Today our class celebrated International Dot Day after having started a Dot Project last week.
(See a previous post about how this all started...)
Here are a few of our memorable moments together:
Dots were everywhere!
We made dots in many different ways!
"How many dots might Ms. Babalis be wearing today?" asked a student.
Parents thank you for supporting our special day! All of the dots photographed above are from the various fabrics that the students wore to school today. We were so impressed!
Tomorrow we are going to continue our Dot Project using the theory of loose parts. I'm looking forward to blogging about what emerges soon!
For now, I would like to leave you with a few quotes from an article I read tonight about integrating the arts in education.
"How the Arts Unlock the Door to Learning"
Mariko Nobori
"Integrating the arts into the curricula helped students embrace their learning and retain their knowledge."
"Arts integration goes beyond including art projects in class; it is a teaching strategy that seamlessly merges arts standards with core curricula to build connections and provide engaging context."
"Arts integration uses teaching practices that have been shown in brain-based research to improve comprehension and long-term retention. For example, when students create stories, pictures, or other nonverbal expressions of the content they are learning -- a process researchers call elaboration -- they are also helping to better embed the information."
"Beyong engagement and retention...numerous other benefits of arts integration: It encourages healthy risk taking, helps kids recognize new skills in themselves and others, provides a way to differentiate instruction, builds collaboration among both students and teachers, bridges differences, and draws in parents and the community. Plus it's just plain fun."
"Creating a richer, more memorable learning experience through the arts...unleash not only a rising tide of academic achievement but they lay the foundation for what it means to be a truly creative community."
What I loved most about this article is that it states teachers do not need to be "artistic" to be able to use art integration, rather they just need to learn a few of the fundamentals. I look forward to the rest of our integrated learning this school year!
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