To stimulate cognitive development, encourage innovative thinking, and build creativity, think about starting an arts integration study group at your school. Melissa Hinajosa, 6th grade Science, Jessica Peltier, Visual Arts, and Jenny Carr, 8th grade Social Studies, did just that at KIPP Sharpstown.
Check out what they are reading and watching:
- Educating For Creativity
- Making the Case for Arts Education
- Video on how arts integration was fundamental in reforming New York schools
The group wants to take a cross-disciplinary approach to encourage students to make connections and see the relationships between subjects leading to original thoughts and ideas
The big goals for the group are to build an arts integration resource database for their school, create some systems to share information among teachers, increase awareness throughout the school of the importance of arts in the classroom, and study best practices for creating objective not activity-driven arts integrated lessons.
Each member also has personal goals:
Melissa Hinajosa aims at increasing proficiency in using music to teach science and gaining fuller picture of what an arts integrated school looks like.
Jessie Peltier wants to build student critical thinking skills in and out of the art classroom, while creating systems to have arts in the core curriculum, and vice versa.
Jennie Carr would like to provide resources and systems for individual teachers and the whole school to use for arts integration. She is also interested in raising awareness about the importance of arts integration for academic success as well as facilitating communication between the arts department and the rest of the school.
To prepare students for postsecondary success, add UIL Academic competitions to your school portfolio. Great for building key cognitive skills, key content knowledge, academic behaviors, and contextual skills and awareness. UIL Academics:
To nurture creativity, here are some ideas for activities with KIPPsters.
On November 23rd at 10:00 AM and 7:30 PM in Jones Hall, a special musical piece will be presented by the Houston Symphony with Hans Graf conducting and in collaboration with Holocaust Museum Houston. Incorporating 110 instruments and 140 voices, this special piece composed by Lawrence Siegel, chronicles the journey of Holocaust survivors from before the war, through the Holocaust, and to their lives beyond. It is a journey of despair and hope captured forever through “Kaddish”.
