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In the first article, "Exploring the Benefits of Art in Elementary", my eyes were really opened to the fact that art is disappearing from curriculum. I even found myself thinking, "Wow, this is true for myself and I need to change that." Since art is not a component of state standardized testing I do feel like teachers do not feel they have the time or that it is necessary to include art in their curriculum. I am guilty of this. There are so many priority math standards that I need to get to with my 7th grade students, I feel as though I'm always pushing for more time. However, I realized after reading this article that I am at times leaving out all of my kinesthetic learners. There are several ways mentioned that I could accommodate these learners: creating songs, working to music, using pictures to explain their thinking, etc. Lastly, I loved the quoted by Elliot Eisner: "Unlike most of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, the arts is judgement rather than rules that prevail". The reason I loved this so much is because when teaching math it does seem to focus on the "correct answer" rather than how students are thinking which should be the main priority.
In the second article, "How Integrating Arts into Other Subjects Makes Learning Come Alive", I found several ideas for my own classroom. For example, when teaching students angles I could examine the work of famous artists who use lines in their art, then have students explore on their own and create their own work using the same style as the artist. With all of the research stating how much art boosts academic achievement, I believe it is definitely one of the best ways to differentiate learning in my classroom for students.
Lastly, I found the third article to be extremely interesting because of all factual research and student feedback. One of the biggest takeaways from this article was the fact that there 60-78 percent difference between student achievement when comparing a non-arts unit to an arts unit. Wow! That is a very large difference that really will drive me to include art to differentiate my curriculum to reach all of my different learners.
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