Since Art Partners is a preservice fieldwork program for college students majoring in art education, lessons are conceived and written with teacher training needs in mind. This means that lessons conform to current guidelines for state and national learning standards for the arts. Art Partners takes a holistic approach to serving children and teens with special learning needs, therefore, lessons will also reflect established educational and developmental goals and objectives for these students. Although not necessarily stated in each lesson plan, there are certain goals that are a given in every lesson with every class we teach:
- To increase students' awareness of and appreciation for diverse works of art
- To help students' develop expressive language skills, especially descriptive language
- To help students' develop ability to think and behave in aesthetically thoughtful ways
- To help students' increase self-confidence and self-esteem through acquiring competencies in art- making knowledge and skill.
- To help students' achieve greater emotional/social intelligence
To assist with the latter three goals, we have found it useful to establish a "philosophy" and a set of behaviors with the children that we introduce at the beginning of the year and reinforce continuously throughout every lesson. We are careful to repeat the same terms and phrases we start out with. The two ways of thinking and behaving that we share with the children are called:
The Three A's and The Three C's:
The Three A's are the three main things we will learn about through Art Partners: Artworks, Artists (or artmakers), and Artmaking. The children are told from the start that they will be artmakers, and they are told what this means in terms of their behaviors: artmakers (or artists) think carefully about what there are doing…they take chances, they experiment and are not afraid to try new things; when something goes wrong, they do not quit, they learn something useful from a mistake and they keep going.
The Three C's are like a code of behavior for us to follow, and they tell us three important things to strive for: Control, Caring, Competence. We will control our selves, our behaviors, our art tools, and the materials we use. We will be careful about what we do and not rush through things without thinking. We are Art Partners and we will care about each other and show that caring every day, students and teachers alike. We will learn to be good at something; we will become competent.
Although goals are written specific to the unit/lesson, please note that for our purposes and for fulfilling special education requirements, goals are long-term and they reflect children's IEPs where applicable. Performance objectives are written to be measurable and observable and support the stated goals. Please adapt these and any other part of the lessons to meet your needs and those of your students.
The following links will take you to the curriculum currently being taught at our elementary and high school sites. The material contained in each link is organized into thematic units of study, each containing 8-10 related lessons.
