When used meaningfully, Art can be Education’s best ally! Whether it be witnessing or creating it, Art gives students and teachers the opportunity to engage with something new.
In the attempt to approach, explore, and practice new pieces of knowledge, Art serves as the forum to make connections through multiple angles. By allowing the space to search through diverse points, Art provides the freedom to bring students into unique and intimate relationships with their answers (Greene, 2001).
Think about it! The more ways to engage with the learning materials, the better chance ALL student have at finding something that speaks to them; therefore, the more likely they will be of making connections relevant to them and their previous knowledge.
Here at Scarfe Sandbox we are firm believers in interdisciplinary learning experiences for students. So the Scarfe Sandbox 2020 team set out to interview UBC professors from the Faculty of Education, and create Thinking Outside the Sandbox! A podcast sharing knowledge on Interdisciplinary learning in teacher education. For inspiration on intertwining Art into your lesson plan we encourage you to check out episode 3: “Art & Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching” which featuring Dr. Sandrine Han. Dr. Shannon Leddy, and Dr. Marina Milner-Bolotin.
In addition to the podcast episode to help you begin thinking about the ‘A’ in STEAM, below are some examples showing a few approaches to planning meaningful Art-based lessons to engage students with Big Ideas, Content, and Curricular Competencies across three different subjects of the BC curriculum. All of these examples were presented to TC´s at an “Intertwining Art into Unit planning” workshop in early 2020 by Belen (post-author, pod cast host & graduate student in Arts Education)
Intertwining Art and English Language
A great way of intertwining Art and English Language is creating a museum or art gallery inside your classroom!
By encouraging both teachers and students to think of art pieces, museums, and artists as living and dynamic, Art turns into a space and medium to explore, express, and document new pieces of knowledge. Engaging students with unique ways of expression allows for the exchange of stories and new perspectives.
Perks: It can remain as a short lesson plan but has the potential to become a cross disciplinary unit plan, using museum and gallery spaces as a theme to the project.
Provided in the link, you can find slides from our Art-based unit planning workshop, offering a wider insight on the potential to this Art-based unit plan and an overview on how Big Ideas, Content, and Curricular Competencies from the English Language Arts 1 are covered in the BC curriculum: Meaningful Art-based lesson plan for Language Arts 1
Intertwining Art at a Secondary level
For all you secondary teachers we have some great resources to accompany our episode on creating interdisciplinary units plans that intertwine Art, we invite you to read our post on Interdisciplinary Unit Planning: Secondary Art, Sci, SS, in which you can find a lesson-plan to engage students with the Bentwood box, constructed by Coast Salish artist Luke Marston, carved from red cedar to represent First Nations, Inuit and Metis cultures. All while exploring (remotely) the Museum CMHR, through their app.
Intertwining Art and Mathematics
Engagement with Art can activate students’ imagination to conceive possibility and other choices of life, such as ways of interpreting and displaying different forms of data.
Analyzing art composition can be a wonderful way to introduce fractions, decimals, percentages, and even ratios. While the creation of art pieces becomes a great medium to practice with, it can also be a form of assessment.
Provided in the link, you can find slides from our Art-based unit planning workshop, offering a wider insight on the potential to teaching fractions in an Art-based approach, plus the overview on how Big Ideas, Content, and Curricular Competencies from the Mathematics 4 are covered in the BC curriculum: Meaningful Art-based lesson plan for Math 4
Intertwining Art and Science
Manually sculpting, carving, and using the potter´s wheel are magical. With the appropriate use of wording, children will experience what it means to cool, steer, mix, heat, dilute, and dry matter. Plus it can even be done in 1 or 2 classes!
Provided in the link, you can find slides from our Art-based unit planning workshop, offering a wider insight on the potential to teaching fractions in an Art-based approach, plus the overview on how Big Ideas, Content, and Curricular Competencies from the Science 2 are covered in the BC curriculum: Meaningful Art-based lesson plan for Science 2
Guest Post contributed by Belen Guilleman, a grad student in Arts Education
References:
Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a Blue Guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute Lectures on Aesthetic Education. New York: Teachers College Press.
