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AWAKE Wild About Art
Creating a Link Between Nature Art and the Core Content for Assessment
Purpose and Justification
Our schools have a large diversity of students: students from different ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic groups, and students with different learning styles and different talents or intelligences. Many of our students communicate in ways other than writing and speaking: art may be their medium of choice. However, we often expect our students to demonstrate learning in all the same way, through a writing portfolio piece or perhaps a worksheet. But many of our students learn through creating art and should be offered the opportunity to demonstrate learning through art. By giving our students choices, we match assignments to students' abilities and learning styles and increase motivation.
Teachers of science and social studies often ask students to create artwork, such as posters, to represent the science they have learned, but do not know how to teach art, as outlined in the core content, through those art pieces. With some knowledge of the elements of art and principles of design and a connection of those principles to activities in units of study or textbooks, teachers could teach art principles in the content areas of science, social studies, language arts, and mathematics, thus, achieving a more interdisciplinary approach to instruction.
Kentucky has a rich heritage of nature art found in many different venues: museums, textbooks, tradebooks, literature, and movies. In addition, folk art with nature themes is an important part of our cultural heritage. Students often see examples of nature art they have no skills to interpret. However, students are asked to describe works of art using appropriate art terminology, respond to different styles including realistic and abstract, and identify subject matter such as landscapes. There appears to be a perfect opportunity to connect our students need for interpretive skills to the analysis of nature art.
Some of our students already are creating wonderful pieces of art. The duck stamp contest is a wonderful example. A second contest that our students may be participating in is the state fish art contest. At this time, however, there is no place for these pieces to be displayed so they reach a wider audience.
To create truly interdisciplinary learning activities, it is incumbent upon curriculum developers to include meaningful opportunities for students to create and respond to pieces of art whenever possible. Even our national environmental education curricula, such as Project Learning Tree, do not adequately address the creation and teaching of art. In order for teachers of science, social studies, language arts, and mathematics to begin to understand fundamental art principles, they must be given simple tools that outline the steps they can take to teach and evaluate art in their classrooms. There appears to be a perfect opportunity to help Kentucky teachers teach the analysis and creation of nature art.
Wild About Art is a way to promote the creation, display, interpretation, and teaching of nature art in all content areas. Wild About Art can have one of two homes. We can create a tab for the program or the ideas can be imbedded under the curriculum tab.
