ElementaryIntegrating the arts from the preschool level through graduate school enables students to develop their creativity and their ability to reason, draw abstractions, analyze, give personal meaning to what they are learning, and to express themselves in very powerful and fulfilling ways. Students must be taught with a variety of approaches to accommodate various learning styles. Experiential learning--testing theories, creating models, tinkering, expressing ideas visually, aurally, and kinesthetically--reinforces the learner as well as the concepts. And as students share their products with their peers, they learn from each other. It is important for teachers and specialists, curriculum directors and principals to come together to plan the total curriculum from kindergarten through the elementary grades. Integrated education involves looking at the curriculum as a unified whole rather than as a series of isolated subject areas. Subjects are linked from one discipline to another. The power of the arts as an integrating catalyst is dramatic and compelling. This document offers an instructional framework and shows how an integrated approach can accommodate various learning styles. Case studies and classroom applications are presented to illustrate how the approach works. An 11-item bibliography concludes the document. (JB) |
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