Running Header: JOURNAL: LEARNING ANG THE ARTS

Journal: Learning and the Arts Bianca Whalen EDU417 JoannaSavarese-Levine April 14, 2014

JOURNAL Journal: Learning and the Arts

I believe that there are definitely benefits to incorporating the arts into the classroom. I feel that using music or drama in the classroom can very helpful at retaining and remembering information that is taught in the curriculum. One great example is the alphabet song and is something we all basically know in kindergarten that helps to remember the letters and their order in the alphabet. Making the alphabet into a song helps children remember it. A lot of what children do in play involves singing, drawing, and dancing. What makes these activities so effective in development in the brain is that they employ all the senses and wire the brain for successful learning (Fischer & Immordino-Yang, 2008). There are a wide array of research studies that have found that well-designed arts practices create positive academic and social influences and can help to develop essential academic skills, basic and advanced literacy, and numeracy. The strongest influences were found in programs that utilize arts with focuses in the core curriculum. Many researchers suggest that utilizing arts in the classroom results in students and teachers to reevaluate how they see the arts and create outcomes that educational researchers and cognitive scientists explain are paramount to learning (Fischer & Immordino-Yang, 2008). Learning to play music alters the brain in novel ways. Music allows a person to decipher different tone patterns and groups and also fresh motor skills have to be learned and coordinated in order manipulate an instrument. The auditory cortex, the motor cortex, the cerebellum, and the corpus callosum are bigger in musicians when compared to non-musicians. Research implies that these brain differences in skilled musicians are from training and not genetic. Music can be helpful in mathematics and reading. Music involves the use of patterns, counting, geometry, ratios, proportions, equivalent fractions, and sequences. Music is helpful in reading because it

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requires similar decoding and comprehension processes, sensitivity to phonological or tonal distinctions, the synchronized use of reading words and music, the use of performing in groups could result in a strong need for academic responsibility and performance that improves reading success (Fischer & Immordino-Yang, 2008). Another area of the arts that influences education is the visual arts. In the majority of people, the left hemisphere is responsible for interpreting verbal information and the right side of the brain interprets visual information. Imagery involves the mental pictures of objects, events, and arrays associated with the new learning, and corresponds to a significant way of storing information in the brain. The same areas of the visual cortex are triggered when the eyes process experiential information when the brain creates images. The effectiveness of the brain capacity to process visual information is suggested to be related to survival. It is important to train students in imagery because it encourages them to scan their long term memory for correct images and utilize them like a movie or picture. Imagery can be utilized in several classroom tasks such note-taking, cooperative learning groups, and alternate assessment options (Fischer & Immordino-Yang, 2008). The last area of the arts that can be helpful in academic performance is movement. Some areas of movement in school are dance, theater, and sports, and these are commonly removed from school systems to lower the budget. This is unfortunate, because as we learn more about the correlation between body and mind, the significance of movement on cognitive development is obvious. The cerebellum is responsible for the use of motor skills, yet new research has found through the use of scans that nerve fibers of the cerebellum correspond with different areas of the cerebrum also. As more information is gathered on the cerebellum, the more is found on the link between the movement and learning and memory (Fischer & Immordino-Yang, 2008).

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The arts can be utilized in the classroom through music, imagery, and movement. Teachers can turn important information into songs to help to students with rote memorization. They can also create mind maps or visual aids and place them around the classroom. They can have the students create their own individualized visual aids. The students can create art projects on certain topics through the use clay, paper, markers, etc. The options are endless. Teachers can play active games with students like Pictionary, charades, or sports games where they the answers to questions as the opportunities to score and run bases like in baseball or downs in football. These activities cant be performed in a gym, outside, or in the classroom permitting it is big enough. Not only is using the arts fun for the students, but it promotes learning and cognitive and brain development.

JOURNAL References Fischer , K. W., & Immordino-Yang, M. H. , (2008). The jossey-bass reader on the brain and learning. (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.