Integrating the Visual Arts Across the Curriculum: An Elementary and Middle School Guide

With lots of examples and color images, this resource is both a foundational text and a practical guidebook for bringing contemporary art into elementary and middle school classrooms as a way to make learning joyful and meaningful for all learners. The author shows how asking questions and posing problems spark curiosity and encourage learners to think deeply and make meaningful connections across the curriculum. At the center of this approach is creativity, with contemporary visual art as its inspiration. The text covers methods of creative inquiry-based learning, art and how it connects to the "big ideas" addressed by academic domains, flexible structures teachers can use for curriculum development, creative teaching strategies using contemporary art, and models of art-based inquiry curriculum. Book Features: Provides research-based project ideas and curriculum models for arts integration. Shows how Project Zero's flexible structures and frameworks can be used to develop creative inquiry and an arts integration curriculum. Explains how contemporary visual art connects to the four major disciplines—science, mathematics, social studies, and language arts. Includes full-color images of contemporary art that are appropriate for elementary and middle school learners. Demonstrates how arts integration can and should be substantive, multi-dimensional, and creative.