What makes teaching art important?

As a child art for me was all about being able to express myself and not worry about getting a wrong answer. Now as an art educator I am finding it is much more for my students:

• Art is universal

• Art is involved with all subjects, math, science, reading, writing, and more

• Art promotes out of the box thinkers

• Art is therapeutic

• Art is telling a story in a way word cannot

Art is a way for my students to become out of the box thinkers and show me and the world around them how much they know just by creating.

 

Instruction:

Instruction is very important for students to gain understanding of a new subject. Students learn daily, but to understand means it really resonates with them and they could describe their new learning to someone else.

• Clear instruction starts with planning for the day. Here are some of my examples of how I make instructions clear:

-Write the instructions in multiple places.

-Explain to students what I expect and show them examples.

-Talk about art (peers examples, and artist and designer examples)

Instruction can help students create with confidence because if instruction is done correctly they will have the confidence and support they need to understand their new learning.

 

 

Assessment:

Assessment in art is just as important as assessing in other subjects. Some examples of assessments I do are:

• Pre-assessments- these are valuable because it shows me what the students know and what they need to work on.

• Formal Assessments- I always try to do formative assessments daily. They are assessments that can show me how to teach further based off of what they say.

-Sometimes they are as simple as a show of thumbs for how everyone is feeling about art for the day.

-Sometimes they are check-ins to see if students are listening such as “can anyone tell me what cool colors are? (or other vocabulary word they are learning)”

-I can statements… (I always relate my I can statements to the standards to create a deeper learning)

• Summative Assessments- Summative assessments are a final assessment to see the student’s final understandings.

-summative assessments can be a final rubric that I give to students. I like to give students their rubric and let them grade themselves and then I talk to them about why I gave them the grade I did. Sometimes I think students don’t understand but when they have a chance to explain I can understand their learning.

 

 

 Instruction and Assessment Together:

Here is an example of how instruction and assessment go hand in hand:
When I student taught at the high school, I taught a lesson on social justice and how it is seen at even the high school level. The project was done with linoleum and it had to be a multi-layer print. The students were pre-assessed in technique and understanding of the topic. The first pre-test was seeing if the students understood a three-layer print process and if they would be able to move on to their big project. I demonstrated a three-layer print and then asked students questions like ‘What order do we print colors in?’ ‘Should you work background forward or foreground to background?’. These questions turn into a formal assessment to see if the student is listening.  The second pre-assessment was done verbally to check for understanding on social justice, as a class we discussed what we thought social justice might mean. I then showed the students how it was demonstrated in prints. Students then had to write their story, and have it traded for a classmate to create their story. The idea of writing the story before creating it was a formal assessment to see if they understood social justice and could make a personal connection to it. There were a few students I emailed back after reading their stories with a couple articles that could help them understand what social justice looked like. At the end of the lesson the art was hung in the hall way and with sticky notes students wrote down what they thought each print meant and what if it demonstrated the multi-layer printing technique. This was my summative assessment to see if the students gained a deeper knowledge of social justice and multi-layer printing. I then had the artist share the comments they got on their art, and if they felt that the comments matched the story and how they did in multi-layering prints.