Ocean Underwater Scene Dioramas of First Graders with Submarine Porthole Views

Ecology education of the younger generations is vital for worldwide change of people’s attitudes toward nature warranted by the current global ecological crisis. Yet, this goal needs to be addressed through age-appropriate activities that are educational and engaging. This practical article focuses on dioramas of ocean reef life made by first graders. This arts-integrated project served two main purposes: 1) education of primary students about ocean ecology and helping students realize their roles in saving nature 2) increasing student science content knowledge. Additionally, several other benefits of making dioramas emerged during this project, including highly creative student products, genuine interest in the topic of ocean ecology, and heightened levels of motivation and concentration displayed by the students during the project

Art for El Salvador

This project will showcase the work that the student organization, Art for El Salvador has done the past few years in conjunction with the non-profit organization, Art for El Salvador. The organization was brought to UNI by Maria and Niah Howard, both graduates of UNI. A student organization was formed and together the two groups have made and sold art to help provide educational needs to impoverished rural communities in El Salvador. Through the hard work of many people, Art for El Salvador actually provided the resources for a community of Casseria Mediagua to build a new middle school. The school makes it possible for the students to continue their education past 6th grade, which is very hard to accomplish in rural El Salvador due to unsafe conditions and needing to travel long distances from home communities . We have just celebrated the first graduates and they will attend high school in the fall

Shadow Puppet Plays in Elementary Science Methods Class Help Preservice Teachers Learn about Minority Scientists

This practical article describes an arts-integrated project with engineering design and science concepts from the Next Generation Science Standards, art principles from the National Arts Standards, as well as ideas under the theme of “Culture” from the National Council for the Social Studies Standards. Preservice teachers in an undergraduate science methods class researched the background, life, and accomplishments of a minority scientist by reading books and articles about the person. They created a script to present the experiences and contributions of the scientist to other preservice teachers and, eventually, elementary students. Shadow puppets were constructed out of cardboard to portray different aspects of the scientist’s setting and work communicated by the script. The preservice teachers performed the shadow puppet shows for their peers, receiving feedback. Examples of the puppet show scripts and models of puppets are included in this article

Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Still-Life Paintings of Crystals with Artist-Focused Compared to Science-Focused Introductions

This experimental study was undertaken with preservice teachers to test whether the use of science integration into arts education increases demonstration of science details and creative features in artwork. Two conditions were created: arts-focused and science-focused; gouache still-life paintings were produced and analyzed, and an attitude survey was completed. The results suggested that science integration into visual arts classes increased creativity for the arts-focused condition and increased science concepts in the science-focused condition. Participants in both conditions reported positive attitudes, specifically, high levels of enjoyment, alluded to lack of experience with arts and creative projects, and expressed desire for more exposure because of emotional benefits

Creativity and Thinking Skills Integrated into a Science Enrichment Unit on Flooding

Floods that used to happen every hundred years are now occurring more frequently. Human influences on the damage inflicted by flooding need to be well-understood by future voters and property-owners. Therefore, the timely topic of flooding was used as the focus of a special multi-grade enrichment short course taught by two university education professors for 26 preK-8th grade high-achieving and creative students. During the course, students listened to guest speakers (city council member, meteorologist, and environmentalist), watched two flood-related videos, read books on floods, viewed electronic presentations related to dams and recent floods, discussed causes, effects, and mitigations of flooding, and devised creative games from recycled materials to teach peers about flood concepts. The de Bono CoRT Breadth thinking skill system was used to organize many of the course activities. The flood lesson activities were relevant to these students who had experienced a flood of the city’s river the previous year and challenged students more than their typical classroom activities, an important finding considering that many gifted students drop out of school because of irrelevant and non-demanding class work. The course broadened students’ knowledge of floods and assisted them in thinking beyond the immediate situation

Arts Integration Literacy Night at Irving Elementary School

This project will showcase the community engagement work the students in ELEMECML 4123-03 ( Methods of Teaching Visual and Performing Arts Integration in the Elementary Classroom) did in partnership with Irving Elementary School. The students taught arts integration lessons every Thursday for a semester and culminated their work by planning an Arts Integration Literacy Night for the parents and students at Irving Elementary School. The UNI students worked in partnership with Irving teachers to plan interactive arts based activities that helped parents learn a way they could help their children practice their literacy skills

Executive Function Improvement of Students With Adverse Childhood Experiences After an Art-Integration Program.

This paper shares the results of an exploratory study that measured the change in Executive Function (EF) skills of At-Risk third-grade students with varying Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) before and after an Arts-Integration (AI) program. Student EF skills were measured using the Minnesota Executive Function Scale (MEFS) and a statistically significant increase in EF skills was observed in the post-test. In addition, a regression analysis was conducted to determine if students with a high level of ACEs improved at a different rate than students with a low level of ACEs and it was found that the number of ACEs was a significant predictor of improvement on the MEFS.  The article describes why students with high ACEs would likely have EF skill deficiencies, why EF skills are important for success in school, and how using the arts in curricula can help develop EF skills in students