Looking Closely

From chapter 7-8 of artful teaching, Saunders made a statement that “with musical experiences and with music integration, more hooks are created in the students mind from which to make more connections “. I was really invested in the fact that the teacher used the art of a musical to help broaden her students imagination and thinking. The students were able to recreate the characters and from there they were able to project a theme and eventually turn it into a musical. The students were able to focus on their spelling and other strategies when they did not even realize it. Studying a simple musical and having the students recreate it can be used for all content areas but more so literacy and writing which often goes hand and hand. I also took from the chapters of students writing from visual prompts. This is something that I have attempted multiple times to implement in my own classroom while student teaching. Doing this is another way of integrating art into your core content. It is also a good way to get them students writing their own story and not so much being prompt and being told what to write about. “The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress. As long as you’ve got slightly more perception than the average wrapped loaf, you could invent something.” (Trevor Baylis, Inventor) To obtain, it means that you sometimes have to think outside the box! Even though that can be sometimes difficult if a child can put forth a little effort they can invent and create anything. As educators we want to integrate arts into our everyday teaching to allow our kiddos to to begin to explore beyond their box and have more of an open mind. Out of all the studio habits of mind I feel that I used “understanding the arts world”. While going through the process of sketching in the mind of Leonardo Da Vinci, I would think about the things that are going on not just in the art world but in everyday life. I would then ask myself if I was to draw modern day, what would that look like? So, I would start part of a sketch that would resemble a certain issue but then later the finished product may turn into something different that is supporting a different event. Any major event that happens in my mind is considered historical, and I feel that is what Vinvi painted. This is something that I have utilized in my classroom during a history lesson. We were in the midst of black history month and I simply gave my kids and event and some background knowledge of the event, then I asked them to draw what the event looked like to them. You can use this strategy for many more different content areas and for me it brings a lot of uniqueness to the classroom and it helps create a more entertaining environment where the students will be more excited to learn.