TETAC Guidelines for Arts-Centered Instructional Units

Instruction/Pedagogy
Instruction/Pedagogy refers to the ways teachers construct and shape the learning environment, the experience of learning, and the order of learning activities. Teachers must provide paths to substantive learning and help students make connections to real life. They must reference new skills and concepts in art and advise students of assessment expectations. They must guide discussions and individual inquiry and provide a variety of learning activities that help students arrive at an understanding of the enduring questions.

Criteria		Explanation		Examples
1. Activities and questions provide substantive engagement for students.		Activities and questions yield multiple answers and solutions. Activities and questions lead students to developing their own questions and understandings. Activities and questions can be explored again and again		Evidence of substantive engagement includes: explaining interpreting comparing evaluating with evidence and reasons making meaningful connections synthesizing finding evidence finding examples finding new perspectives
2. Connections to prior knowledge and skills and real life situations are provided.		Meaningful connections to real life situations will engage students more fully.		After exploring Commedia dell'Arte, a medieval theatrical form, students study contemporary sitcoms to compare plot formulas, stock characters, and character lazzi. Students compare a traditional band performance of the Star Spangled Banner like those they listen to before a sports event with Jimi Hendrix's rock-n-roll arrangement for electric guitar to discuss how the meaning of the music changes from one arrangement to the other.
3. There are assessment expectations for students.		Students are informed of assessment criteria/expectations in the initial stages of instruction.		Criteria are posted and discussed at the beginning of the unit/lesson. Sample criteria for a written judgment of an artwork might be: students make judgments supported with persuasive evidence.
4. Opportunities are provided for practice of new skills and concepts.		Ample time is provided for students to practice prior to working on a final product.		sketchbooks rehearsals
5. There are opportunities for students to ask questions.		Inquiry is welcomed and students need to be taught how to ask questions so that they may: generate their own questions. guide their own investigations.		Research-based repertoire of learning and teaching strategies. Questioning strategies. Reciprocal teaching strategies. Structured reading.
6. There are opportunities for student-directed discussion.		Students need to be provided with strategies for engaging in discussion and opportunities to practice. Students are given questions that initiate and sustain substantive discussions. Students are given tools/guides for focusing and/or evaluating their discussions.		Some discussion strategies: how to ask clarifying questions. how to respond to the points of others. how to actively listen.
7. A variety of learning activities allow students to make individual and collaborative substantive contributions to the group effort.		In the course of a unit, students work as individuals and in groups using a variety of strategies, resources, and materials.		In the unit The Commentary Islands, students work both individually and within small collaborative groups.
8. There are opportunities provided for student self-reflection and metacognition.		Students have models of and opportunities for thinking, talking, and writing about their own thinking. Metacognition is thinking about thinking.		The teacher shares own written response to an artwork and then shares a reflection on his/her own thinking in writing that response.Students articulate on the choices they made and why they made them in producing artwork.
9. There are opportunities for critical thinking.		Students need to be given instruction in critical thinking strategies; e.g. analysis, problem solving, and evaluation.		The teacher demonstrates the steps in a process for problem solving before asking students to apply the process to create a timeline dealing with social context.
10. There is an audience for student work and responses.		Peers, parents, and community as audiences add relevance to student work, increase engagement, and help students make connections to life beyond the classroom.		exhibitions and/or presentations in the school or community. peer exchange. online exhibitions and exchanges. newspaper articles student letters to the editor
11. Materials are appropriate for student developmental levels.		Reading levels, concept levels, tools and materials are appropriate.		Older students might do independent research online and then design their own art projects. Younger students might have assigned books (readings) and follow written directions for an art assignment.