Learning Styles and Arts Integration

In the photos above, Mr. Howell discusses the instant bar charts that were created from inventory results of workshop participants using different colored sticky notes.

On Tuesday, April 7th, John Howell and Ann Jones from Casey Elementary, Susan Womack of Parents for Public Schools of Greater Jackson, and I as a graduate of the Parent Leadership Institute facilitated a workshop for district Ask4MoreArts teachers about Learning Styles and Arts Integration. Two sessions were offered-- one for lower elementary teachers and one for upper elementary teachers. The workshop used arts integration techniques to explore learning styles. Teachers who attended the workshop may, in turn, share this information, lessons, and techniques with colleagues, students, and parents in their schools.

The learning styles workshop is based upon a session in the curriculum for the Parent Leadership Institute. After completing the Institute in 2007, I co-facilitated a workshop for parents at Casey and at Oak Forest Elementary with Venetia Miller, another PLI graduate and Oak Forest parent. We thought this information was extremely relevant to our children's elementary schools because of their participation in the Ask4MoreArts program.

Howard Gardner's work on learning styles or multiple intelligences is a theory of education that can be used to explain why arts integrated learning works. Children learn through dancing, singing, playing, painting, creating, movement, pretending, writing, growing plants in gardens, and a host of other ways. The theory of learning styles submits that everyone has unique ways in which they learn best and in which they may be challenged to grow. A school that uses the arts to teach core academic subjects such as reading, writing, math, social studies, and science will reach more children to help them succeed because more styles of learning are nurtured and encouraged.

Under the leadership of Leslie Coleman, principal of Casey Elementary, all teachers and students at Casey took a learning styles inventory based on the work of Howard Gardner at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year. Every classroom created visual displays of their learning styles, shared this information with parents, and used this information to group students in different ways for learning.

In the photos below, teachers shared representations of their personal learning styles profiles with each other. With art supplies available in the meeting room and an encouragement to let each representation emanate from their dominant learning style, teachers let their creative juices flow! Some teachers wrote poems or made creative bar charts, picture displays, or 3-dimensional objects. One teacher who scored highest as a musical learner sang her results using the notes on a scale to represent her highest to lowest scores.

Throughout the workshop, teachers asked probing questions and discussed real-life, classroom situations in which students learn differently. With video footage of Mrs. Kimble's class using movement, rap, poetry, and dance to represent ocean creatures, Mr. Howell and Ms. Jones shared how the second grade teachers at Casey used learning styles to group students during their rich study of the ocean that also resulted in the 2nd grade PTA performance.

During the workshop, I loved watching the faces of teachers light up as they shared their stories with each other. Learning about learning styles is empowering for everyone-- students, parents, administrators, and teachers!

If you would like to take an online multiple intelligences inventory, please see this site from BGFL.

If you are interested in learning more about Parents for Public Schools, Ask4MoreArts, or the Parent Leadership Institute, please call the PPS office at 601-969-6015.