Blog 11

What are the benefits and limitations of integrating the arts throughout the elementary school curriculum? What issues are you encountering as you plan your unit? How do you think these issues might present themselves in the classroom situation? How are you addressing these issues now? How will you address them in the classroom?


The benefit of integrating art throughout the curriculum is that it helps reach students with different learning styles, especially kinesthetic and visual learners. A limitation of integrating art is that art becomes a tool to teach another aspect of curriculum. We can lose sight of teaching art for specific art purposes. Often I found that when I am planning a lesson, it's difficult to keep sight of specific art objectives when I'm attempting to also cover goals from another subject. Some other issues that might show up is how is the integrated curricula going to meet the child learning needs, and will it create interest in the child. I think that when applying these to classroom situation, the issues becomes more difficult because you have to think about more than one child; twenty different learning styles must be addressed in the best ways possible. The way that I would address these issues now is to plan well by getting to know my students learning styles and address them in my unit planning. In a classroom, I think that trying to plan lessons so that they meet the needs of different learning styles as often as possible, and not just one, is important. I also realize, however, that it will not always be possible.