Arts Integration: An Essential Component of Education

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts defines arts integration as “an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process that connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both.”

How the Arts Benefit Our Students

All children naturally learn by acting, playing, singing, and exploring their own world. When teachers integrate art into the language arts curriculum, they tap into students’ natural learning style and help them apply it to their education. Teachers can use artistic, creative activities to make natural connections to the arts using everyday strategies that make learning come alive.

Easy Ways to Integrate the Arts Into Your Balanced Literacy Program

Children’s literature with an arts theme provides a range of standards-based literacy strategies that promote listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Use these literacy activities in your curriculum:

• Read-alouds
• Shared reading
• Independent reading time

Some of my favorite books for arts integration are:

I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly by Nikki Smith This classic folk song is my all-time favorite. It is a great book to use during shared reading that integrates rhyme and repetition into music. Students can also be introduced to the art forms of watercolor and collage using the book’s illustrations.

Grade level Equivalent: 1.9

Lexile^® Measure: AD250L

Vincent’s Colors by Victoria Charles Written to educate readers about the artist Vincent van Gogh, this book will help students develop phonemic awareness through descriptions arranged in rhyme. The descriptive words used in context lend opportunities for the teacher to develop mini-lessons for writing using descriptive language.

Reading Level:1.7

The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds This is the story of a little girl who feels she can’t express herself in an artistic form. The book will provide teachers with an opportunity to demonstrate how students—including English Learners—can clarify and communicate thoughts, ideas, and feelings through drawing. It is a fable about the creative spirit that is alive in all of us.

Grade level Equivalent: 2.1

Lexile^® Measure: AD500L

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg In this chapter book that students can read during independent reading time, we discover that protagonist Claudia is bored, so she runs away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Teachers can have students view The Met’s website and research the museum’s works that are mentioned throughout the story, leading into an independent informational writing activity or a group research project.

Grade level Equivalent: 4.7

Lexile^® Measure: 700L

Barnyard Dance! by Sandra Boynton This is a fun read-aloud that introduces students to rhyme, instruments, and dance. It is a great way to get students up and moving after enjoying the book. They can role-play as the characters when the book is reread to them. This provides an opportunity for teachers to engage students in conversation based on character traits and character actions.

Reading Level:1.3

Lexile^® Measure: 400L

Reader’s Theater Available for Grades 1 through 6, these books provide an excellent way for students to demonstrate their comprehension of complex text through acting. Benchmark Literacy’s whole-group instruction block uses leveled text in every three-week unit to engage students’ interest and develop comprehension.

It’s impossible to underestimate the importance of the arts in education, and we’re here to help you include them easily in your lessons. For more information and ideas, please check out the sites below.

Additional Resources:

Education Closet offers valuable information, including professional development, lesson plans, and resources for teachers to reference when integrating the arts into their curriculum.

Edutopia, a site dedicated to ‘showcasing what works in education,’ offers many best-practices ideas for arts integration in the classroom.

You can find us at booth #3537.

Come check out Benchmark Education’s latest digital (and print) products, or join us for a free demonstration of our interactive learning portal, Benchmark Universe! #ISTE2016

Calling all Benchmark Universe users! We’ve created a Quick Start Guide. While it will come in handy for new BU users especially, seasoned pros will also benefit from its easy reference style.

Inside, you’ll learn how to:

• Navigate your Benchmark Universe dashboard
• Create and manage student groups
• Access, launch, customize, and share your digital resources
• Locate teacher support
• Create assignments

AND

• View students’ close reading notes

Take a look! And if you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at info@benchmarkeducation.com.

To download a copy of this guide, click here.

A New World of Technology—in Classrooms, Around the Globe

The clock is ticking.

Everyone, from Kindergarten teachers to high school teachers, hears it­—loud and clear. In this era of markedly different standards, shifts in core content, and high stakes tests, the bar for our students and for us as educators is significantly higher. The goal: ensuring students are college ready, career ready, AND new world ready.

So, how do we best prepare our students for college?

Our students have grown up in a brave, new, digital world—so we look first to technology as a key part of the answer.

Why Use Technology in the Classroom?

Harnessing the power of technology by truly integrating it into our curriculum enhances instruction, enriches guided practice, and ignites independent practice. With digital gradual release, students practice and apply skills necessary for literacy in a 2.0 world.

Technology holds huge promise, but has it delivered?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gets it entirely right, going directly to teachers to define the promise of technology. Check out Teachers Know Best for more information.

How Do We Use Technology in the Classroom to Maximize Learning?

Buried under an avalanche of edtech resources, where do we start with tech-integrated instructional planning?

Dr. Matthew Koehler and Punya Mishra, researchers at Michigan State University, developed TPACK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. TPACK is a framework for technology integration to guide planning and implementing best practices while meeting standards. Want more information? Check out this aptly titled video: TPACK in 2 Minutes.

Consider the crossroads of technology: we must intentionally partner devices, hardware, and software with content (the “what”) and pedagogy (the “how”) of education.

From there, all we need to do is find a useful technology product—or products—that purposefully use this approach to assist educators with literacy instruction. THIS is the promised land of college-readiness for all students.

To get started, we’ve outlined some resources below.

Useful Resources to Integrate Technology Into Your Curriculum

For literacy, Benchmark Universe delivers this tech partnership, engineered with pre-curated content, including highly customizable ePosters and eBooks to greatly increase student engagement and motivation.

How will this next generation learn? Sal Khan, among the earliest edtech innovators, figured out a powerful piece of the answer, focused on the powerful potential for disseminating information via video. For more information, I recommend The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined.

Continuing this same theme, addressing the needs of this generation, Benchmark Universe makes it easy and efficient for users to embed YouTube videos (and other multimedia!). This means targeted background building like never before, conducting research, webquests or other lesson extensions— right at the point of use for you, instructionally, or at the point of need for your students.

ePosters provide short, sharply written mentor texts designed specifically for your think-alouds to model navigating grade-level complex text. They are built to mentor students through strategic thinking at two levels: metacognitive and text-dependent. With this content knowledge base and strategy focus, your students are ready to move into precisely leveled texts for guided and independent practice.

Wouldn’t it make sense to provide filters with leveling systems, by letter and number level or Lexile AND be able to match students with the exact practice they need by filtering for text-dependent comprehension strategies? Yes! Benchmark Education thought so, too. So, these exact filters make it efficient to locate and assign eBooks in a pedagogy-aligned website.

Want to know how your students are actually processing texts—the holy grail of embedded formative assessment? Benchmark Universe allows you to do exactly that, bringing close reading to life with eBooks designed so students can take close reading notes on each page, even pages we add, so they can extend to webquests, virtual fieldtrips via hyperlinks, and much more.

Technology offers a universe of unlimited possibilities. But this promise is best delivered when content and pedagogy drive technology integration to prepare our students for college, and to the new world of technology beyond!

“… We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

– Ancient Native American Proverb

Earth Day is becoming more and more important in schools across America—we commonly hear about global warming, endangered and extinct species, disappearing forests, and pollution. As a result, many educators and parents are urging students to find a way to participate.

Want to get involved? For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of Earth-focused activities and resources you can share with students of all ages:

• Composting 101: Show students the differences between compostable and noncompostable foods. Then, take them for a visit to the cafeteria and have them take a look around. How much food is being wasted? How much of that food can be composted? Look into starting a composting program within your school.
• Reuse, Reuse, Reuse: Have your students take a look at what they use every day. How can they reuse those items? Do they use plastic containers with their lunch? Instead of throwing them out, mention that students can wash and reuse those containers in other ways. A lid can become a tray for flowerpots. A plastic bottle can become a vertical garden, chandelier, or even a work of art!
• Recycle Now!: Visit a recycling plant as part of a class field trip. Show students all the new items that are made from recyclable materials. How are they made? What do they become? Which items do students use in a typical day?

Still looking for more ideas?

Celebrate Earth Day 2016 with your students with these Benchmark Education titles, each one echoing the need for greater awareness and consciousness about human behavior and how we can make a positive impact on our fragile environment. You can also consult the official Earth Day Network’s website or ThinkEarth.org for more ideas on how to participate and educate, including an Earth-focused lesson plan!

For Benchmark Education Company’s part, we print all of our catalogs in the U.S.A., using 100% recycled paper, 90% post-consumer waste, and 100% soy ink.

We are so proud of our commitment to the environment that we print the estimated savings of resources in trees, energy, solid waste, water, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions on the back of all of our catalogs—take a look! And, in the meantime, enjoy these wonderful e-books.

Early Explorers:

– It’s Earth Day! Level M/28

Early Connections:

– The Race to Recycle Level G/12

– Where Does Your Garbage Go? Level G/12

– Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Level I/15

– Are We Hurting the Earth? Level I/16

– The Great Green Forest Level I/16

– A Healthy Earth Level K/20

– Environmentally Friendly World Level M/28

Content Connections:

– Celebrating Earth Day Lexile 420L

– Earth’s Water Lexile 490L

– From Pine Tree to Pizza Box Lexile 680L

Text Connections:

– Opinions About Ocean Health Level R/40

Readers’ & Writers’ Genre Workshop:

– Dino-Pals Are Dino-Mite! and Earth Is All the Home We Have Level U/50

– Energy Sources for the 21^st Century Level X/60 (3 persuasive essays)

Reader’s Theater:

– The Earth Day Garden Levels J-L (18-24)

– Return to Earth Levels N-U (30-50) (Excellent references to CFCs and renewable energy)

– John Muir: Our National Parks Levels N-Z (30-90)

Science:

– Earth Lexile 300L

– Water on Earth Lexile 350L

– Discover Ocean Pollution Lexile 330L

– Deforestation and Desertification versions in Level Q/40 and Level V/60

– Discover Oil Spills Lexile 380L

– Oil Spills Lexile 410L

– Ocean Pollution Lexile 450L

– Habitat Rescue Level O/34

– Global Alert Level P/38

– Riches From Earth Level U/50

– Ecological Disasters Level W/60

Prime Science:

– Energy Resources versions in Level R/40 and Level V/60

– Land Biomes versions in Level R/40 and Level W/60

– Climate versions in Level R/40 and Level W/60

– Aquatic Biomes versions in Level R/40 and Level X/60

– Earth’s Hydrosphere versions in Level T/44 and Level Y/70

– Earth’s Freshwater Bodies Level Y/70

– The Nature of Energy Level Z/80

E-Posters:

– Nuclear Energy

– Energy Resources

– Air Pollution

– Ocean Pollution

And here is a helpful image that you can embed into any of the books:

• How Long Things Take to Decompose
• The 8^th Continent of Trash

† Please note: If these titles are missing from your library, they may not be included in your current Benchmark Universe subscription. Contact your rep or e-mail us to learn more about adding new titles to your subscription!

LEXILE^® is a registered trademark of MetaMetrics, Inc., and is registered in the United States and abroad.

“…Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

            Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

–The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe

The American Academy of American Poets introduced April as National Poetry Month in the United States in 1996 and in Canada in 1998 as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry.
Engage and inspire your students with the imagery, musicality, and joviality from the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, Brewster Higley, and Sara Teasdale. Perhaps there is a budding Emily Dickinson or Langston Hughes among your students just yearning for the proper encouragement and instruction. Writing poetry improves cognitive function, may heal emotional pain, may lead to greater self-awareness, and offers a vehicle for students to express themselves. But perhaps you are asking yourself, “How does teaching poetry meet CCSS?”

Here is just a short list of the comprehensive strategies that poetry can address, thanks to a recent EdWeek post:

• Making inferences
• Citing specific textual evidence to support conclusions and answers
• Determining and analyzing the theme of a text
• Analyzing the way ideas develop over the course of a text
• Interpreting words and phrases
• Analyzing connotative and figurative meanings of words
• Analyzing how word choice shapes a text
• Assessing how point of view shapes a text

So if you’re a Benchmark Universe user, we suggest incorporating these timely e-book titles into your classroom activities/lessons/daily plans. Just imagine asking your very attentive class: “Why would the poet choose that title for the poem?” or “What word is most important in this poem?” or “How are the sentences and stanzas connected?”

All of these books are available with audio, so to hear all their delicious linguistic intonation, inflection, and dramatic pauses, just click the PLAY button at the top center of the navigation bar.

– Opinions About Three Victorian-Era Poets: Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Emily Dickinson Level O/34

– The New Colossus Levels N-Y (30-70)

– Analytical Arguments About Poetry: Interpretations of Three Classic Poems Level Y/70

– Haiku, Nine Poems no level

– Cinquain no level

– Limericks no level

– Text Connections Poetry (13 titles) – Book number denotes suggested grade level

E-Poster:

– From the Poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”

Did you know? Some historians believe that William Shakespeare was born and died on the same day in April, April 23^rd.

† Please note: If these titles are missing from your library, they may not be included in your current Benchmark Universe subscription. Contact your rep or e-mail us to learn more about adding new titles to your subscription!

Benchmark Education Company praises the contributions of women who shaped the world we live in today. Let their courage, commitment to excellence, compassion, and irrepressible drive inspire your students to achieve their own greatness.

These remarkable women represent all walks of life: an aviator, a Civil War soldier, a refugee, a novelist, two activists, an abolitionist, two astronauts, four women Supreme Court Justices, two First Ladies, an archaeologist, a Native American guide, a painter, and more.

We encourage you to use Benchmark Universe to share these women’s stories in your classroom activities/lessons/daily plans, and, remember, you can use the edit icon and the wrench tool to add fun facts and links directly into the e-book or onto the e-poster.

Please use the comments section below to add your own ideas!

• Try adding one of Michelle Kwan’s short figure-skating program performances to Michelle Kwan, her biographical e-book, to really bring the content alive.
• Enlighten your students regarding Eleanor Roosevelt many accomplishments- including what she did to be recognized and ranked ninth in the top ten of Gallup’s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.
• Assess your students’ “Making Judgment” comprehension strategy: was Dolley Madison an American hero, or a moderate hoarder? (She didn’t just save the portrait of George Washington; she also saved White House furniture and plates.)

Here are some Benchmark Education titles that will assist with your celebration of women’s accomplishments:

Early Connections:

• Laura Ingalls Wilder, Level F/9
• Ellen Ochoa, Level F/10
• Grandma Moses, Level J/18
• Sacajawea, Level K/20
• Michelle Kwan, Level L/24

Content Connections:

• Women of Courage (Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart)

Text Connections:

• Rise to the Challenge: Memoir of an Astronaut (Dr. Rhea Seddon), Level Q/40
• Mayhoua Moua: A Real-Life Story from a Hmong Story Cloth, Level Q/40

Readers’ & Writers’ Genre Workshop:

• Marian Anderson and Frida Kahlo, Level R/40
• Women Justices of the Supreme Court, Level R/40
• Sarah Emma Edmonds: Union Solider And Spy and Clara Barton: Battlefield Nurse
  (T/44)

Reader’s Theater:

• Cry Out Liberty, Sarah Winnemucca, Indian Princess, Level F-M (9-28)
• My Name Is Deborah Samson, Level N-X (30-60)

Navigators:

People Who Changed the World:

• Women Who Dared (Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and Eleanor Roosevelt), Level Q/40

E-Posters:

• Women in the Medieval Period: Eleanor of Aquitaine
• Dolley Takes Action (Dolley Madison)
• Marian Wright Edelman
• Grandma Moses
• Mary Leakey
• Rachel Carson

Please Note: If these titles are missing from your Library, it may be because they re not included in your current Benchmark Universe subscription. Contact your rep, or e-mail us to learn more about adding new titles to your subscription!

*The above photograph is of Rachel Carson, notable biologist and author of Silent Spring, an influential work in the history of science.

What’s a collaborative learning community? We hear about them all the time—in fact, we’ve probably heard the term so often that it has lost some of its potency. However, the value of collaborative learning communities cannot be underestimated within a classroom environment.

It may seem obvious—in fact, we often forget this minor detail—but the basis for such a community is collaboration: where a group works together toward similar goals. In this case, it’s learning. Students discover the skills and behaviors that benefit their community and become partners in helping each other learn these skills, so that everyone can learn more effectively. We know that these skills will transfer to the world outside their classroom and help pave students’ way for a successful future in society.

It’s up to you to establish such an environment within your classroom’s walls—and make it last. We’ve included some tips to help you out.

Classroom Courtesy

Create a set of “Classroom Courtesy Rules” with the students and enforce them. These rules might include:

• Saying please and thank you
• Using kind words and respect toward each other
• Avoiding sarcasm and other disrespectful behaviors

If teasing and disrespectful and unkind behavior occur between classmates, stop such behavior immediately—you’ll send the message that it will not be tolerated. Once students realize that your classroom is a safe place, their minds are free to learn.

Morning Meeting

Use class-building activities and class meetings to promote a sense of community between your students. During class meetings, provide students with the opportunity to give and receive compliments and appreciation. If your students are struggling with cooperation or courtesy in your classroom, give them the opportunity to solve problems through discussion and brainstorming of possible solutions as a group.

Class meetings follow the following format:

1. Compliments and appreciation
2. Follow-up on prior solutions
3. Agenda items
   a. Share feelings while others listen
   b. Discuss without fixing
   c. Ask for problem-solving help
4. Future plans

(Nelsen, Lott, and Glenn, Positive Discipline in the Classroom)

With common courtesy, class building, and class meetings as an integral part of your day, you will see the relationships among your students grow. They will become more positive and supportive of one another once they realize how good it feels to give and receive praise for doing a good job! You will set the stage for creating a collaborative learning community—and it will last well beyond this school year.

If you’re new to using BU, here are three essential features that are quick to master and easy to utilize in your daily lessons.

1. Create Bookshelves

The Bookshelf is a simple and extremely beneficial feature of BU. On the right side of the BU Library interface, there is a blue box labeled “Add New Bookshelf.” Click on the yellow “plus” button to create a name for your new Bookshelf. There are two rapid ways of adding materials to your Bookshelf. One method is dragging the product across the screen into the Bookshelf box. Another method is clicking on the product’s “gear” icon, which will prompt an “Add to Bookshelf” option. Now, all of your materials will be quickly organized, which is fantastic for viewing, customizing, and using at your convenience.

2. Add New Assignments

Want a super fast way of distributing online tasks to your classroom? Try the Assignments feature. From your Library, click the “Assignments” button and type a name for your new assignment. You can then begin adding assessments, eBooks, and ePosters. Gathering materials is exactly like picking products for your Bookshelf. Simply click on the gear icon on the book jacket thumbnail or drag the entire product to the right. You’ll also see a message that reads “Drag & drop resources here.”

The Assignments sidebar is interactive and allows you to send instruction notes and to quickly check the status of assigned tasks. Clicking the “Start Date” and “Due Date” buttons will also launch a handy calendar, perfect for choosing dates easily.

3. Analyze Reports*

*Note: You’ll need a subscription to one of Benchmark Education’s online assessment products to access this feature. Click here to find out more.

After an assignment is issued, it’s time to observe your students’ scores. On the Reports page, drag your assignment to the dashboard to discover your students’ statistics and test results. The “Display Student Results” button will list completed tests, along with each student’s test score.

Toward the bottom of the screen, click on “Classes” to uncover more assignment data. In just a few mouse clicks, you can rapidly toggle through correct and incorrect questions, standards, topics, skills, and students’ test percentages. Keeping a copy of the reports is a breeze! You can either print the report or export the data as a digital file.

We hope these tips help you get started quickly with Benchmark Universe. If you discover any clever tricks, please leave a comment and share your user experience with your fellow teachers!

Inspiration for technology integration comes from many diverse places: a great app suggested by your colleague, a student who shows you a favorite site, the blogs you read, online versions of newspapers you love, professional organizations, and our daily lives.

How do we make our technology integration decisions? Who’s got the best recipe?

Ask the experts and it comes as no surprise: there is no single, right recipe, no “secret sauce” for technology integration. That said, we can build a roadmap, a lesson template to use again and again.

To start, let’s ask educators like yourself, who contribute to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual report, Teachers Know Best.

The overarching principle outlined in this report is that technology is an “accelerator of gains in education,” supporting the teacher and increasing student learning. In other words, technology is a tool to enhance effectiveness of instruction.

Based on that principle, we can start to build our roadmap.

1. Start with content, guided by standards for each content area we teach.
2. Consider the pedagogy and the instructional tools we have to execute best practices. Remember, gradual release and teaching for transfer are two key examples that cross the curriculum.
3. Bring in the technology into the planning! Think about your devices and applications, their features and functions. Which ones could be used to best support teaching, learning, and practice?

Sounding familiar? It may be!

What I’ve just walked you through is a model of technology-integrated instruction, a lesson planning framework, developed by Dr. Matthew J. Koehler and Punya Mishra at Michigan State University. They use the knowledge strands of content, pedagogy, and technology to find the most advantageous use of technology.

Check out this video, TPACK in 2 Minutes. As you can see, TPACK is agile enough for any teacher, any grade level, any instructional setting; AND it keeps the focus on instruction, with technology as a tool to accomplish our objectives better, more efficiently, and completely more engaging as we meet students’ needs.

Some have compared technology-integrated instruction to an artist layering paint on canvas. Technology. Pedagogy. Content Knowledge. The context of you and your students completes the picture.

Here’s an example I’ve used. Give it a try. You’ll find yourself coming back to this template again and again!