Buckman Arts Focus Elementary School

What does arts integration mean?

While providing students with the academic knowledge that's required for their grade level, the school's arts specialists, classroom teachers, support staff, and volunteers also work to nurture the whole child—intellectual, emotional, social, and physical—using a variety of teaching strategies. Notably, staff use a multiple-intelligence approach (developed by Howard Gardner), working with students' linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, body-kinetic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences.

This means that a lesson about mathematical patterns is not just a static, standard math lecture—instead it might include a rhythmicdance involving the whole body. A first-grade unit about rocks does not mean rote memorization of different types of geologic formations. Instead, it might involve a puppet show of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, creation of a mosaic using different types of rock, or spontaneous dance moves, imitating how rock erodes from a mountainside. As one teacher put it, the idea is to give students a variety of ways to create authentic, immediate connections with the subject matter, as appropriate to their age group, grade level, and intellectual abilities.

In addition, students embark on in-depth explorations of particular notable, groundbreaking artists and art movements throughout history, including Picasso, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Asian art, and many others, deepening their understanding of world events, cultural movements, and historical perspective. Students' strengths and learning preferences are taken into account.

Staff use themes, learning centers, design technology, projects, and simulations to make learning activity-oriented, memorable, and self-confidence boosting.