A team of first- and second-grade teachers at Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, plans a year-end project that lets students show what they have learned in science, math, English, and the arts. Their classes work together to create an original, multi-arts performance based on works of art with similar themes: The Entry of the Animals Into Noah’s Ark, a painting by Jan Brueghel, and The Flood, an opera by Igor Stravinsky.

Teachers Geralyn Broussard, Megan Neelis, and Paul Reynaud meet with principal Kathleen Hurstell Riedlinger to discuss what children will need to know to complete the project. They also organize each teacher’s responsibilities and discuss how the planned activities are geared to state standards.

In their classrooms, the teachers use arts-based methods to bring the project to life.

Members of the instructional team reflect on how the arts enhance instruction.

“The arts let you learn through so many different modalities,” says Broussard. “It becomes so much more tangible and real to them that it’s almost a painless learning experience.”