Before going into one of my Artful Teaching lessons, I want to take a moment to admit how impressed I am with this new way of teaching.  As I started integrating Artful Teaching into my practice, I realized how important, yet basic and easy it is to do.  Honestly, I must admit that I am a little shocked that I have not always taught this way.  I had completely overlooked the importance of explicitly teaching kids how to think.  I expected this to be a skill that kids would just know what to do when I said, “think about it.”  Now, I have learned that by giving my students the tools they need to “think,” they have become much more critical thinkers and incredibly curious about their world.  My classroom culture is now built around student thinking.  Students have learned to critically think about new topics when I introduce them by using the skills of:

• building on prior or background knowledge 
• making connections
• visualizing 
• asking questions
• making inferences 

Within a matter of weeks, my students were able to create their own truth and facts based on their own thinking.  Do I wish that I had always taught this way? Absolutely.  I am so pleased with Artful Thinking, that it has completely changed how I teach in such a way that all the Thinking Routines have become habitual.  I remember beginning and really planning out which routine to use for which piece of art, which I still do; however, now students automatically use thinking routines all day long whether I have planned them or not.  I am so proud of the kids!
 
Okay, enough chit chat, let’s get into one of the lessons.  Sea Week was one specific area that I wanted to focus on, and I especially wanted to integrate art, science, and writing.  I have found that for first grade students, it can be challenging to take another’s perspective.  This is something that we work on for developing social skills. I first chose to conduct an informal assessment to gain some information on what the students already know about low tide beaches and creatures in Southeast.  I also wanted to figure out what it was that they were interested in learning about. 

In order to do this, I gathered students on the carpet and explained that we would be starting a new science unit on sea creatures.  I used the Artful Thinking Routine Step Inside as a way for the children to demonstrate what they already know about the beach.  I had them close their eyes and imagine walking off the bus, arriving at the beach, and exploring the low tide.  I had them imagine what the beach would sound like, look like, feel like, and smell like.  After allowing students to use their imaginations, I had them go to their seats and draw and write about each of the senses that they think they would experience at the beach.  I prepared student books using two pieces of paper that have lines on the bottom and blank space on the top for drawing.  The papers were folded in half so that there were four spaces for four senses.  I labeled each page for each sense (look, smell, feel, and sound) with an icon to help the students stay focused on the task.  I have found that scaffolding thinking into a focused area can often encourage more writing than given a broad topic.  I asked the students to write their thinking, meaning any thing that they think is true, as well as any questions or wonderings they might have.  Students were given time to write and draw to express what they already think they know to be true and then ask questions that I could use as a way to plan.  

by Tracy Goldsmith
Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School
My 8th grade Language Arts class students studied the Holocaust. They were assigned different Holocaust novels to read and they participated in literature circles using those novels. We started the unit by using the Step Inside Artful Thinking Routine with this image;