Welcome back! Per our discussion last week, I want to submit ideas to you for consideration where arts integration is concerned. How do we put two classes together, especially when one of the classes is considered "general education"? How do we connect the standards from our classes? How do we ensure that the students are learning - that our instruction is differentiated? These are the questions that I want to address this week. Also - I haven't forgotten - you requested examples and I'm glad to accommodate...
Remember the keys: 1.) Get out of your classroom. 2.) The arts are a language. 3.) The arts are connected to everything. If you don't believe these three tenants, this will not work. If you are compartmentalized in your thinking, this will not work. However, if you're open-minded, honest with yourself, and have a strong command of your content area - you should be fine.
When I talk to teachers getting ready to integrate, they express concerns that my partner and I expressed when we were first brought together. Our principal ensured that Sarah and I had time, and a chance to really work out how we were going to do this. We started with a Venn diagram. Right away two things happened. First, I realized that my partner was brilliant and knew her content very well. Also, I realized quickly how many standards that we had in common. Check your standards together. Find the similarities. Find the differences.
Once we figured out how our standards would work together, we set about creating projects that would cover them. We typically do ten projects a year. The following projects are my favorites...
Poetry Slam - Write poetry (music lyrics included). Analyze poetry (this includes musical texts). Put together a "slam". Stage and perform the show. Students that are capable are encouraged to play instruments as well as sing their poetry. How do we differentiate for students that cannot play instruments? 1.) They have the option to simply stand and read their poetry. 2.) They have access to music notation software. They can write entire symphonies, dub-step, etc. to go with their poetry and then just press play and start reciting their poetry into the mic. I note that some students elect not to include music for artistic reasons. That's cool too.
Film Fest - We ask the students to write an essay on an issue they feel strongly about. Then we pair them in groups with other students that have similar or contrasting themes. We ask them to come up with a script covering all of their ideas. We encourage them to be elaborate - sets, costumes, blocking, etc. Then they are asked to go and film. We ask them to compose both entree' act and incidental music as well as come up with actual theme music for their film. Using Finale music software, students create full scored orchestrations for their films. Then they export them to mp3 files and drag them into the movie software. The project culminates in a festival for the public to see what they created.
Myth - Our myth project asks students to study myths from different cultures. During their research they build a wiki for their myth. Then we randomly assign a wiki to each group. The group must go only on the data that their researchers have given them. They have to create a skit, puppet show, or some other sort of live performance. Music is to be included throughout. Some groups have even composed songs to tell their stories with. Then the students take their act on the road to the Elementary school and put on live shows for the students there.
At face value, those projects may sound like too much fun (is there such a thing, really?), but Sarah and I make sure that the students don't shirk the writing and research components. Students are checked at every turn about what they are doing and more importantly... WHY.
So, your reading this and you teach math. Math teachers are the first to point out that they teach math, and math is an oddball. This is not so with the arts. Ask your students to create a physical, tangible representation of the relationship between sin and cosin. Too rigorous for you? Okay - have students check intervals for distance and create a song using the matrix they come up with. In music, this is a valid composition style known as "Serialism". You can research Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) for more information.
What about Physics? Pythagoras and Music love one another. Pythagoras invented the guitar... well, sort of. It was his idea that clipping a string might change the pitch. Perhaps your students could construct guitars? That would be a radical project...dude.
Music History and History go together. For every age, there is a composer. Roaring 20's = Kurt Weill, Baroque = Bach/Handel, Napoleaonic Conquest = Beethoven. Artists gain inspiration from their environments. Find a world event worth studying, you'll find a composer there attached to it somehow.
What about the other arts? What about theater? Dance? Sculpting and painting?
Dance can go with mathematics through measuring forces, distances, and looking at motion. Measuring motions and creating problems to calculate issues concerning precision movements and distances can become fun. The problem is that most students have no dance background and they don't feel confident doing it.
Art can become both the focal point of an analytic study and supplemental to analytic study. Finding works that coincide with the concepts that you are presenting is easy to do. For a history class - have the students examine pictures (both photo renderings and artistic works) from the period that you are studying. Ask them what they imagine the artist felt, what they feel, and what they think the subject of the work felt. This exercise will bring History alive for them and make it much more meaningful and relevant.
Art and Music tend to work hand in hand. At the beginning of the 20th Century Debussy hung out with Monet. It's interesting that Monet would work on visual impressionism, while Debussy would forge a musical aesthetic that was equivalent. History is full of connections between artists, writers, and musicians. The arts draw on each other and inspire one another.
Mathematics also has a great friend in the arts. Art can be measured, calculated, plotted, and even created by math. Artists tend to "see in lines" and it is my understanding that math people love the logic of linear calculations. There is order in art as there is order in math.
Chemistry and the Culinary arts. Go bake cookies! And while you're at it, sort out this equation for me...
Now, I have been rather trite and I understand that several of you may need more assistance. I do not mean to make light of your situations. I know that it is daunting to begin. If I have been unclear or you would like supplemental work, please just e-mail me and I can assist you further.
Until next week, when we look deeper into STEAM.
Adieu!
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