Art is a unique way to engage students with diverse learning needs. Integrating art in education can help improve students’ critical thinking & social-emotional skills along with making learning relevant to students’ lives. Art-inquiry inspires students to engage in abstract & creative thinking. Therefore, art has been recognized as an indispensable part of education by various educationists. Some ways to integrate art into the curriculum are:
1. You can present students with an existing artwork & ask them to create a new piece of art that’s related to the subject on basis of that artwork. For this, you need to be careful while selecting artwork according to the age-appropriateness & grade level of the students. Art can help students think about a subject from different perspectives.
2. You can include art inquiry in your classroom practice. You can present in class some artworks & ask students guiding questions related to what they see in the artwork, what does it tell about the time it was created, about the context & culture it was created in, about the person who created it.
3. When using artwork in class, ensure that the questions you pose are open-ended. You can consider taking up a debate on what an artwork means in the class & encourage students to reason their statements about the artwork.
4. If possible, take your students to visit local artists. Such experiences can be a rich source of information for your students about their surroundings & area.
5. You can give students assignments to critique art pieces. This will improve the research, articulation, argumentation, & reasoning skills of your students.
