What do math, science, social studies, and language arts have in common? Each subject is present in the arts, and the arts are present in each subject. Arts integration is the practice of teaching multiple subjects; that is, learning math through music and learning music through math.
Life rarely affords the time to devote to a single task. We multitask through the day, so why do we not multiteach? Or, why do we not integrate the arts into our subject areas?
Teaching is a rigorous profession. Not only must teachers be experts in their subject areas, but they must also be part nurturer, part counselor, part nurse—part everything. Arts integration may appear to be an added expense and added effort; but the expense can actually be minimal, and the effort is well worth it. The time devoted today will benefit teachers and their students in the years to come.
Professional Development to Integrate Arts in Education
Many elementary classroom teachers in central and southern Alabama have been receiving professional development and mentoring to integrate art lessons into their teaching since 2004 through the University of Southern Alabama Arts in Education (AiE) program in Mobile. Funded by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education and the Alabama State Council on the Arts, with additional donations from Chick-fil-A of Daphne, this professional development program increases learning in the classroom by using dance, music, theatre, and visual arts to teach English/language arts, math, science, and social studies.
AiE provides 42 hours of intensive, long-term professional development throughout the year with 6 additional hours of individual mentoring. Mentoring helps teachers see the relevance of the program to their situations, allowing them to adapt the professional development and see how it functions with their unique student populations. Through mentoring, teachers actually bring their new knowledge into the classroom, rather than leaving it behind as soon as the training ends. When teachers know that they are meeting with a mentor, they also think about the training more purposefully and look for ways to use this information in their classrooms.
Mentoring can take many forms. For example,
- Teachers may have a discussion with a mentor to address obstacles they face in delivering a new lesson.
- Teachers may try an activity and then work with a mentor to refine it.
- A mentor and teacher might coteach a lesson.
- A mentor may present an activity and then allow the students to discuss the activity and give feedback about what worked and didn't work for them.
To further assist teachers in the training and mentoring, AiE provides kits that include books, recordings, music instruments, and puppets. Teachers are encouraged to create unique ideas for their classrooms and share them with other teacher participants in the Lesson Plan Compilation, which is published and distributed to every contributing teacher.
Meeting Students' Needs
Arts integration can take many forms. One example is singing storybooks, which are wonderful for increasing reading comprehension and teaching children to remember the sequence of events. And because students enjoy singing the storybook, they'll want to sing the same one often. This repetition can help children recognize newly learned letters and words, and it serves to center the children, especially when combined with rocking, which is a self-soothing mechanism.
One 1st grade teacher who learned about singing storybooks during an AiE training session shared with AiE Director Jeannette Fresne her touching story about using the technique in her classroom. The teacher explained that she had a new student in her class who continually cried and was unable to communicate what was bothering her. The child, who was born several weeks early, also had medical difficulties that delayed her development.
The crying student was often inconsolable, and the teacher found that the emotional display often disturbed the other children. The teacher wanted to come up with strategies to help the student feel more comfortable and to help other students as well, so she introduced a rocking activity she had learned during the AiE training. While singing the storybooks, the students could rock alone or with a partner while sitting in a chair or on the floor. Some tunes were obvious, as in the case of Old MacDonald Had a Farm; instead of reading the book, they sang it. Other books work well when sung to familiar tunes like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." The children enjoyed the activity, and the teacher found that it helped focus her students and center them on higher-level thinking tasks.
"We decided that if they start to feel bothered by her crying, they could rock themselves in their seats and hum the song to themselves," the teacher wrote. "We practiced together and, while we were doing this, [the student's] crying started to subside. When I noticed this, I asked her if she wanted to join us in singing the song, to which she replied, 'I don't know the words.' My class sang the song to her twice as they continued to rock, and everyone was calm and she was ready to rejoin our group. … It really saved the rest of our day."
This was the first day of an increasingly successful elementary education for the young child.
Creating Safe Spaces
As an elementary school teacher, teaching the whole child and creating emotionally safe spaces is the number one priority. Integrating arts instruction into lessons can help teachers make their elementary school classrooms safe, welcoming, and engaging spaces for their students. Here are some tips you can try in your classroom.
Repetition
Teachers may tire of the same book every day, but routine provides stability. If children request the same book repeatedly, read it or, if it is appropriate, sing it!
Time Management
Use a song (sung by you and the students) or a recording of a song to help students get in line. If students are supposed to sing along with a recording, they are not allowed to talk. Use the same song for at least three months so that students, by determining how quickly they need to move to get in line by the end of the song, learn time-management skills. As an additional benefit, you never have to say, "Get in line." Just begin singing.
Changing Positions
If students are not enjoying a specific subject, try having them move around frequently, limiting sitting time to a minute for every year of their age. For instance, if you have a 1st grade class with children ranging in age from 6 to 7 years old, try limiting their sitting time to 6–7 minutes. Then, have the students stand and do a 10-second dance or movement, which restarts the 6- to 7-minute goal. Perhaps you try this for only 30 minutes during the day. Adjust the time period according to the age of the students.
There are a large number of helpful books on arts integration. Creating Meaning, by Claudia Cornett, includes a chapter that introduces the fundamentals of music followed by a chapter on ways to integrate music in the classroom. The book includes the same pairing of chapters for dance, theatre, and visual arts.
For more information about arts integration tips, contact Jeannette Fresne at 1-251-460-6697 or jfresne@usouthal.edu.