From the outset of the year with the Artful Teaching project, I’ve been challenged as a school leader to think about how I could help to catalyze and support arts integration in a way that aligned with other district initiatives. From the first time Nancy Lehnhart and Mandy Mallott presented to our Admin Council, I began thinking about how I could orchestrate professional learning about arts integration when teachers were showing signs of “initiative overload” very early in the school year.
 
Fortunately for me, Harborview teachers are fairly well inclined to embrace the arts, but with so much else coming our way (Marzano, SLOs, and Reading Wonders, in particular), I was quite nervous about teachers not having intellectual space (or time) to open up to new learning.
 
When Jessica Ross from Project Zero visited, I gained quite a bit of insight into the fit with the work we had committed to, in heart and mind, at Harborview. Ms. Ross’ introduction of “Thinking Routines”  meshed nicely with the “close reading”  protocols our teachers had been collaboratively developing to work with Reading Wonders materials. As I perused the exhibitions of student work that were part of Ms. Ross’s presentation, I was delighted to experience the connection with our site based work just that morning, reading Ron Berger’s thinking about the value of curating and studying exemplary student work.  That confluence of themes will continue to help us find a way forward in sharing knowledge about practices like close reading, inductive thinking and evidence-based reasoning while using District-purchased curricular materials.
 
Deb Brzoska's presentation  at Dzantik'i Heeni was well attended by our staff.  In her session, “Integrating Art with Reading Wonders,” Ms. Brzoska presented a set of “best practices” which called for adoption of constructivist techniques of giving students experiences with content, allowing them to engage through a variety of modalities as a mode of teaching that is more effective than teachers’ “delivery” of information. This spurred important dialogue among primary teachers about the potential opportunity cost in teaching straight from the directions in Reading Wonders. We integrated tableaus with choral and close reading while Ms. Brzoska reminded us that students should engage a complex text at least three times.
 
I emerged from Richard Jenkins’ workshops at The Canvas and at Dzantik'i Heeni grateful for the experience of art providing multiple entry points into writing. Mr. Jenkins’ advocacy for special needs students was especially powerful due to his own soft-spoken intellectual nimbleness. We learned a step-by-step technique for turning geometric shapes into superhero drawings. I loved his technique of demonstrating a single step, giving a very precise instruction, and saying “Go.”
 
Melanie Rick’s talk about art integration, and then her teaching demonstrations about portraits helped bring the year’s p.d. full circle to me. She provided a definition and a rationale for arts integration, and then she modeled some exceptionally good class management and thinking routines with students observing and describing portraits. Students arrived ,through close observation, at a working definition of portraits, and they realized that portraits were everywhere.
 
Finally, at our school table during the Arts Team Day, we re-visited the theme of alignment. Ted Wilson grounded thinking routines in several elements of Domain 1 of the Marzano teacher evaluation framework. Our team will continue to discuss how to align next year’s work with this year’s cornerstones of close reading and curation of student work. 

Artful Thinking has become such a natural part of my teaching. I have found that it sneaks its way into everything. I continue to be amazed at the engagement and effort that my students put in during and after a Thinking Routine.  It brings the focus back to the process and emphasizes curiosity and critical thinking skills, which are two things that I strive to facilitate. One way in which Artful Thinking has made a huge impact for me and my students is in science. I have always used science notebooks as a way of recording our observations and findings, but this year, they have been a lot more successful. I am realizing that Artful Thinking is what I have to thank for that. My students are structuring their observations and notes in ways that are mirroring and combining a lot of the routines that we have tried. Without leading them in a formal routine, I find that they are using the language that has been modeled when they make notes in their science notebooks. Woohoo!

I have been loving using Artful Thinking as an introduction to a unit to spark interest and identify our background knowledge, as well as at the end of units as assessments. This specific lesson was kind of in the middle.

My students had just been to DIPAC to learn about mollusks. They had been introduced to what a clam was, gotten to see one, and had an overview of the parts. A couple of days later, a parent showed up in the morning with a bucket full of clams and asked if I wanted to use them. I obviously threw out the old plans and quickly came up with an idea of how to use them in my classroom. Artful Thinking immediately came to mind. I started out with a See/ Think /Wonder with this picture. This is a routine that we do A LOT.

• “I see worms in that mud.”
  
• “I think that is a hole for a little animal to live in.”
  
• “I see an 8.” 
  
• “I wonder if the water is going to fill the holes.”
  
• “I wonder if that water is moving?”

I didn’t inform them of what they were looking at yet. I just had them go straight to their tables and have a look at the clam in front of them.

I started the lesson doing a Looking 10 x 2 Thinking Routine. They immediately forgot about the picture, because a live clam on your table is way more interesting.

1st look: Quick and simple.  They had about 3 minutes to write down words, phrases, or sentences about the clam in front of them. Some second graders struggled with this, so it turned out to be more like 5x2 for some. Here is an example of one students 1st look:

• “I see twirly lines.”
• “I see a hard shell.”
• “I see lines on that shell.”
• “I see this part that looks squishy, but I don’t know if it is squishy.”
•  “I see dirt and I see triangles.”

Introducing kindergartners to sea week may be one of the best reasons to be a kindergarten teacher. There’s something that amounts to pure joy in uncovering a huge group of sea urchins under a rock, or the slippery curvy movements of a prickle back with children for the first time.

Our time at the beach was amazing!  We made so many discoveries and were able to use important property words to describe their physical characteristics. We used our observational skills to notice animal movement and interaction with their environment (and ourselves). In coming back into the classroom, I wanted to see what my children had learned and how they could represent this new knowledge to each other.  And so I gave them a challenge:
 
We’ve practiced our acting skills throughout the year with guest actors and individual “tableau” to help us represent characters in some of the books we’ve read. We’ve used the phrase “actor’s neutral” to control our bodies before acting. We’re familiar with the concept and role of an audience. So we’ve had some preparation already.  
 
For this tableau experience, our goal was three fold:

1. Each group would perform a short tableau for the other students – in which they represented a specific tide pool animal (which the audience will try and guess!).
2. Group members were expected to work together respectfully when creating and performing their tableau.
3. Each child would work to be a respectful and supportive audience members (who were ready to guess the animal each group was trying to portray).

 
Before giving children their group assignments or photo, I modeled a performance with a parent helper in the classroom. My emphasis was on teamwork and kindness during practices, as this was certainly a piece I was worried about as a kindergarten teacher.
 
 I placed children into small groups of 2 or 3 children with an animal assignment (which included a familiar photo of the tide pool animal), giving groups 10 minutes to practice and rehearse their role. Then, it was time to perform.
 
Each group’s performance began in the “actor’s neutral” stance. This gave them an opportunity to check their bodies and also gave the audience an indication that they were ready to begin (and, truly, we kind of need to have “audience neutral” at times in kindergarten!). 

​Students were in control, had a plan, and really thought through the movement (or lack of movement).

​What I loved most was the response of the audience. Students were enraptured because the act was also a game for them – their job was to try and guess what the tide pool animal was. I encouraged children from the audience to explain what clues brought them to their conclusion. It demanded that children look for details in the performance – like the squirt from a clam or the small spikes on top of a still sea urchin. 

OK, fine, I loved a lot about this experience. So I’ll just mention the other really important piece – the children were elated. They loved working with each other! Learning should be a joyous experience, no matter the age (but goodness it is so important for young children). They should be working together, creating together, and learning together. This year of focused arts integration has been such an important reminder to me of what young children are capable of if they are given the right amount of guidance, modeling, and opportunities (for mistakes and successes!).  And, that it’s ok for me, as the teacher, to take risks and make few mistakes along the way to find those joyous and meaningful successes.

I was scheduled to use the 4th grade elementary art kit, Centennial Bridge, but I’d never used it before.  I didn’t check it out with a purpose to integrate it into our current social studies or science units of study, but I was excited to try an Artful Thinking Routine that would add some depth to our discussion, and hopefully deepen students’ engagement in the lesson. I decided that I would begin by showing the photographs of the Gastineau Channel/Douglas Bridge included in the kit, and use the Think/Puzzle/Explore routine. I hoped that showing the photographs without telling any information would invite students to try to build a narrative about the history of transportation in Juneau. ​

I displayed the photographs on my whiteboard tray at the front of the room, and asked students to look at them carefully and quietly without talking. 

I began with the question, “What do you THINK you know about this topic?” Some of their responses:

• “Before, bridges, boats and canoes were used to get across the Gastineau Channel”
• “Tlingit people used to race across the channel for transportation” 
• “The old bridge in 1935 was big, the bridge we have now is smaller” 
• My favorite response was,“the topic could be called ‘History in Motion.'"

​
Students seemed to understand that all of the photographs were connected, and they were telling a sequential story of the transportation used in the Gastineau channel. Then I asked, “What questions or puzzles do you have?

• “Why did they change the bridge?”
• “How did they make the new bridge?”
• “How long did it take to build the bridge?”
• “Why was Juneau so small in 1880 and so big in 2010?”

And the final question: "What does this artwork or topic make you want to explore?"

• “Tlingit paddling/canoeing”
• “The first ferry.”
• “How does the bridge built in 1980 stay up?”
• “Was the 1935 bridge torn down because of the miners?”
• “Who came up with the idea to take down the old bridge and build the new one?”

I will share the story of how I used the SEE/THINK/WONDER routine when I brought 6 salmon into my kindergarten class.
 
I love this routine for its simplicity:  What do you see?  What do you think you know (in this case about salmon)?  And what does this make you wonder?
 
This routine is a great way to get my students more engaged with a piece of art – or in this case – a topic (salmon). 
 
I started out by laying a number of salmon (both Pink and King) around the room on tables.  Actually, I started by giving my kids a direct order: “You can’t say ‘Ew!’ – you have to say, ‘Cool’– or something like that."  (Unfortunately, that order was not as successful as the use of the SEE/THINK/WONDER routine…but it was pretty funny to hear the kids continually saying ‘Ew!’ and then have 20 other kids yell at them not to say that). Kids were then encouraged to move throughout the room to touch, draw and talk about what they see/notice about the salmon. 

We then regrouped at the front of the room and I posed the question “What do you think you know about salmon?”.  I recorded the kids thinking on butcher paper. 
 
The kid’s thoughts ranged in complexity – from simple thoughts and details:
“I think tails help fish swim” and “If they don’t live in water they will die”
To more in depth details:
“The fin right here (points to gills) helps the salmon breathe” and “I think they (salmon) have slime on them so if they go in a seal’s mouth they can slip right out”.
 
That is another thing I really like about using this thinking routine – it allows for multiple entry points for kids depending on their observational skills and/or prior knowledge.
 
Some of the ‘thinking’ was very literal about what they saw from the salmon in the room:
“King salmon have dots on their bodies” and other ‘thinking’ obviously came from prior knowledge the student had come in with “You can only keep a King Salmon if it’s size is big enough”. 
 
The student’s comments would often build off the comments of their peers.  Sometimes it would directly contradict what a classmate had just stated – for instance, right after the claim about the gills helping a fish breathe, another student made the claim:
“I think that that fin (points to rear fin) goes under their body and helps it breathe”.
All thoughts were recorded by me, word for word, with no corrections or judgements.   

I then took a different piece of butcher paper and posed the question, “What do you wonder about salmon?”  Like the “I think I know” process, some of the wonderings were related to what the students actually observed from the salmon in the room, while others were from prior knowledge or wonderings in general. 
 
“I wonder what that little fin on top does?”
“I wonder how salmon can breathe under water?”
“I wonder how old fish are?”
 
After all the ‘Wonderings’ were recorded I grouped the students around me for the dissection of a few salmon.  

It was only at this time did I reveal/deliver any of information about salmon – a good 30 minutes into the lesson.  All previous talk had been strictly kid generated.  Every student in my class was engaged.  How often can I say that?
​
The dissected salmon were then put back on tables and students were encouraged to engage in the same process we used to start the routine – touching, talking and drawing what they saw.