Arts Integration Essay

1234 Words5 Pages
Arts Integration Improves Literacy
Over the years, the role of arts in American schools has changed. Art has been predominately taught for two reasons: “art for art’s sake” and “art for the sake of the workplace”. Recently, a third reason for art to be taught has emerged, “art for the sake of learning” (Booth). There is a rising interest in using arts integration as an approach to teaching “art for the sake of learning”. Arts integration is defined as “an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both” (“What is Arts Integration?”). The use of many diverse materials and methods to teach means reaching and teaching every whole child. The implementation of arts integration within schools interests me as a pre-service art teacher because I want my students to benefit the most from their education; and I know that by meaningfully integrating the visual arts with other curricular areas I can help meet and develop the many needs of a child.
Research shows that using arts integration as a tool for academic gains “makes students want to learn” (Cornett, 2011, p. 36, para 1). In fact, Eric Booth, a music educator of Julliard, Stanford, and The Kennedy Center examines many aspects of being a teaching artist and states “artistic engagement does something catalytic to a learner (Booth). It has positive cognitive, literacy, math, motivational, and social effects; it also engages a wide range of learners. I have specifically focused on my research on the effects arts integration has on literacy and learned that students exposed to and engaged in the arts across the curriculum perform much better “in six categories of literacy and critical thinking skills” (Kennedy 2006, para 3).
I discovered that
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