Arts Curriculum Framework
THE PRACTICE OF CREATING
Republished in this protected area for the purpose of curriculum development.
Author: Massachusetts Department of Education, HTML Template for Documents
Date: October 17, 1995
URL: http://info.doe.mass.edu/
Arts
Content
Experience in the creative process is essential for all learners. In the
arts, this process involves solving problems with skill and imagination,
discovering new questions, and producing new ideas, objects, or interpretations
of existing works. Learning in, about, and through the arts develops each
learner's capacity to make meaning from experience, respond to creativity, and
contribute to society.
Skillful teachers of the arts are conscious of how they build arts curriculum,
instruction, and assessments to reflect the Core Concept by combining
the framework's three Strands into all classroom work. In this
framework, Arts Content is represented by Strands and Learning
Standards.
Creating and Performing
- Students will use the arts to express ideas, emotions, and beliefs.
- Students will acquire and apply essential skills and literacy unique to
each art form.
Thinking and Responding
- Students will use imaginative and reflective thinking during all phases of
creating and performing.
- Students will use analytical and critical thinking to respond to works of
art.
Connecting and Contributing
- Students will investigate the cultural and historical contexts of the
arts.
- Students will integrate the arts and make connections among the arts and
other disciplines.
- Students will use technology in order to create, perform, and conduct
research in the arts.
- Students will participate in the community'scultural and artistic life.
Learning Standards define what each and every student should know and be
able to do in each content area. The Massachusetts Learning Standards have been
designed with three purposes in mind:
- to acknowledge the importance of both the content and the
skills students learn in each disciple;
- to help teachers create classroom assessments;
- to be used as the basis for a statewide assessment of student learning
at grades four, eight, and ten.
Students may require support or adaptations to achieve these standards, and
teachers and families are urged to consult and apply the "Strategies for
Including All Learners" listed in Chapter Two, "Lifelong Learning, Teaching,
and Assessment."
The Learning Standards are also applicable to the thousands of adult
learners enrolled in adult basic education centers throughout Massachusetts.
Adult educators are strongly encouraged to implement then and adapt them
according to the literacy and experiential levels of their students.
In the Arts Framework, Essential Questions are included to suggest the
dimensions of lifelong inquiry and learning in the arts. How It Looks in
the Classroom represents a sampling of extended projects and units in
which students address essential questions in each Learning Standard.