Primary Junior Visual Arts

Available in print and online
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. Marshall 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, multidimensional, and creative.

Available Online
This easy-to-use resource features chapters on each of the major art forms and shows teachers how to help students meet related curriculum outcomes: music--from composing songs and the elements of music to novel approaches to singing songs; visual arts-- from exploring pattern, shape, color, and texture to special events that feature mobiles, collages, and paper structures; drama-- from playing, moving, and imagining to communicating, improvising, and performing; dance-- from physical ways of conceptualizing to dance as a problem-solving exercise; media-- from being intelligent media users and using interactive media to taking a media field trip.

This practical resource emphasizes the special contribution that visual art, drama, music, and dance can make to student literacy and understanding of content-area reading assignments. Focusing on those areas where students tend to struggle, the author helps K-5 teachers provide an age-appropriate curriculum that is accessible to an increasingly diverse student population.

Provides an overview of academically linked research in five arts areas: literary arts, visual art, drama, dance, and music.