Arts integration offers students a break from traditional, fragmented learning. By producing their new understanding in metaphor or illustration through drama, music, movement, visual art or creative writing, students regularly practice skills demanding higher creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. The arts provide a way for our students to personally connect to their studies by using all their different senses and range of emotional responses, and this helps their brains to process what they experience, guiding them to real learning. The arts bring life into the classroom with its music, colors, freedom of expression,

movement and drama.

Examples of Art integration:

• Visual art: including two and three dimensional art forms, drawing, painting, sculpture, woodworking, pottery, textile crafts, printmaking, photography, film-making, technologies (graphic arts, animation), art history.
• Dance: Lyrical movement, ballet, tap, body balance, placement, expression.
• Drama: Public speaking, debate, Shakespeare, classical and modern plays, skits, poetry recitation, readings, role-play, musicals.
• Creative writing: composition, poetry, fictional prose.
• Music: Voice, instruments, rhythms, percussion, composition and performance, appreciatio of all genres, the classics, music history.
  

Benefits of Arts Integration:

• Engages students, makes learning relative, forces students to make connections.
• Inspires creativity and excites the imagination.
• Art learning experiences have been tested and proven by educational research to significantly impact higher academic achievement across all disciplines for all students from disabled to gifted.
• Encourages higher order thinking and critical thinking skills.
• Teaches to all learning styles and multiple intelligences, and naturally differentiates by interest and ability.
• Provides meaningful and diverse multi-cultural learning experiences.
• Goals 2000 declared the arts co-equal in value, relevance and importance to all other academic subjects such as math, science, history, or language arts, establishing National Standards for curricular goals and technical mastery.
• Improves student self-confidence, team-building, social awareness, and empathy.