Fine arts: Teaching fine arts

• Lessons should engage students in activities that promote enjoyment and understanding of dance as fine art.
• Use instructional strategies to develop students' creative expression.
• A skilled teacher understands and teaches basic dance concepts and techniques.
• State guidelines should be used to create lessons that include the elements of dance.

Instructional Strategies

• Story-telling and re-creation of familiar and imagined stories using movement is an effective strategy.
• Learning short combinations and dances from instructor-created choreography aids performance abilities.
• Movement improvisation in response to music is a useful teaching tool.

Teaching the Elements of Dance

Shape

• Have groups move in different shapes through the performance space, using taped guides on the floor.
• Have students create shapes with their bodies, individually or in groups, simultaneously with other groups.
• Focus student attention to the spacing between bodies.
• Is the group moving in personal or general space?
• Are the movements high or low in space?
• Are the movements large or small?

Time

• Discuss the concept of time, including how it is measured and how movement duration varies.
• Have students mirror each other in pairs, with one student leading movements to music of different tempos and discuss the impact of time on movement.
• Instruct the class to move around the space using different tempos when called out.

Force

• Assign small groups an adjective that describes a kind of movement.
• Each group creates a short combination with this movement and shares it.
• Have two groups perform at the same time, and discuss how the force used impacts the movement.
• Ask students about spatial, time, and movement relationships.

Body

• Assign small groups a particular body section to "lead" with or focus the movement on.
• Each group creates a short combination with a focus on this body part.
• Have opposing groups perform together.
• The audience should observe:
• The shapes being created.
• The groupings that are happening.
• Whether they noticed any spatial, time, force, or movement relationship.

Elementary School Music Genres

• Students benefit from learning about different genres of music.
• A genre is a category of musical styles that share similar attributes and traditions.

Folk Songs

• Considered the music "of the people".
• Traditionally associated with the laboring or agricultural classes.
• Folk songs provide a way for cultures to transmit key values, stories, and customs.
• Instruments used in folk songs vary depending on culture, but typically feature stringed, wind, and percussion instruments.

Jazz

• A highly improvisational genre that blends the features of the blues and folk.
• A distinctly American form of art that grew out of the African American communities in New Orleans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Ensembles feature a keyboard, a drummer, and a bass player, with brass and woodwind instruments also used prominently.

The Blues

• African Americans from the rural south developed the blues in the late nineteenth century.
• Combined elements of traditional African forms with folk music and Christian hymns.
• Features simple rhythmic and harmonic structures, and the lyrics often express feelings of dissatisfaction or sadness.
• The guitar is almost always used in blues music.

Gospel Music

• Expresses Christian themes and varies widely across different denominations and cultures.
• Popular variants include the gospel blues, bluegrass gospel, and Christian country music.
• Typically consists of hymns and spirituals that feature keyboard instruments (piano and/or organ) and harmonized vocals.

Bluegrass

• Developed in Appalachia when settlers from the United Kingdom and Ireland began writing songs about their day-to-day life in their new home.
• Typically played on acoustic stringed instruments including the fiddle, the banjo, the guitar, the mandolin, and the string bass.

Teaching Diverse Styles of Dance

• Students should be exposed to a wide range of cultural variation and diversity.
• Diversity will allow for a more complete understanding of dance.
• Diversity will increase the likelihood of finding a particular area of interest for most students.
• Effective dance instructors identify and showcase folk and traditional dances. Explain who took part in the dances, and any social or cultural purpose it had.
• Bring in other aspects of fine arts by exploring historical music and theatrical movement and dance.
• Explain the impacts of history when possible.
• Dances help engage the entire body in experiencing music.
• Select dances that are age appropriate.

Locomotor Movement

• Requires dancers to move their body through the room in a determined or undetermined direction.

Non-Locomotor Movement

• Involves movements completed without moving to a new location in the room.

Teaching Folk Dances

• Teach them one small part at a time, using the part-part-whole model.
• Initially teach a dance without playing music.
• The teacher should say the next step of the dance two or four beats ahead of when the step should happen.
• Once the dancers can anticipate the next direction of the dance, music can be added.

Circle Dances

• Can be locomotor or non-locomotor.
• Children can do a folk dance in a circle with a partner, then switch to a new partner.
• Children can follow a leader in a circle, copying the motions.
• Encourage improvised dance movements where the rest of the circle copies the leader.
• The children moving in the circle are able to pick two new children to take their place when the song repeats.
• Formations include dancers facing clockwise, counter-clockwise, or center, or dance partners facing each other.
• Double formations include dance partners facing each other where they move in the same direction, or where the outside circle moves one direction and the inside circle moves another direction.

Line Dances

• Can be done in two lines facing each other ("long ways" or "contra" formation).
• The former line leader pair connects hands, and the rest of the students follow through the arc that has been created.
• Can be done in multiple lines with every line facing a common direction.
• With each repetition of the song, the students complete a quarter turn and face a new common direction.

Scatter Dances

• Often done to encourage improvised dance movements.
• Can be done without bringing students to a circle formation or a line formation.

Dance Examples

• Noble Duke of York: locomotor, longways set; two lines walk up to each other while singing.
• Hello And How Are You: locomotor and non-locomotor, single circle; dancers face a partner and sing while doing non-locomotor movements.
• Bo Diddley: locomotor, longways set; the head couple takes hands and sashays down the middle.
• Rocky Mountain: locomotor and non-locomotor, double circle formation; circles walk in opposite directions until they reach their partner again.
• Hokey Pokey: non-locomotor, scatter or circle; dancers put different limbs "in" and "out" while staying in one place.

US Culture in Music

• The United States is culturally and ethnically diverse.
• Native peoples and those who immigrated have greatly impacted all aspects of American life.
• Reflected in the musical heritage of the United States.
• European and African influences mixed to create genres heard today.

Jazz

• Grew out of the African American communities in New Orleans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• Features a keyboard, a drummer, and a bass player.
• Brass and woodwind instruments are also featured prominently.
• Ella Fitzgerald was a singer in the early 20th century who defined what jazz singing should sound like.
• She perfected "scat," a vocal improvisation technique using wordless, nonsense syllables.
• Louis Armstrong was a trumpeter and bandleader known for his singing voice and as the first great jazz soloist.

Rock and Roll (Rock)

• Combines elements from the blues and country music to form a new genre in the 1950s.
• Generally features an electric guitar, drums, and bass.

Pop

• Emerged from Rock and Roll in multiple Western countries during the 1950s.
• Defined by its basic structure (typically verse-chorus-verse) and chord progressions, catchy melodies, and simple lyrics.

Hip Hop

• Emerged in the 1970s in America.
• Grew out of urban communities.
• A highly rhythmic genre that often features samples from other songs and rhythmic vocals.

Rap

• Includes words recited quickly to beats that are rhythmic and usually electronic and pre-recorded.
• Generally included under the umbrella of hip hop, but not all hip hop songs feature rapping.

Diverse Opportunities for Music Students

• Teachers must be sure to include diverse opportunities that involve students in activities that promote enjoyment and understanding of music.
• Students can develop music literacy by experiencing performance.
• A simple way to promote music literacy is to inform students about local live musical performances and encourage them to attend.
• It is important that students experience the opportunity to perform their own music in a variety of ways, even outside the music classroom. Students can create their own songs and jingles that clearly show their learning.

Song Types

Game Song

• Clapping songs, such as "Patty Cake," help emphasize rhythm and motor skills.
• "Naming" songs such as "Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?" work well for class introductions.
• Songs like "Let Us Chase the Squirrel" can be paired with choreographed/coordinated movements.

Jingles

• Students will likely be able to bring in examples.
• Teachers can have students adapt popular jingles by changing the lyrics.
• Teachers can ask students to create a jingle for a particular product or content area.

Lullaby

• Soft, gentle songs, often sung by parents to their children.
• Lullabies help establish emotional bonds between adults and children.
• Lullabies convey important information about human relationships and cultural traditions.
• They offer excellent opportunities for students to compare and contrast works from different cultural contexts.

Curriculum Integration

Interdisciplinary connections

• The music teacher should communicate with the students' classroom teachers to determine what content area they are currently studying.

Examples of extending and reinforcing student learning

• When preparing for a performance, students can create backdrops and props (Art).
• Students can learn to do exercises to different rhythms and beat counts (Physical Education).
• Students can learn songs to help them remember the names of their bones and organs (Health).
• Students can write songs that rhyme or use their spelling words (Writing).
• Students create musical arrangements to remember complex concepts such as the water cycle (Science).
• Students read lyrics and sing songs that contain their weekly sight words or vocabulary words (Reading).

Note Values and Math

• Teaching note values is the same as teaching fractions, so it can be helpful to use an analogy that students can readily understand.

Classroom Management in Music Class

• Music instruction has numerous benefits for elementary school students, including increased cultural literacy and improved performance in core subjects.
• Active, hands-on learning makes music classes fun for students and helps them retain key information. Active

Listening

• Play selections from various genres and have the students brainstorm a list of the key features for each of the genres.

Movement

• Incorporate movement and sound into lessons.

Instruments and Objects

• Demonstrate key concepts by allowing students to play instruments or create sounds with everyday instruments.

Composition

• Encourage students to adapt one of the songs that you're studying into a different genre.
• Ask students to compose their own works in the style of a particular genre or composer.

Organization in any classroom will benefit student-led activities

• Give students responsibilities in all group work.
• Include detailed instructions, deliverables, and outcomes.
• Change student roles when appropriate to allow students to learn a variety of methods for analyzing information and creating great work.
• Routines and structure impact classes positively. Post signs to let students know when noise is allowed.

Classroom Structure

• Assign small groups to rehearse; if the performance space must be shared, post a timer and require students to move accordingly.
• Include a class schedule on the board each day, so students know when to move on to the next activity.
• Include routine to daily lessons.

Teacher Fluency for Theater Arts

• Create lessons that involve students in activities that promote enjoyment and understanding of theatre arts.
• Use appropriate instructional strategies to develop students' creative expression.
• A skilled teacher understands and teaches basic skills in acting, directing, design, and scriptwriting.
• Use state guidelines to create lessons that include the elements and principles as outlined.

Instructional Strategies

• Story-telling and re-creation of familiar and imagined stories.
• Pantomimes of real-life situations.
• Improvisational role-playing based on fairy tales.
• Puppetry promoting appropriate school and home behaviors.
• Readers' Theater and one-act plays at the upper elementary level.

Cross-Curricular Connections

• Be creative developing lessons that teach concepts from all content areas.

Examples of integrated lessons

• Write and produce a puppet show that reflects a theme from a poem or novel (Language Arts).
• Students can learn about percentages by using theatrical lighting equipment (Math).
• Use the scientific method to create masks with different materials (Science).
• Research a historical figure and have students dress, speak, and act like the person for an interview in class (History).

Relating Theatre to History

• Introduce students to theatre from different times.
• Unique pieces could impact the attention and curiosity of a child.

Example lessons

• Teach compare and contrast skills by showing Bunraku (Japanese Puppet Theatre) and Sesame Street recorded performances.
• Have students create a timeline of the framing of The Constitution.
• Evaluate/critique live or recorded dramatizations.
• Listen to and recreate stories derived from diverse cultures.
• Recreate tales from different historical periods and identify unique period characteristics.

Teaching Elements of Art

• Should promote the understanding of the elements of art.
• Should apply their learning by creating original works that utilize and highlight those elements.
• The teacher should model using terminology in class, identifying the elements of art in student work.

Sample Lesson: Beyond Understanding Texture

• Students gather examples of textures found in their surroundings.

Outcomes

• Cut out depicted textures from newspapers and magazines.
• Make rubbings from surfaces found at home or school.
• Use objects found in the environment to print textures.
• Students use their collection of textures to create a collage in which the textures communicate contrast, emphasis, and value.

Teaching Principles of Art

• Lessons promote student understanding of the Principles of Art.
• Creating pieces using several principles as the focus will allow students to apply their knowledge.

Principles of Art

Direct Teaching

• Review and discuss the terminology used for the principles of art: proportion, rhythm, balance, emphasis, contrast, pattern, and unity.

Modeling/Examples

• Display visuals that clearly illustrate each of the design principles.

Hands-on Practice

• Direct students to use two or more design principles to create an advertisement or illustration that communicates their message.

Assessment

• Have students present their designs to the class, explaining their choices in using certain principles of design to create the image and the message to the viewer.

Balance/Symmetry

Direct Teaching

• Discuss different types of balance, i.e., symmetrical, asymmetrical, and radial

Modeling/Examples

• Have students find examples of balance in works of art and in their surroundings and post in the classroom.

Hands-on Practice

• Direct students to create three different designs, each one showing a different kind of balance.
• Decide where and how the colors should be repeated to create a unified and balanced design.

Assessment

• Instruct students to choose one of their designs to transfer to a piece of fabric.
• Have students present their final design, explaining their use of color and balance.

Proportion

Direct Teaching

• Discuss proportion and why it is important in design. Ask students to share what they already know about proportion.

Modeling/Examples

Post examples of different proportions.

• Show that proportion can change in living things during different life phases.
• Give examples from nature and man-made objects.

Hands-on Practice

• Have students use tape measures or rulers to measure their facial features.

Assessment

Students will use measurements to draw a representative life-size drawing demonstrating the proper sizes and proportional relationships among the features.

Art in Various Cultures

• Any work of art has to be understood in the context of its cultural origin and values.
• You cannot view a piece of art in isolation of its origin.
• Culture speaks through art.
• It is difficult to give a useful summary of the main characteristics of how different cultures use art elements and principles to create art.
• Examining the role that art has played in different cultures can help us understand those cultures today.

Prehistoric Hunting and Gathering Cultures

• Drawings on cave walls depicted their everyday lives.
• Walls on tombs tell stories of people farming and working the fields, side by side with the animals they domesticated.

Egyptians

• Expressed their religious beliefs in half-animal and half-human stone works.
• The great Egyptian pyramids were places of worship for the pharaohs.

Ancient Greeks

• Greek sculptures were so life-like that they gave the feeling that they could be alive.

The Roman Empire

• Constructed buildings using design methods they borrowed from Greece and other conquered people.
• Roman architecture was influenced by the need to connect a far-flung empire.
• Used the arch to build large structures with seemingly unsupported domes.

Ancient China

• Calligraphy was a highly valued art form.

Ancient Japan

• Often depicted tranquility in nature and demonstrating a spiritual connection to the natural world.

Global Art

• The elements that we recognize in Western art do not necessarily reflect the concepts used in non-Western art practices.
• The teacher should share visual art from a variety of times, places, and cultures around the world.
• Includes a broad range of forms: paintings, drawings, 3-dimensional art, prints, jewelry, textiles.
• Practical uses, entertainment, reflecting beliefs.
• Often created from local resources.

Teaching Art in Various Cultures

• When planning lessons, incorporate small/whole group discussion and intentional questioning.
• Use varied materials and examples to facilitate student connections and understanding.

Sample Lesson

Direct Teaching

• Share and discuss works of art from multiple cultures.

Modeling/Example

• Post samples of a variety of medium used in the creation of art from different parts of the world.

Independent Practice

• Assign students a geographical location, materials, and subject.

Assessment

Assess student awareness and appreciation of various cultural art elements and principles.

Clarify/Reteach

• Review art elements and principles with students and compare Western art to the non-Western samples.

Class Assessment/Critical Analysis

• Students participate in a "studio walk" where they analyze pieces.

Teaching Visual Literacy

• Teachers should provide daily instruction that allows students to develop the skills and knowledge needed for visual literacy.

Sample Lesson

Model/Examples

• Display several works of art by Salvador Dalí and discuss what the students see in the works.

Direct teach

• Discuss elements/ principles from different cultures/ diverse purpose.
• Define Surrealism.

Assessment

• Students generate philosophical questions regarding the purpose of the work, and create their own work to represent a purpose that is meaningful for them.

Teaching Art Techniques

• There is no replacement for first-hand experience in working with various types of media.
• The process of creating art includes innovation.
• Divergent instruction leads the student to a wide array of answers.
• Convergent instruction leads the student to a limited number of answers.

Teaching Perception of Visual Arts

• Lessons and activities increase students' ability to perceive and reflect on the environment.
• Activities build upon student's prior knowledge.

Curriculum Model Examples

• Arts Across the Curriculum Deepens and varies student learning across content areas, allowing for the curriculum to be more relevant, and increasing students real world connections.
• Creative, Self-Expressive. Allows students to express themselves through the arts and develop skills.
• Community Resources. Expands appreciation of the arts by exposing students to artists in their local communities.
• Comprehensive approach to helping students understand both sides of the arts: Aesthetics, performance, history, and criticism

Arts Cross-Curricular

• Natural patterns and Fibonacci sequences (Science/Math).
• Historical portraits or paintings of historical events (Social Studies/Government/History).
• Mythological scenes (English/Science).

Cognitive Development and Art Instruction

• Activities should be appropriate for the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical development of the students.

Development of understanding lines:

• Kindergarten students identify lines in art and then create their own art using a variety of lines.
• Second-grade students identify lines in art and use the principles of design to interpret and recreate movement, repetition, and balance in their own work to represent ideas and feelings.
• Fifth-grade students will use appropriate vocabulary when using the elements and principles of art in artwork inspired by their life experiences.
• Middle school students will create original artwork, using appropriate terminology, to further their understanding of how famous artists from various cultures use line to express emotion or reflect upon historical events.
• High school students will use information from a variety of sources to create a collection of works that reflect the artistic use of lines throughout history and cultures.