Frankfort Arts Integration Academy

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to participate in an Arts Integration Academy in Frankfort, Ky.  It was sponsored by KDE, Kentucky Center for Performing Arts and KET.  The week was packed with activities, speakers and field trips.  It was educational, inspiring and a lot of fun!  Here is a list of some of the things we did and learned about, also some of my own creations throughout the week.

One of the discussions at the beginning of the week was about Arts Integration.  Arts Integration shouldn’t just be about art enhancing other core subjects.  It’s a 50/50 split in responsibility, standards, accountability and importance.  They referenced the Kennedy Center CETA as a true definition.  It states…

Art Integration is an approach to teaching in which students construct and 
demonstrate understanding through an art form.  Students engage in a 
creative process which connects an art form and another subject area and 
meets evolving objectives in both.  

In my opinion, It shouldn’t simply be an art activity in Social Studies or any other class, the student’s product should be assessed on the core subject criteria and the arts criteria.  This not only increases the rigor and engagement of the students during a certain project, but it will create better crafted and more professional products as well.  It also reiterates that Art and Humanities are vital in eduction and to our future.  

Additional activities included using Tableau to act out scenes in Social Studies or Literature.  We wrote a diamante poem.  We had a wonderful speaker come and perform an amazing example of storytelling with body language and rhythm, vocal expression and whole group interaction/engagement.  We looked at and drew our own self-portraits, learned how to efficiently incorporate songs into our instruction, create character maps for our bios and performed a closing activity of colored stickers on large paper questions.  

In regards to Art and Humanities, I learned that there are new and improved standards being presented to the Board later this fall.  Of course, I went ahead and got to know the new standards, made my own cheat sheet for better understanding and implementation.  Here is my cheat sheet and the link for the National Core Arts Standards.  It’s actually really helpful, with Essential Questions and an assessment criteria already provided.

We had someone come and give a presentation on CIITS, PBS Learning Media with KET and TranspARTation grant information.  

Tons and tons of amazing information and great ideas!!  Looking forward to giving a PD at my school this semester!!