Greenlee
Learning Technology and Design
The Arts in Schools: Three Variations
Every day the arts can be found in classrooms in elementary, middle, and high school in a variety of ways. The variations can be divided into three main categories.
Arts as Curriculum
There are some schools that have a music, art, drama, or dance teacher. They primarily use Arts as Curriculum. In the classes students develop skills and knowledge in that particular art form.
Programs are usually guided by national, state, or local standards of the art forms.
The Kennedy Center explains Arts as Curriculum in the following example. ” In visual arts, students learn the content, processes, and techniques for two- or three-dimensional work. They learn how the visual arts developed and changed throughout history, and engage in creating and analyzing works created in a variety of media.”
Arts-Enhanced Curriculum
Arts-Enhanced Curriculum is a fun was to engage students in learning content. This curriculum allows teachers to have little to no training in the art form.
When teachers use the arts as a strategy to support other curriculum areas, andare not identifying art objectives they are using the Arts-Enhanced Curriculum approach.
For example, a student is taught the phases of the moon using a song instead of learning the order verbally. Though the students are learning through music they are not required to learn about melody, song structure, or develop singing skills.
Arts-Integrates Curriculum
Arts-Integrated Curriculum the arts are the main keys to teaching resulting in increasing a student’s knowledge. Students are able to meet a variety of learning objectives when they engage in the creative process to make connections between the are and various subject areas.
In order for Arts-Integrated Curriculum to be successful teachers should engage in professional development to learn about arts standards and how to effectively integrate the arts into the curriculum.