May 2005 • Volume 36 • Issue 5 • Pages 9-19

Standards-Based, Thematic Units Integrate the Arts and Energize Students and Teachers

Karen Bolak, Donna Bialach, & Maureen Dunphy

Imagine a middle school where teachers and administrators spiritedly collaborate, where parents and community members enthusiastically participate, and where young adolescents eagerly engage in the learning and discovery of meaningful content, look forward to attending school, have opportunities to excel, and show encouraging academic growth.

In our small mid-western urban school district, a planning committee, charged with restructuring the junior high schools, read Turning Points (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989) and identified several critical issues challenging our schools:

• the educational challenges created by a gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students
• disappointing test scores
• lack of teacher enthusiasm
• lack of parental involvement
• community dissatisfaction
• absence of community partnerships.

As a result, a group of parents, community members, teachers, and administrators in our school district combined their talents, energies, and passions to try a different way to educate our children. They envisioned a middle school where:

• Educators and community members collaborate to plan interdisciplinary thematic units based upon core curricular standards and instructional methodologies reflecting best practices in middle level education.
• Students are eagerly engaged in the learning process and show measurable academic growth.
• Parents enthusiastically participate in the planning, implementation, and culmination of these units.

This vision was congruent with a major goal which emerged in Turning Points 2000 , "to integrate what is known from education research and practice within a coherent approach toward adolescent education that educators can use in their own efforts to transform middle grade schools" (Jackson and Davis, 2000, p. xiii).

This article recounts our experience designing a program for one of our restructured middle schools that reflects a national movement in middle level reform.

Our Inspiration
A visit from Howard Gardner began our remarkable journey. Gardner (1993, 1999) believes humans possess at least eight different forms of intelligence, each reflecting an individual's potential to solve problems or to fashion products valued in cultural settings. The eight intelligences are logical/mathematical, verbal/linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Most often teachers use instructional strategies falling within only two of the intelligences: logical/mathematical and verbal/linguistic (Figure 1). Consequently, traditional instructional strategies, narrow in scope, represent only part of a complete educational program. Gardner's (1993) theory introduced our community to the concept that the arts are more than an extra; they are vital to the balanced development of a child, cognitively as well as affectively.

We realized we were not addressing all our students' learning needs because we were not engaging all of their intelligences. We became convinced that the theory of multiple intelligences was part of the answer to ensuring all students, regardless of their profile of intelligences, become proficient learners.

Coming Together to Design a Program
For our district, merging theory with practice in the schools began with a team effort by teachers, administrators, and parents that identified our strengths as a school district and as a community. The first of these strengths was ethnic, racial, and socio-economic diversity. The community was proud of the 31 flags gracing the high school commons that recognize the heritage of each member of the student body. Being recognized statewide for its achievements, the school district was also proud of longstanding success with its music and drama programs. The planning team recognized that the arts employ many of the intelligences identified by Gardner. For example, whereas constructing a set for a performance relies heavily on logical/mathematical and visual/spacial intelligences, choreographing and performing a dance depends on musical, bodily/kinesthetic, visual/spatial, and interpersonal intelligences. Why not capitalize on our district strengths by applying Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences as well as current research to solve the educational challenges presented by our diverse middle school learners?

Arts Integration
Integrating the arts with the core curriculum is an energizing solution at the middle level. For those whose lives are richer because of a connection to the arts, the value of an arts-integrated academic program is clear. Fowler (1994) stated, "The arts … invite students to explore the emotional, intuitive, and irrational aspects of life … while affirming the interconnectedness of all forms of knowing. This is why an education without the arts is an incomplete education" (p. 9).

Hurley (2002) made a case for improving the school culture by fostering aesthetic experiences among staff members:

Because we emphasize raising students' test scores in today's schools … aesthetic experiences provide an opportunity for principals to balance the intellectual and rational approaches [by] … experiencing and exploring human creativity. We reach our potential as we develop our aesthetic sensibilities and share them with others. (pp. 25-26)

Applying Current Brain Research
Current brain research supports integrating the arts with the core curriculum. Jensen (1998) repeated that, "today's biology suggests that it's the arts that lay the foundation for later academic and career success. A strong arts foundation builds creativity, concentration, problem solving, self-efficacy, coordination, and values attention and self-discipline" (p. 9).

Sylwester's (1998) neurobiological research indicated that by using the arts, students develop a variety of channels in the brain, enhancing their ability to connect their learning experiences to better construct meaning and make sense of the world. An arts-integrated model is also consistent with Marzano, Pollock, and Pickering's (2001) research synthesis on best classroom practices. They reviewed psychologists' findings regarding learning through nonlinguistic representation or imagery. When students are encouraged to discover and apply knowledge using graphic representations or drawing, making physical models, or engaging in kinesthetic activity, the effects on achievement are strong. "By learning and practicing in the visual and performing arts, the human brain actually rewires itself to make more and stronger connections" (Kolb & Whishaw, 1990 as quoted in Chan & Petrie, 1998).

Envisioning a Paradigm Change
Ultimately, district stakeholders envisioned a middle level program that would:

• apply Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences
• include the arts as a cornerstone
• transfer current middle level educational research and theory into practice
• involve community partnerships
• employ integrated thematic units
• authentically assess student learning
• create teams for program planning and implementation
• choose from a variety of appropriate teaching models
• provide professional development opportunities.

The thematic units would integrate content from the core academic areas and extensively use four arts areas to support learning. The state content standards and benchmarks in language arts, social studies, science, and math—integrated with the national standards in arts for music, creative movement, visual arts, and drama—would be the starting point for planning. The selected standards would be clearly referenced. Student outcomes would be measured by:

• rubric assessment by students and teacher
• teacher-made tests
• personal reflection by the students
• national norm-referenced tests.

After much discussion and refining of vision, we presented our plan to the Board of Education as a new district program for middle level students that would incorporate a broad range of educational goals.

The Board Gives the Go-Ahead
The Board approved a one-year integrated arts pilot program for two classes of sixth grade students and their teachers who were headed for a restructured middle school the following fall. The superintendent selected a pilot program principal who understood the importance of standards-based, integrated thematic units, teaching teams, collegiality, flexibility within an organization, and the value of community partnerships. A member of the district long-range strategic planning committee and a leader in professional development, the principal had just written a proposal for a Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) grant. The CSRD grant was awarded to the district middle school where the pilot students and teachers would be placed the following year.

The principal overseeing this pilot program recognized that the district strategic planning goals for restructuring the middle schools, the CSRD grant goals, and the pilot program objectives matched. Moreover, the staff's professional development goals were congruent with the pilot program objectives:

• increase achievement for all learners while integrating the curriculum
• form collegial teams to transfer best practices in middle level theory to practice in the classroom and to integrate the arts through thematic instruction
• improve parental and community participation.

To manifest these goals, the pilot program principal spearheaded a team whose members shared the belief that the responsibility for change lies with educators, parents, and community members who come together believing that the effort is worthwhile for their children.

Designing an Arts-Integrated Program
On a hot mid-August day, with water bottles everywhere, volumes of Michigan state curricular standards lay open on the table. Based on our understanding of Glickman (2002), we knew that the most successful schools are those whose staff members share and collaborate. Thus, a team—middle school core, visual arts, physical education, and music teachers; the high school drama teacher; the district's gifted and talented coordinator and the district's fine arts coordinator; the principal; parents; and members of the community—began creating the first arts-integrated thematic unit for the 51 sixth graders in the pilot program.

A teacher-friendly planning framework guided the process that helped meld research-based curriculum models with the theory of multiple intelligences. Student outcomes, areas of integration, focus questions, and key concepts were clearly articulated in the framework. (See Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5; which include some sample concepts for lesson development as well.) Selected standards and benchmarks from the core curriculum and the arts curriculum were referenced and addressed as we developed the thematic units. Higher order thinking skills were always considered in lesson development. Assessment was formative and summative, standardized and authentic. (See Figure 6 and Figure 7 for sample rubrics which are authentic and summative.)

Planning the First Integrated Thematic Unit
After analyzing the state content standards and benchmarks for each core area, the team decided that our first thematic unit would be "Exploring the Universe" because the universe was a concept that lent itself to integration across the disciplines. The theme could be well supported by the arts—music, visual arts, creative movement, and drama—and would provide opportunities for engaging all the intelligences. The team developed a thematic statement containing the student outcomes to guide our planning:

Through the exploration and study of the universe we learn how people can live and work in space; how people, from ancient times to the present, look to the skies to explain natural phenomena; and how the heavens have provided the world's cultures with inspiration for the arts.

As a way of targeting these student outcomes, we composed focus questions:

• How do people live and work in space?
• How have people explained natural phenomena by studying the skies?
• How have people of different cultures demonstrated their interest in space and their understanding of the universe?
• How have the skies inspired people, from ancient times to the present, to express themselves through the arts?

The team designed instruction that was required of all students. In addition, students could choose from a number of alternate activities. (See "Optional" on unit plans, Figure 2 and Figure 4.)

The final unit design was a tapestry of interwoven learning experiences, using all eight of the intelligences to provide an array of situations in which students had the opportunity to learn required content. All students would participate in a culminating event that demonstrated their understanding and mastery of the concepts studied. In the case of the "Exploring the Universe" unit, the culminating event involved multiple simulations of scientific concepts related to space travel and research. For example, students engaged in a simulated docking of the Hubble space telescope without using verbal communication. After a loss of visual orientation, they charted their course with a compass. Appropriately attired and by responding to "virtual" technological prompts to solve problems of working and living in space, they experienced some of the rigors of life in space.

Assessment was project-based and authentic, individual, cooperative, or reflective, as appropriate. (See Figure 6 and Figure 7 for sample rubrics.) A timeline was determined, and each lesson plan was "owned" and eventually implemented by a team member.

A Peek at Our First Planning Session
How did the team create these thematic units? If you had dropped in on the first unit planning meeting, you would have observed team members engaged in a brainstorming session about how to integrate the content standards across the disciplines under the theme exploring the universe.

The art teacher led off, "I know, I will teach a lesson on Van Gogh's work. We'll read the book, Starry Night, then create a crayon resist. That will address three content standards from the National Standards for Arts Education (Consortium of National Arts Education Associations, 1994) while integrating the universe theme with visual arts."

The science teacher piped up, "That's great! We could build a small model of the space shuttle,
using NASA's plans. Then the students can participate in a process drama of the docking of the Hubble, cooperatively and non-verbally."

A parent enthusiastically joined in, "My brother teaches music composition at a university. I'm sure he'd volunteer to come and help the students compose music related to space."

The music teacher exclaimed, "Wonderful! I'll e-mail him and perhaps we could work together. I will teach the students about music used in the movie industry related to space. Also, I will have them make their own instruments to use with their original compositions when your brother visits."

Referencing National Standards for Arts Education in creative movement, the physical education teacher chimed in, "The students could choreograph and perform a routine that interprets the movement of the planets around the sun."

A classroom teacher, with the state language arts benchmarks open before her, added, "We'll read The Little Prince and study the symbolism of the central character living on his own planet."

As the session heated up even more, another classroom teacher referred to math content standards and suggested students calculate weight on different planets. The heat outside was forgotten as a brainstorming synergy flared like wildfire, generating myriad exciting learning experiences to complete the unit design.

Flushed with the initial success of designing the first thematic unit, the team turned to other issues important to program start-up: parental involvement, special student needs, and the role of the larger community. A parent participation model based on skills, expertise, talent, and availability was constructed to coordinate parent volunteer efforts.

Teams worked on designing units throughout the year (using the planning model illustrated in Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5). The principal facilitated the process. She chaired meetings, kept the vision focused, allowed for release time, and handled communication between all participants, parents, and central administration. She scheduled co-teaching time and found space for the many program activities. The principal also provided professional development opportunities and nurtured both team spirit and a school culture receptive to the arts-integrated program. As the pilot year progressed, leadership responsibilities were shared by all team members.

Gratifying Results
As our pilot year unfolded, both students and staff sustained enthusiasm, parents reported increased student interest in attending school. Even growth in student socialization skills was evident. These outcomes resulted from:

• capable leadership
• applying educational research to creative planning
• committed collegial relationships and teaming
• wholehearted parent and community participation.

In addition to a capable building principal, supportive central administrators, and a receptive school board, the teaching staff assumed leadership roles in a variety of ways as needed. For example, teachers and parents networked to bring in guest "instructors." One of the teachers invited a local poet to present a workshop which resulted in students compiling a book of their poems for the unit "Exploring and Influencing the Environment." In another instance, the district's fine arts coordinator managed to locate and convince a community band to provide music at the parent and student program orientation before the school year began. This type of leadership from the entire staff laid the groundwork for individual educators to envision new ways of contributing to the pool of resources needed to fulfill our vision and to implement the arts-integrated thematic units, resulting in increased student engagement and achievement.

Such leadership, shouldered by all team members, led to a wider expression of effective collegial planning. As word leaked out about the initial successes of this program, we found people approaching our doors. Seventh and eighth grade teachers from other district schools heard about the program and asked to be invited to culminating events and then asked to attend the bi-monthly planning sessions. During the summer, as we continued to receive requests by parents to place their children on our waiting list, seventh and eighth grade teachers took the initiative to plan their own units for the next year with the help of the sixth grade teachers.

Unit culminating events drew overwhelming parent support and attendance. At our culminating event for the unit "Exploring and Influencing Our Environment," 100% of our students attended with one or more parents as well as additional family members and friends. We also had close to 100% participation at the other culminating events.

At the end of the year, standardized test results showed encouraging improvement, especially from students with the poorest test records. On the Stanford Achievement Test, a national norm-referenced test, students' achievement scores rose by 15% in reading and 18% in math, compared to the previous school year. Our assessment results were consistent with the research on the benefits of integrating multiple intelligences into curriculum design. The Project on Schools Using Multiple Intelligences Theory (SUMIT) was a three-year investigation of schools using multiple intelligences. For this investigation, educators at 41 schools were asked about how multiple intelligences were implemented in their schools and also about their schools' general make-up with regard to organization, curriculum, and assessment practices. Twenty of the 41 schools had improved standardized test scores, 22 had improvements in discipline, and 25 had improvement with parent participation (Harvard Project Zero, 2000).

The arts-integrated program pilot was a success, and plans were made to expand the program into the newly restructured middle school. Our experience in designing and implementing a program that integrates the arts with the core academic curriculum demonstrates that it is possible to energize teachers to provide instruction that engages students, keeps them excited, and keeps them learning. We had come together to dream of a better way to educate our middle level students and discovered that dreams really can come true.

References

Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. (1989). Turning points: Preparing American youth for the 21st century. New York: Carnegie Corporation.

Chan, T. C., & Petrie, G. F. (1998). The brain learns better in well-designed school environments. Classroom Leadership On-line, 2(3), 1-3. Retrieved April 21, 2002, from http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/classlead/9811/2nov98.html.

Consortium of National Arts Education Associations. (1994). National standards for arts education. Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference.

Fowler, C. (1994). Strategies for success, strong arts, strong schools. Educational Leadership, 52(3), 4-9.

Gardner, H. (1993). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences (10th anniversary ed.). New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic Books.

Glickman, C. (2002). Leadership for learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Harvard Project Zero. (2000). Project SUMIT: Schools using multiple intelligence theory (Outcomes section, para. 1-9). Retrieved May 17, 2004, from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/SUMIT/OUTCOMES.HTM

Hurley, J. C. (2002). Art and human potential. Principal Leadership, 3(4), 25.

Jackson, A. W., & Davis, G. A. (2000). Turning points 2000. New York & Westerville, OH: Teachers College Press & National Middle School Association.

Jensen, E. (1998). Teaching with the brain in mind [Electronic version]. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Retrieved April 21, 2002, from http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/books/jensen98book.html

Marzano, R., Pollock, J. E., & Pickering, D. J. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Michigan Department of Education. (1998). Michigan curriculum framework. Retrieved July 14, 2004, from http://www.michigan.gov/documents/ MichiganCurriculumFramework_8172_7.pdf

Parkay, F. W., & Stanford B. H. (2004). Becoming a teacher (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education.

Sylwester, R. (1998). Art for the brain's sake. Educational Leadership, 56(3), 31-35.

Karen Bolak, a former principal, is an assistant professor of teacher development and education studies at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan. E-mail: bolak@oakland.edu

Donna Bialach, a former district gifted and talented coordinator, is a lecturer in teacher development and education studies at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, and an instructor in Walden University’s master of science in education program, Minneapolis, Minnesota. E-mail: dbialach@waldenu.edu

Maureen Dunphy, a former school board member, is a special lecturer in the Department of English, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan. E-mail: dunphy@oakland.edu