DRAFT Preface: Writing Across the Curriculum – Arts

Writing: An Important Element in Arts Learning

Teachers of the arts are faced with the task of assisting students in the development of important multimodal knowledge, concepts, and skills. The knowledge, concepts, and skills learned in the arts and other classes will ultimately enable students to become creative, contributing members of their local and global communities.

Effective instructional strategies are always sought after and writing strategies can be useful for teachers of the arts from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Well designed strategies such as the ones demonstrated in this online document, can engage students as critical thinkers who have the ability to integrate knowledge from a variety of topics,disciplines and media and re-present this knowledge through a variety of modes.

This online document was created as a sample of writing across the curriculum strategies which can be applied to arts classrooms. They include strategies to assist students in: xxxxxxxxx.

While these strategies will assist students in becoming better writers, the main focus of these strategies is to assist students in a deeper understanding of the arts. The importance of these strategies is that they promote deep understanding of the knowledge, content, and skills of the arts discipline being taught.

Each strategy includes a quick definition of the strategy and what it does. In addition, each page has instructions on how to implement the strategy and an example of how it could be used in the arts classroom. This online guide is not exhaustive. Each of the strategies included can be investigated further by interested teachers. All of the Strategies have been researched and found effective.

It is our hope that teachers of the arts in grades K to 12 will give careful consideration to each of these proven strategies, and add them to their repertoire of effective instructional strategies.