CONNECTING TO THE COMMON CORE

By Juline Chevalier, Curator of Education

As the new academic year begins, the Nasher Education Department staff are excited to get started with another year of tours and programs for K-12 students from Durham and beyond. Last year we welcomed more than 8,000 K-12 students on guided and self-guided tours, and served over 200 teachers in teacher workshops and open-house events. We also served an additional 3,000 students by visiting classrooms with engaging conversations about art from Nasher exhibitions. This is more than double the number of students served by visits to classrooms during the previous year.

At the end of June 2014, we also wrapped up the intense implementation and assessment of a successful program called Words & Pictures. The two-year project was funded by a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with the goal of creating lessons and activities for Kindergarten, First and Second grade students that teach Common Core English Language Arts standards using visual art from the Nasher Museum’s collection. The lessons are available on a free website: wordsandpictures.sites.nasher.duke.edu.

The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Math have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, and so by connecting the lessons to these standards, they are relevant and useful to teachers all over the United States. The lessons are written so that they can be completed with artwork from other museums in states that use the Common Core, thereby increasing our potential connections within the field. The investment in time and energy from other institutions is minimal—they only need to provide Nasher Museum staff with digital images of artwork in their collections. The returns for these museums can be huge, as they will have a ready resource to share with educators, linking English Language Arts Common Core State Standards and artwork from their permanent collection.

Lessons focus on identifying and creating point of view, fact and opinion, and story structure (beginning, middle, end). Students also engage in comparing, contrasting and supporting interpretation with evidence through carefully observing and discussing artwork; reading and discussing related books; and written activities. The lessons were written by K–2 classroom teachers and elementary art teachers from Durham Public Schools

The Words & Pictures project has also invited students to visit the Nasher Museum. Guided tours reinforce concepts and skills covered in lessons and allow students to see the actual artworks they had previously viewed only in digital reproductions. On numerous occasions, students excitedly shout, “I’ve seen that before!” as we approach an artwork.

To assess the efficacy of the Words & Pictures lessons compared to non-arts infused lessons we had students complete short written surveys, and a small group was interviewed to evaluate the program. Compared to their control group peers, Words & Pictures students showed a slight increase in the sophistication and detail of their answers about books they read, and they were much better at providing strong evidence to support their interpretations of artwork. Following is a sample of responses by first and second grade students in the Words & Pictures program to the survey question, “Do you think looking at and talking about art helps you with anything at school? If yes, please explain how.”

“When I use art, it gives me more details to my writing.”

“I think yes, because it helps me express and tell other people about how I feel.”

“Because it helps me explain stuff in school, like why you like something.”

We look forward to expanding the website to include artwork from museums across the country.

 

Sections of the article also appeared in the September/October 2014 issue of Museum magazine.

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Photos by J Caldwell

 

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