Connecting With the Arts: A Workshop for Middle Grades Teachers

Professional Development > Connecting With the Arts: A Workshop for Middle Grades Teachers > 4. What Roles Do Students Take On?

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What Roles Do Students Take On?

This program examines the artistic process of creating, performing, and responding. Participants will see students assuming the roles of researcher, writer, designer, director, performer, and critic.

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Connecting With The Arts: Workshop, What Roles Do Students Take On? — Transcript

Learning Goals

The goals of this workshop are for you to:

Identify the many roles students can take on as they engage in the artistic process
Learn methods of responding to artworks that you can share with your students

This workshop session examines the artistic process of creating, performing, and responding. In the program you’ll see students assuming the roles of researcher, writer, designer, director, performer, and critic.

See Related Teaching Practices Library Programs:

Breathing Life Into Myths
Finding Your Voice
Two Dance Collaborations

Getting Ready

Read and discuss the following definitions of the artistic processes of creating, performing, and responding: (15 minutes)

ARTISTIC PROCESSES¹

Creating is the process of generating original art. Creating involves the artist expressing unique and personal ideas, feelings, and responses in the form of a visual image, a character, a written or improvised dramatic work, or the composition of a piece of music or a dance.

Performing is the process of presenting a work in dance, music and theatre or exhibiting works of visual art. During the performing process, the artist is engaged in interpreting the artistic work and must not only have the skills, but the contextual understanding of both the work and the audience, to successfully perform the dance, musical composition or play. This need for contextual understanding is also true for exhibiting in the visual arts.

Responding is both the process of artists reflecting on their work and the process of an audience member reacting to a work of art. Response is usually a combination of affective, cognitive, and physical behavior involving a level of perceptual or observational skills; a description, analysis or interpretation on the part of the respondent and sometimes a judgment or evaluation based on some criteria.

Discuss these questions:

Which area do you tend to concentrate on most with your students? Why?

Are there ways to engage students in the other roles more often? If there are barriers to doing so, how might these be overcome?

¹National Assessment of Education Progress. Arts Education Assessment Framework

Watching the Program

Consider the following questions as you watch the program. If you are part of a professional development group, consider stopping the video to discuss each question with your colleagues.

How can you broaden the variety of artistic roles students assume in your classroom?
How can you help your students understand the importance of the revision process?
How can you help your students constructively respond to the work of others?

Activities and Discussion

Activity: Responding to Works of Art

Rationale

Many teachers ask students to critique their classmates’ work. Many non-arts teachers, however, may not be familiar or comfortable in guiding students to respond to works of art, whether student work or professional work.

Set up (Prior to Session)

Ask one of the school’s arts specialists (dance, music, theatre, or visual art) come to the session prepared to share a work of art with the group — and her/his procedure for helping students respond to it.

Respond to a Work of Art (15 – 20 minutes)

Have the art specialist lead the group in analyzing a work he/she has brought in – e.g., a video clip of a dance, a music recording, a clip of a theatre performance, or a drawing/painting/sculpture — following the same procedure she/he uses with students in the classroom.

Discussion (15 minutes)

Afterwards, talk about similar or different procedures participants use with their own students.

For more information and practice with responding to artworks, go to the Responding to Works of Art interactive on the program website.

Additional Resources

Web Resources

How Integrating Arts Into Other Subjects Makes Learning Come Alive
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/01/13/how-integrating-arts-into-other-
subjects-makes-learning-come-alive/
An article highlighting the benefits of arts education in today’s classrooms

The Kennedy Center Arts Edge: National Standards for Arts Education
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/standards.aspx
Standards that outline what every K-12 student should know and be able to do in the arts

Print Resources

Greene, Maxine. Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. Indianapolis, IN: Jossey-Bass, 2000. ISBN: 0787952915

A set of essays that defines the role of imagination in general education, arts education, aesthetics, literature, and the social and multicultural context.

Jackson, Philip W. John Dewey and the Lessons of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0300082894

An examination of John Dewey’s thinking about the arts and exploration of the practical implications of that thinking for educators.

Palmer Wolf, Dennie., & Balick, Dana (Eds.). Art Works! Interdisciplinary Learning Powered by the Arts.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999. ISBN: 0325001162

A sophisticated analysis of what makes for an effective partnership between the arts and other forms of knowing.

Series Directory

Connecting With the Arts: A Workshop for Middle Grades Teachers

Credits

Produced by Lavine Production Group, Inc. in collaboration with EDC/s Center for Children and Technology and the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts. 2005.

Closed Captioning
ISBN: 1-57680-754-1

Sections

PDF: What Roles Do Students Take On?

Support Material

Transcript: What Roles Do Students Take On?

Video Transcript

Workshops

Workshop 1 What is Arts Integration?

This program presents three instructional models for integrating the arts: independent instruction, team-teaching, and collaborations with community resources. Participants will also explore informal, complementary, and interdependent curricular connections, and see examples of what these different types of arts-integrated instruction look like in the classroom.

Workshop 2 Why Integrate the Arts?

This program explores how integrating the arts with other subjects raises the level of student engagement, helps teachers address diverse learning styles, establishes the relevance of learning for students, and provides alternative ways to communicate.

Workshop 3 How Do We Collaborate?

This program illustrates a variety of teaching partnerships. Participants will see how teachers integrating the arts can benefit from collaborating with fellow teachers, partnering with visiting artists, and drawing on community resources.

Workshop 4 What Roles Do Students Take On?

This program examines the artistic process of creating, performing, and responding. Participants will see students assuming the roles of researcher, writer, designer, director, performer, and critic.

Workshop 5 What Are Connecting Concepts?

This program presents strategies for planning lessons that integrate the arts with other subjects. Participants will see how teachers organize instruction around themes and concepts.

Workshop 6 What’s the Big Idea?

This program is about planning and teaching toward big ideas — important understandings that have lasting value. Participants will see how arts-integrated instruction enables students to make deeply personal connections to what they are learning.

Workshop 7 Identifying What Students Are Learning

This program investigates ways to evaluate student learning in and through the arts. Participants will see teachers using arts-based performance tasks to assess student understanding.

Workshop 8 Reflecting on Our Practice

This program explores methods for assessing instructional practice. Participants will see teachers reflecting alone and interacting with colleagues to evaluate and refine their planning and teaching. To conclude, the discussion group models a protocol that allows teachers to draw on the expertise of colleagues to refine their practice.