Running Head: Literature Review 1

Literature Review

Andres Gonzalez

National University

TED 690

November 3, 2018
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Abstract

This review is based on reasons for using art to teach curriculum. Chapter 1 of Linda

Crawford’s text Lively Learning provides six reasons why arts can be used to teach the

curriculum. Lively provides great rational and this helped me in selecting a Physical Education

lesson involving art and movement as an artifact in my Professional Development Quest

portfolio.
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The piece that I selected for my literature review is a Chapter from Linda Crawford’s text

Lively Learning. Crawford is a longtime educator who wrote this piece to offer practical

suggestions for bringing arts into daily life in the classroom. The text is very easy to grasp even

so for those without a background in the arts. The text helps teachers become comfortable with

art forms like drawing, poetry, music, theater, and movement. It describes how these forms of art

can be integrated into the curriculum.

For domain A: Making Subject Matter Comprehensible to Students I have chosen to

include a lesson plan that integrates Modern Art and Physical Education by having students act

out the movements and emotions depicted within the paintings, The Starry Night, by Vincent

Van Gogh, The Scream, by Edvard Munch, and Number 1 (Lavender Mist) by Jackson Pollock.

Students will be asked to "become" the shapes, the colors, or the paintbrush, and to explore the

possibilities within the selected canvases.

In today’s classroom we tend to focus primarily on making sure students know enough to

thrive within the community. We teach students to become good communicators to learn what

others know. We teach math, so they can operate in the world of making and exchanging. We all

have the goal to make our students knowledgeable, but we don’t really pay attention to the

“How” aspect of teaching. As Crawford states “We need to stimulate curiosity, children need to

be able to analyze problems and solve them creatively.” As an educator we need to help out

students in absorbing these skills. The arts will help us do so.

The lesson that I choose as my artifact makes the content more accessible. When I

thought about the lesson plan before I made it I worried that the students would not have any

interest in just viewing pictures of art and listening to a lecture. I asked myself “What will I do to

make this lesson engaging and memorable for the students?” For many of the students in the
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class I know that they learn best when they engage their whole body. Crawford mentions that

Kinesthetic leaners learn best when they can form geometric shapes and demonstrate movement.

My lesson plan has the students using movement to demonstrate their understanding of the art.

Another reason I have selected this plan is because the arts help students make and

express personal connections to the content. Researcher Geoffrey Cane states “We need to help

learners create a sense of self meaning, a sense of relationship with the subject, in addition to an

intellectual understanding (D’ Arcangelo 1998 p.24).” With the chosen artifact students where

able to use movements to show self-expression to what they or the artist may have been feeling.

They used their bodies to express happiness, sadness, and even curiosity.

Perhaps the most important reason for selecting this piece is that it stimulates higher level

thinking. Crawford states that the arts involve a few ways of thinking such as attending,

discerning, and inventing. Attending and discerning help students with analytical skills, while

inventing takes students further by asking them to build on what they learn so they can create a

new meaning. This requires students to have an imaginable understanding.

The students enjoyed the lesson as much as I enjoyed teaching it. Crawford defends that

the arts provide the tools to assist students in developing an intellectual muscle from multiple

points of view. The arts help our students develop minds that are strong enough to function in a

world that is constantly changing.

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References

Crawford, Linda. Lively Learning: Using the Arts to Teach the K-8 Curriculum.” Northeast

Foundation for Children, 2004

D, Arcangelo, Marcia. 1998. “The Brains Behind the Brain.” ASCD Educational Leadership

(November): 20-26.