Findings: How We Sould Teach

Through our research with this project, we concluded that art vocabulary can be taught effectively in a variety of ways. First of all, here are some activities which teach art vocab in written form:

• Written artist statement: Students must use the vocabulary covered in class in a written artist statement
• Written words on the board: teacher writes the words to be covered in class on the board, then goes through each one in detail
• Research paper: Students must research a particular artist dealing with an art component, such as assemblage, armatures, or juxtaposition
• Think/pair share activity: students jot down notes on cards, paraphrasing what a partner says about their artwork
• Illustrating a book: Students use art vocab to make their own illustrated book
• Keep a sketchbook/journal: in their own drawings, students can identify elements and principles of art and write them out
• Making elements/principles posters: Students can make their own posters representing the elements and principles of design, using imagery to convey the vocabulary

These activities reflect some of the key elements that we found to be the most effective methods of vocabulary instruction:

• Making cross-curricular connections
• Active student Participation
• Access to multiple representations of words
• Group/pair work
• Student centered curriculum
• Making curriculum culturally relevant
• Art Critiques (see critiques posting)
  

Using just one of these methods to teach art vocabulary by itself is not as affective as using multiple methods. Using multiple methods does two things: it reaches multiple learning styles as well as reinforcing students' learning by having students apply their learning.

We also concluded that students need to use the vocabulary that is taught to them repeatedly and in multiple ways or students do not really learn it. A really good activity for having students use their vocabulary is having Art Critiques. This will be talked about in it's own posting.