This is the first post in my series on concepts I am working to bring into my classroom.

What is Arts Integration?

To me, and in an ideal world:
Arts integration means teaching all of the subjects of the classroom through the arts. In an ideal world, this would mean daily art in each subject. The art would be variegated: theater, dance, visual art, sculpting, computer graphics… anything that might fall into the category. The arts would tap into and teach the visual and performing arts standards.

Why do I want to use this tool?

Art is fun! I love art in all its forms. I’m bad at most of those forms, but they never stop being the highlight of my existence. Art gives the work we do in the room purpose. It allows students to be creative. Art motivates the kids to learn, and it motivates me to teach.

How do I currently do it in my room?

Some of the best arts integration from my room might be…

• Creating book jackets about Frederick Douglass in 8th Grade.
• Building our own countries maps, flags, and identities for 8th Grade.
• Painting Daoist inspired artworks in 7th Grade.
• Writing and illustrating story books about life in the Roman empire in 7th Grade.

My favorite way to integrate art in my room is to think of any form of art, and then think of any way I can squish it together with whatever topic we’re learning next. This has led to fun innovations like: painting the mistakes of the first four US Presidents, or having students fill in Meme templates as we learn about the Underground Railroad. If you think about it, basically any art form can be combined with any subject. You just have to be creative!

Future Goals?

I definitely don’t do this nearly enough. I have students do art projects in some subjects, but due to lack of planning and resources, it doesn’t happen as frequently as I would like. I’d really like to start integrating art more into Math & Science.

The biggest challenge with integrating art into Science is that you only have so much ‘fun time’ for each subject, and my Science fun time often turns into STEM Projects and Experiments.

The biggest challenge with integrating art into Math is that I have so much more fun integrating it into history and ELA! I know it’s not the best reason… but it’s on my to-do list.

My Top Arts-Integration Resources:

Kevin Roughton is basically where I get all my best ideas from. His CYOA Assignments page is an amazing resource for a variety of arts-integration projects for History (but I think a lot of them could be applied to other subjects as well.)