FEATURE
ARTS INTEGRATION Accessible, Active, and Authentic By Eleanor W. Gensemer, Ed.D. Picture a group of our youngest Benchmark students energetically singing a song about key words during their morning meeting to help them understand the importance of looking for patterns in our language. The song, written by music teacher Laurie Veacock, helps the students remember the key words and the process of using key words to decode words they don’t know. Putting the process to music enables the students to make the connection to the language-based learning in their Word Detectives lessons. Research has shown improvements in phonological processing, spelling, and reading skills when music is integrated with word learning in dyslexic children. Picture, too, a group of students studying and observing the life cycle of a butterfly, from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly as they actually watch the process unfold with monarch butterflies. They then create paper mache representations of the various stages of development in their art classes. Under the direction of art teacher Joan Fox, students are able to demonstrate with this hands-on activity their understanding of the process of the life cycle of a butterfly, meeting science goals and art goals at the same time. The effect of learning in the arts has been shown to increase academic learning for students with learning differences.
Arts Integration: A Slice of the Innovation Pie These are just two examples of the exciting work that is being done this year as part of our focus on arts integration.
Benchmark School is committed to providing innovative instructional opportunities to our bright students who learn differently. Arts integration is an important articulation of our larger focus on innovation in instruction. “This is an exciting time. We have the opportunity to take strategy instruction, which has been successful throughout Benchmark’s history, and layer in music across the school in subjects like social studies and language arts. This fall, I have already seen some of our more reserved students become more open, creative, and curious,” says music teacher Laurie Veacock. The goals of arts integration are also closely linked to the designthinking model that is practiced in classrooms and in the Innovation Labs.
What is Arts Integration? Arts integration is an instructional approach where the visual and performing arts are included across the curriculum in three equally important ways. 1. Students are taught the skills and organizational frameworks of the art and music subjects as curriculum in regularly scheduled classes. 2. The arts are used to enhance the curriculum in other subjects. In this case, the curricular focus is on the other subjects and the arts are used as a complement to that instruction and provide students with a variety of ways to express their understanding. 3. The arts are integrated with instruction in another curricular area and the students learn to connect the arts with other curricular areas to achieve objectives in both subjects. Arts integration is defined by the Kennedy Center as “an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form.” This approach provides opportunities for students to make their understanding visible through the products they create. It is a natural way to differentiate instruction for learners with different needs and provides an authentic context for problem-solving and creative thinking. (Duma & Silverstein, 2019)
3 Benchmark Magazine | Winter 2020
