning process. In a series of experiments carried out more than a decade ago, Arthur Glenberg of Arizona State University " found  that children’s reading comprehension improved when they acted out a written text , using a set of representational toys (a miniature barn and horse, for example, accompanied a story about a farm). Glenberg then  demonstrated  that the same procedure could work on a digital platform: In a 2011 experiment, he showed that having first- and second-grade students manipulate images of toys on a comput...

You may completely understand the importance of creating a safe classroom atmosphere, but if asked by an administrator or other stakeholder to explain, would you be able to put it into a language that they will understand? Let's face it, that language is one of data and research. So it follows that you'll need to have that data and research in your back pocket in order to make others see where you are operating from and convince them that your methods are sound. I recently picked up The Kinesthetic Classroom: Teaching and Learning through Movement by Traci Lengel and Mike Kuczala (2010), and while I'm still working my way through it, I came across this interesting piece on emotional climate in the classroom and its effects on learning. It considers how the brain prioritizes information: 1. Survival : if this need is not met, the student will not be "in a position to work at optimal levels." 2. Emotional State/Stress : If a student feels stressed or has e...

Back to the Massachusetts Educational Curriculum Frameworks which advocate for making connections across the curriculum. Here's what it says: Making Connections across the Curriculum Teaching an interdisciplinary curriculum involves collaboration among faculty and the community. Teachers and students might explore topics such as: • visual, oral, aural, and kinetic elements of the four arts disciplines; • characteristics common to the process of creating art works in each discipline; • interpretations of a theme or concept, such as harmony or compassion, through each of the four arts disciplines; • the ways in which the content of other disciplines is interrelated with the arts; including languages and literacy, scientific principles, mathematical reasoning, and geographical, cultural, and historical knowledge; and • the ways in which concepts from other core disciplines may be expressed through the arts. While all of these points are important, I want to focus on the point of the ...