Overall Program Design
The Arts Impact professional learning program is a comprehensive, sustained, job-embedded program implemented over the course of two years that immerses teachers in arts and arts-infused teaching and learning in dance, theater, and visual arts.
Core immerses participants in arts learning and teaching.
Educators Will
- Experience the arts as students
- Practice teaching and assessing the arts
- Reflect on their own and others’ art
- Lead students in reflective practice in the arts
- Engage in the artistic process as a learner and a teacher
- Develop personal artistic capacity
- Collaborate with Artist Mentors in the classroom to teach, create original lessons, and assess
Six Curricular Focus Areas
- Arts Foundations and Arts-Infusion;
- Early Learning;
- Arts and Reading Infusion;
- Arts and Writing Infusion;
- Arts and Math Infusion; PreK-5
- Visual Arts and Math Infusion; Middle School
Professional Learning Components
While six curricular focus areas are offered, all models share the same professional learning components. Each year for two years teachers participate in 45-51 hours of professional learning that includes:
Summer Institute
During the five-day, 30-hour summer institute, teachers gain hands-on experience in the lessons they will take back to the classroom and teach. Teachers develop their personal artistic abilities as well as learning teaching strategies for PreK-5 dance, theater, and visual art foundational and arts-infused lessons. Artist Mentors lead instruction at the institutes modeling and annotating best practices of teaching, reflecting, and assessing the arts. The specific lessons taught in the summer institute depend on the curricular focus of that institute.
Mentorship
In the school year following the institute, Artist Mentors work as partners with teachers to support them both in and out of the classroom. 10-hour classroom mentorship includes:
• Lesson modeling by Artist Mentor
• Co-teaching with Artist Mentor and teacher
• Lesson planning with Artist Mentor and teacher
• Independent teaching by teacher supported by Artist Mentor
• Assessing student learning
• Reflecting on teaching practice: Autonomy Rubric for Teachers
Learning Communities
Arts Impact staff and Artist Mentors facilitate learning communities for participating teachers for the purpose of promoting continuous improvement and collective responsibility around shared goals for improving arts and arts-infused instructional practice.
Cultural Study Trips
Participating teachers and students attend a professional live theater or dance performance or museum exhibit designed specifically for student audiences. Arts Impact works with its partners to help teachers connect the arts learning in the classroom to the live performances and exhibitions. Community cultural partners include: Book-it Repertory Theatre, Broadway Center for the Performing Arts, Children’s Museum of Tacoma, Meany Center for the Performing Arts, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Children’s Theatre, and Tacoma Art Museum.
Course Content
- Dance, Theater, and Visual Arts foundational concepts, skills, and techniques
- Classroom management strategies for teaching in the arts
- Arts-infusion and concept based instructional practices
- Criteria-based performance assessment practices
- Lesson plan development
- Planning for sustainability
- Up to 51 clock hours or 4 graduate credits from Seattle Pacific University may be earned each year.
Curriculum
Arts Impact has developed sequential PreK-5 curricula that infuse the arts with reading, writing, math, and science. Stand alone arts lessons, covering a wide range of arts concepts, skills, and techniques in dance, theater, and visual art that can be adapted for multiple grade levels are also available. Lessons are standards based and aligned with National Core Arts Standards, Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and Early Learning Guidelines as applicable.
All lessons are written in a common lesson plan format creating a common vocabulary for arts-infused teaching and facilitating use of all lessons Arts Impact has to offer. There are now Spanish translations of the Arts Foundations and Arts-infused curricula. Video enhanced lessons are also available.
Resources
Each program offers the following resources.
- Two curriculum notebooks, one each year
- Digital images of artworks from local museums as object=-based references of concepts in each visual arts lesson, available in the notebooks and on disc
- Professional performances at partnering theaters and performing arts centers
- Museum tours customized to complement Arts Impact and teacher-created lesson plans
- Web-based, searchable, lesson plan database.
Professional Learning Programs
Arts Impact works with schools and districts to determine which curricular focus best supports their goals for school and student outcomes. Click here to access each of the Arts Impact curricula below.
Arts Foundations and Arts Infusion
Arts Impact’s core program is Arts Foundations (year one) and Arts Infusion (year two). The model is designed to help the classroom teacher develop autonomy in teaching arts foundations and infusing the arts into day-to-day teaching. The Arts Foundations and Arts Infusion model is offered every year, supported by fees and grants.
Early Learning
The Early Learning program is a partnership between Arts Impact and Puget Sound Educational Service District’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP). This program focuses on PreK-3 teachers, bringing together the early learning and K-5 systems to create a seamless pathway of arts-infused learning for students. Early learning and K-3 teachers train together learning best teaching practices from both, including students engaging in learning through play and discovery, learning methods experts say are best for children at least through age eight.
Arts and Reading Infusion
In the Arts and Reading Infusion program teachers learn to teach and assess lessons from a K-5 sequential curriculum in dance, theater, and visual arts infused with reading.
Dance and Reading infused lessons focus on sequence: beginning, middle, end; expression; similar/different; exaggeration; event; meaning; and plot.
Theater and Reading infused lessons focus on: character, action, emotions, visualization, dialog, inference, objective, attributes, and story structure.
Visual Arts and Reading infused lessons focus on: setting, mental pictures, prior knowledge, sense memories, inference, antonym, main idea, analysis, and synthesis.
Arts and Writing Infusion
In the Arts and Writing Infusion program teachers learn to teach and assess lessons from a K-5 sequential curriculum in dance, theater, and visual arts infused with writing. The overall focus of the writing infused curriculum is building a rich vocabulary.
Dance and Writing infused lessons include the literacy/arts infused concepts: opposites, prepositions, verbs, adjectives, nouns, vivid verbs, pattern, rhythm, simile, and metaphor.
Theater and Writing infused lessons include the literacy/arts infused concepts: action, character, descriptive words, context, verbs, emotion, setting character attributes, and objective.
Visual Arts and Writing infused lessons include the literacy/arts infused concepts: action, adjectives, verbs, senses, emotion, imagery, mood, visual imagery, narrative, specific nouns, metaphor, and mood.
Arts and Math Infusion
In the Arts and Math Infusion program teachers learn to teach and assess lessons from a PreK-5 sequential curriculum in dance and visual arts infused with math.
Dance and Math infused lessons include the math/arts infused concepts: geometric shapes, place value, word problems, fractions, area, perimeter, number patterns, and variables.
Visual Arts and Math infused lessons include the math/arts infused concepts: numbers, counting, geometric shapes, equations, line direction, informal and formal balance, arrays, fractions, multiplication, symmetry, number patters, balancing equations, and polygons.
