Creative Arts in the Elementary Curriculum

By Stephanie Wilmore Alverno College Fall 2012

Table of Contents
I. II. Introduction Methods a. Information Gathering b. Organization of Research and Findings c. Presenting Findings Findings a. Findings #1 b. Findings #2 c. Findings #3 Conclusion Resources Appendix a. Appendix A: 10 Lessons the Arts Teach b. Appendix C: Interview Questions

III.

IV. V. VI.

I.

Introduction
What benefits do elementary students receive when the Arts are integrated with core

subject curriculum? Due to the financial climate, many programs have to be cut. More and more teachers have to put different hats on as they are not only the teacher of the core subject areas of Literacy, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies, but are also becoming the teacher for Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Art. Because of this, many students are missing out on learning through the arts. Personally, this is a topic I think of every time I begin to make a lesson plan. I am an Early Childhood Education teacher with a support in Creative Arts. Through the classes I have taken and students I have observed, I have been able to understand how students grow and how they learn best. I believe in the importance of the arts, and believe that through integration with other core subject areas, teachers will be able to keep their students engaged while meeting all the standards students must be taught throughout their elementary career. Through my research, I will use my findings to back up my decision for integration of the arts into my elementary classroom. Other teachers will find this information useful in their own classrooms. As I stated above, teachers have to balance what they teach in their classroom. Through my research, they will be able to see that the Arts have a place in the classroom and will be better prepared to back up their choices when asked why they are teaching what they are teaching. By knowing the facts and seeing how engaged students are in the classroom,

teachers will feel more and more confident in the use of the arts and will realize that it is a tool to help children understand more deeply core subject content.

II.

Methods
What benefits do elementary students receive when the Arts are integrated with Core

Subject curriculum? I have been asked this question and questions like it multiple times over the past two years. When I first began my journey as a Creative Arts Minor, I was not a believer in the arts. However, over the past few classes and experiences I have had with elementary students, I have become more and more aware of how large of a role the arts can play in teaching and engaging students. This is the biggest reason why I wanted to conduct research on the role of art integration with core subject curriculum and the benefits that students receive. Since I was an unbeliever at first, this means that there will be many others who will not understand my reasoning for the way I teach. I will be asked numerous times in my career why I choose to integrate creative arts into my teaching, and this will give me the concrete research of the benefits. Art integration provides many benefits to students of all ages, but I have chosen to focus my research to the benefits of Creative Arts in the elementary school level since that is where I will be teaching. I have decided to narrow my research to the benefits of art integration with core subject areas, rather than simply the benefits of creative arts for their own purpose. I chose to do this because of the demand of teachers teaching the arts due to budget cuts and because students learn best when they are able to learn through different learning styles. To find answers, I conducted research over a period of approximately two months. The following is a detailed account of how I gathered this information, how I chose to organize my research and findings, and how this information will be presented.

Information Gathering
Once I figured out what my question was for my research project, I began to brainstorm ideas of where I could gather information, how I could conduct my interviews, and where I could observe an art integrated lesson. The great thing about this topic was the fact that I had already had many resources from previous classes to get me started! Although I had many materials available to me, I was interested to find more readings to support my research question. With previous materials in mind, my research began. My first step in finding scholarly articles began by finding key words and phrases I could use to become researchable terms. This would make my researching on Alverno College Librarys website much easier. I was able to put in terms such as multiple intelligences, integrated curriculum, creative arts, and student engagement in the key term box and click search. As I was shown multiple articles, I read through the abstract and the beginning/end of the piece to figured out if I would like to keep it and read more or not. Through doing this, I was able to pick out, download and print six articles ranging from two pages to twenty-six pages. Once I read through all of these articles, however, I found out that I wanted to look through books instead of articles. It was not that the articles were not helpful, because they were, but I felt like I had not gotten all of the great information I could have if I were to look for books based off my research question. By doing this, I would be able to open the door to many more readings. At this point, I started to feel a bit stuck. I had spent around two weeks reading these different articles and felt like I had not gained much information from them. So again, I went to

Alverno Colleges Library website and began my search again. This time around, however, I typed in a book I had already owned from a previous class titled Creative Drama in the Classroom and Beyond by Nellie McCaslin. Through the search for this book, I was able to find related books. Once I clicked on related books after related books, I found myself with fourteen books in my add section, and many of them were right there in Alverno Colleges Library. I ended up checking out only eight out of the fourteen, but kept the others on my list just in case I needed them. As my understanding for my topic grew, I used what I was reading to begin forming interview questions. Through my readings, I noted a few key phrases that were brought up. Through my readings, I started to realize there were a few key phrases that were mentioned in every article and book I read. These phrases included multiple intelligences, skills transferred, risk taking, and enthusiasm about learning. Through these key phrases, I began to form several questions. While I was talking to a few teachers in person and over email, I realized that many of them do not have time to sit down and answer questions in person or via email. If they do fill out questions through email, they are usually short and not well thought out. This is when I decided I would rather have questions filled out by multiple teachers using a survey than wait and not hear back from anyone. Once I completed all of my questions, I turned to a website called Survey Monkey to make a survey to send to an array of teachers I knew. I also decided that the name of the teacher did not matter, because I was more interested in the answers. Once I made this conclusion, I began to look up all of the educators I knew that taught in the elementary age range. A few of the educators were ones from my elementary back home in Indiana. I emailed my Kindergarten, 3rd, 5th and 6th grade teacher as well as the principle I had

at the time. One was an educator I had from previous field placement. She teaches Kindergarten in the Greendale School District. A few were educators that had graduated from Alverno College. They had all graduated within the past two years and have found jobs in the Milwaukee area. Lastly, I had contacted a few professors from Alverno College. Two of them teach in my Creative Art classes and the third teaches the Exceptional Learners course. All three have experience in teaching the elementary grades. Once I had my readings done and interview questions in place, I wanted to bring it all together by watching an authentic, integrated creative art lesson taught. In order to do this, I contacted a previous teacher and ask to go with his class as they observed a creative arts workshop being taught. On November 1st, I drove to an urban elementary school. The 4th grade class was made up of fifteen boys and seventeen girls. They were preparing for a show they were going to see called Dont Tell Me I Cant Fly. The students participated in three activities that all related back to art. The first activities she has the students explain in one word and one expression (movement) what they think art is. Each student in the room demonstrates what they believe art is in one word along with the action and the whole class repeats. In activity two, students were put in five groups and had to create a collage based off of a theme they decided to portray out of their own bodies. In front of the class they became the collage and their classmates had to interpret what they believe the collage was. This activity allowed students gain a deeper meaning that people can and will interpret things differently.

Organization of Research and Findings

As I was reading, I used multi-colored highlighters to separate key points in the articles my articles. I also used this method in the books I read except I used colored post-it notes to write on. After about 6-7 weeks of research, I began to categorize my findings and type them out onto different documents. By this time I had already had my Reference page set up and placed the citation with the sentences/phrases I had typed out. The first major finding found was the undeniable fact that when using the arts, skills are being used and transferred. The second major finding was the fact that integrating the arts into the curriculum allowed teachers to teach to the diversity of students abilitiesmultiple intelligences. And lastly, it was apparent that students took more risks while the arts were integrated into their lesson students overall enjoyed learning, took more risks, and were more enthusiastic about doing assignment. Once I realized these were the main findings to answer my question, I began to focus my research to support these findings.

Presenting Findings
I plan to present my findings at an Alverno Student WEA meeting. This group is made up of a variety of Education students. I feel like this is a perfect setting to share my research for many reasons. First of all, my research will help all teachers engage their students better. I focused my question on the elementary side of education, but many if not all points stay true for all grade levels. Second, many teachers do not have the chance to take creative art classes as I do. Many articles stated that teachers do not participate in integrating the arts because

they have never been taught or shown how beneficial they can be to students learning. I believe by showing my findings to this wide range of educators, I will instill in them a peak of interest in the use of the arts and hopefully they will find themselves taking a class at Alverno that teachers how to integrate the arts into core subjects.

III.

Findings

Through reading a variety of scholarly literature, conducting a survey to a range of elementary teachers, and observing a creative drama class, I was able to come to a conclusion as to what the benefits are of integrating the arts with elementary core curriculum. With this understanding, I have found backing to my question in the following areas: When using the arts, skills are being used and transferred Integrating the arts into the curriculum allow teachers to teach to the diversity of students abilitiesmultiple intelligences Students enjoy learning, take more risks, and are more enthusiastic about doing assignments. By pinpointing these three areas, I am able to understand what students gain from integration of the art and why it is important for educators to include them in their core curriculum. Through these next few pages, I will present research to support the question of what benefits elementary students receive when the Arts are integrate with core subject curriculum.

Findings: When using the arts, skills are being used and transferred

Integrating the arts into the elementary curriculum allow students to use and transfer countless skills needed for their entire life. Stephen Dobbs stated that when teaching through the arts, many believe that there is little intellectual content and it is primarily about feelings (creative expression) (Dobbs, 1998). Although creative expression is something students gain from learning through the arts, there are plenty of other abilities that are learned and used inside and outside of the classroom. Inside the classroom, students are able to use creative drama as an outlet to explore language and experiment with bringing readings to life (visual literacy). This allows students to develop competence in perception and understand feelings of different characters. By using creative drama in the classroom, students are able to enjoy and understand nursery rhymes, stories and poems in an interpretation they wouldnt have experienced had they not gotten up and worked with the pieces hands on. In the younger elementary years, students use creative drama (free play/role playing) as a way to make sense of what they are learning. For example, a Kindergarten teacher I surveyed stated that she had a creative drama station set up in her classroom. Many would believe this to not be appropriate from students because they are too old for play time, but in reality it is very developmentally appropriate! Her students would use a part of their free time

each day for free dramatic play where she (the teacher) would find students authentically using what they had been working on in literacy and mathematics. She stated that even though the students didnt know it, she would be able to take what students were doing for fun and use it for the introduction or attention grabbing part of her lessons to make the connections for the students. They were able to transfer what they were learning in the classroom into more realistic situations. One of Elliot Eisners Ten Lessons the Arts Teach (See Appendix A) states four points that relate to how the arts teach skills that transfer to everyday life. Lesson one states that the arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail (Eisner E. W., 1979). As I stated at the very beginning of this paper, due to the No Child Left Behind Act, teachers feel forced to teach to the test rather than to teach for complete understanding. However, in the long run, this does not help the student. Through the use of the arts and integrating it with core curriculum, students take the focus off correct answers and thus judgment prevails. To go along with this, Eisner also states that the arts teach children that questions can have more than one answer and problems more than one solution. This is a skill students must understand and use throughout their lifetime. When there is a problem, there a multiple ways to fix it. Through the arts, students are able develop on skills such as analyzing and problem-solving. The arts make learning much more authentic too because students understand that life outside of school does not involve multiple choice test.

Students are also able to develop communication. Through my observation of a creative drama class, I was able to see the skill of communication take place. Unlike many classrooms where students each have their desks and work by themselves, the students were up and talking back and forth with one another, brainstorming how to solve an answer. The discussion afterwards allowed students to explain their process and how they took every classmates idea and analyzed and problem-solved until they were able to agree on what would be best to present to the class. One student even mentioned that by using the arts, they were working together to create a body collage to represent excitement to their classmates, they were able to use their bodies to communicate with others. One student was very excited because he was an English Language Learner and he was able to communicate more with his peers than usual. This is because the arts allow students to express what their word knowledge may not be able to. This is also a point in Eisners 10 Lessons the Arts Teach. During the course of my readings, it was indicated several times that the arts in the classroom give students skills they need throughout their lifetime. Not only was this finding found in my reading but there was concrete evidence in my observation and through my survey. Out of all of the teachers who completed my survey, one hundred percent identified the arts as a great way for students to learn and transfer skills. All of the teachers, again ranging from 1 year of teaching to thirty years of teaching, identified the skills above (problem solving, analyzing, and communication), as well as skills such as appreciation of differences, collaboration, fine and large motor skills, and perseverance. Creative arts allow students to explore what they are learning opposed to learning in a system where students are told what they should know and how to get there.

Findings: Integrating the arts into the curriculum allowed teachers to teach to the diversity of students abilitiesmultiple intelligences

Again, creative arts include dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. Through these different arts, the type of curriculum is endless. Knowing that, it is absurd to teach to students in just one way. Across the board, each teacher that completed my survey indicated having students in their classrooms that had Logical/Mathematical Intelligences, Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligences, Musical Intelligences, Spatial Intelligences, and Linguistic Intelligences. Because of this, they all also stated that it is a must to teach to these multiple intelligences. By integrate the arts with core subject curriculum; teachers are able to teach to the diversity of students. In many cases, teachers only teach to the Linguistic Intelligences and Logical/Mathematical Intelligences (Dobbs, 1998, p. 14). Because of this, many students are not given the chance to show their full capability in school. A student may not be able to add four plus five (logical/mathematical), because they need to visualize the problem (spatial). If you allow them to get up and create a scenario such as four classmates brought oranges to school for lunch and five other classmates saw the oranges and decided to buy an orange at lunch, how many oranges were their total, the student will be able to see that there were four oranges and then five more (addition) were bought which equals a total of nine oranges, they are able to solve the problem. In my survey, all teachers labeled their students with Logical/Mathematical Intelligences, but they all also highly rated Bodily-Kinesthetic as intelligence that all of their

learners had as well. The Bodily/Kinesthetic learner learns best when they are able to gather and organize physical material, act out roles, and manipulate objects. These learners are very hands-on with what they are learning. The arts allow these students to exploit their learning by taking advantage of how they learn best. In Mathematics, this intelligence could be used by forming angles and different line segments through body movements or having students make shapes of numbers with the body. In Language Arts, this intelligence could be used by dramatize or dance out excerpts from a story or poem. In Science, students could make use of this intelligence by creating a movement that represents how a seed is transformed into a plant and how the soil, rain, and sun all play a critical role in their life. Musical Intelligence is brought out through the arts as well. In Mathematics, this intelligence will help students understand key concepts. For example, students could create a song or rap for learning various math concepts. In Language Arts, students could represent characters with certain instruments and then explain their reasoning for why they believe this character is best suited for this sound. The list can go on and on, but one thing is certain, by teaching through the different intelligences, students are able to exploit their creativity and learning capacity. Teaching through intelligences that are not the students major intelligence also allow students to work on that particular intelligence and make it strong. The more the individual has to work with, the higher the production will be (McCaslin, 1995, p. 6).

Findings: Students enjoyed learning, take more risks, and are more enthusiastic about doing assignments

Since students are being taught towards multiple intelligences and understanding the how the skills used through the arts are being transferred to life events, students enjoy learning and are more enthusiastic about doing assignments. In the classroom, they are seen to take more risks, but why? Creativity is something that starts to fade away throughout the elementary years. Whenever I would create something for fun, my grandma would ask me how I did it and how I came up with it and then go on and on about how she is not creative at all. Although some will disagree, everyone is born creative. It is, however, that over the years we are not given the opportunities to let our creativity shown because we are always looking for one answer and one answer only. In elementary classrooms all around the United States, you will see teachers who will show their students what to do and they do not go outside the boundary of what she has done. There are two options for these students; right or wrong. Instead of asking the questions why did you do it that way in order to gain an insight on the students thinking and connections that are being represented, the teacher asks why did you do it that way because the students varied away from what the teacher had done. Although they may have come up with the same answer, many students who come up with their own way to answer questions are yelled at and asked to do it over. By asking the

questions that was stated first, students take charge of their learning. They are responsible for knowing and understanding why they are doing what they are doing. These inquiry based approaches combined with the use of the arts allow the students to learn in an environment where they are free to develop their creativity in a risk free zone. With conditions set in place, students will make connections through the arts which allow them to develop higher order of thinking. In most classrooms, you will find a mix of students. By this, I mean that you will see a variety of cultures represented in one place. Many have heard the United States called a melting pot which made sense in the 20th century due to the fact that everyone tried to conform and be the same. Now, we want all cultures to be represented and it is the same in our classrooms by having our students know, understand, and be proud of their background. The arts allow students to include their viewpoints and show other students lives other than their own. From creative teaching something new, different, or unique results (Gelineau, 2012, p. 18). Every student has their own set of experience and because of these experiences, every student views things differently. Since culture is involved with working through the arts, students are able to express their viewpoints and feel that their opinions count. This alone leads to more risk-taking in the classroom as well as contributing to the behavioral and psychological well-being of students, nurturing their self-esteem (Dobbs, 1998, p. 8). In my survey, teachers agreed that integrating the arts into core curriculum lead to more students interacting with the whole class. When I asked why, I was given multiple answers that all lead to the same idea. One teacher wrote that all the arts should be used

because it makes the subject area more interesting while another wrote all the arts should be used because diverse instruction ensures that more students are actively engaged. As educators, we want our students to be engaged. We want learning to be fun. Learning is a continuous process. Since the arts have been shown to lead to more risk taking and enjoyment in learning, students are able to take these risks, asses themselves, and figure out what went wrong, what went right, and how things can change next time to make it even better. This process allows students to make mistakes and learn from them to continue their development. The arts allow subjects to not be a right or wrong answer, but skills such as problem solving and communication to take risks and figure out how to come up with the answer that best fits the scenario.

IV.

Conclusion
Many teachers miss out on the chance of including the arts into the curriculum. Due to standardized testing and lack of training, teachers use art education by doing holiday-based craft activities and projects that all look alike. Teachers are missing out on the chance to give their students the opportunity to be creative, self-express, understand other cultures, take risk, and develop skills needed in everyday life. Most of all, they are missing the opportunity to have students engaged and become life-long learners. What benefits do elementary students receive when the Arts are integrated with core subject curriculum? The benefits are many. So as a teacher, go to workshops and professional development seminars to develop your own skills and understanding of the arts and instead of creating a room full of zombies, wake your students up aesthetically. You will enjoy the benefits.

V.

Resources
Dobbs, S. M. (1998). Learning in and through art: a guide to discipline-based art

education. Los Angeles: Getty Education Institute for the Arts. Eisner, E. W. (1979). The educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs. New York: Macmillan. Eisner, E. W. (2002). What can education learn from the arts about the practice of education? Retrieved November 2012, from infed: http://www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_art_and_the_practice_of_education.htm#forms_of_think ing Gardner, H. (1990). Art education and human development. Los Angeles: Getty Center for Education in the Arts. Gelineau, R. P. (2012). Integrating the arts across the elementary school curriculum. Belmont: Wadsworth. McCaslin, N. (1995). Creative drama in the classroom and beyond. New York: Longman Publishers USA.

VI.

Appendix A

10 Lessons the Arts Teach by Elliot Eisner, Professor of Education, Stanford University 1) The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail. 2) The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer. 3) The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world. 4) The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds. 5) The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition. 6) The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties. 7) The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real. 8) The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job. 9) The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling 10) The arts position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important. (Eisner E. W., 1979)

Appendix B: Interview Questions

1. How long have you been teaching and what grades? 2. What multiple intelligences have you seen in your classroom? 3. Do you believe it is important to teach to the multiple intelligences? 4. What arts do you integrate in your classroom (art, dance, music, theater) and why? a. Are there more you integrate than others in your class? 5. If you integrate the arts with core subjects, do you notice improvements in student engagement, comprehension, and/or retention? 6. In your opinion, what skills do children stand to learn from involvement in creative arts? (ex. Collaboration, problem solving, etc.) 7. Do you notice students taking more risks when learning through the arts? 8. Do you believe the arts should be a curriculum all on their own or an integration to teach core subjects? Why? 9. Lastly, have you taken any creative art workshops/classes?