Arts Education Continuum
The DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative created the Arts Education Continuum model in order to demonstrate our three-pronged approach to arts education.
Arts Experiences
Definition: Students have an opportunity to observe performing arts, visual arts or humanities by artists, including community artists or teachers in the arts.
Examples:
- In the community: Students and teachers, or students and their parents, attend a performance or visit a museum/art gallery.
- In school: A performance/exhibit provided at a school by an artist that serves as an introduction to or reinforcement of a particular art form.
Arts Learning
Definition: Students receive instruction by artists and arts teachers to increase their skill in or knowledge of an art form.
Examples:
- In school: Student is enrolled in music, theater, visual arts, dance and/or humanities class as part of their curriculum.
- After school/extracurricular: Student participates in individual lessons or group instruction taught by arts teacher or artist in the performing arts, visual arts or humanities.
Arts Integration
Definition: Students participate in instruction with objectives in an art form and another content area taught by artists, arts teachers and/or classroom teachers to enhance learning in both the art form and the other content area.
Examples:
- A teaching artist or teacher develops a five lesson unit of study integrating English/Language Arts and dance. During the unit, students will learn about the elements of dance (body, energy, space and time), and explore English/Language Arts concepts (nouns, verbs, adjectives), and create a dance using the elements to express the English/Language Arts concepts. The student created dance (performance assessment task) combined with an oral reflection will demonstrate understanding in both areas.
"It's interesting learning [through the arts]. Our school has dramatic arts, books and stories about what we're learning to make connections." - 4th grader from Ketcham Elementary
