Teachers College Press Arts Integration in Diverse K5 Classrooms: Cultivating Literacy Skills and Conceptual Understanding (Language and Literacy Series)

This practical resource emphasizes the special contribution that visual art, drama, music, and dance can make to student literacy and understanding of content area reading assignments. Focusing on those areas where students tend to struggle, this book helps K–5 teachers provide an age-appropriate curriculum that is accessible to an increasingly diverse student population but does not ignore other important aspects of healthy human development. Without detracting from the rigor of a demanding curriculum, Brouillette demonstrates how arts integration allows students to engage with concepts on their own developmental level. Each chapter focuses on a skill set that is fundamental to literacy development, suggests age-appropriate arts integration activities that will build that skill, and offers guidance for fostering a sense of community. Book Features: Research results that support integration of specific, standards-based arts activities when learning certain literacy skills. Strategies that introduce students to a high-quality arts curriculum while enhancing their language arts, social studies, and science skills. Sample lesson plans, classroom videos, and arts activities that correspond to book chapters are available online at http://sites.uci.edu/educ104donline/. Arts activities are matched with children's developmental level to maximize learning.