Visual and Performing Arts

Differentiated instruction through the lens of visual and performing arts

Visual and performing arts education should provide all students with opportunities to advance artistically and cognitively, develop self-expression and self-confidence, and experience accomplishment. Instruction in each of the arts disciplines provides experiences and avenues for student learning and ways to meet the needs of students with diverse learning styles and abilities. In the visual arts, where most production is individualized, different learning styles can be accommodated. In the performing arts, the use of ensembles provides opportunities for students of varied ages and expertise to succeed and learn from each other. The use of a variety of teaching strategies (for example, flexible grouping of students) provides opportunities for everyone to succeed. All students should be encouraged to participate in dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts as performers and as members of the audience.

What does differentiation look like in a visual and performing arts classroom?

Teachers employ a variety of methods to differentiate instruction in the arts; for example, by offering students multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning:

• Selected response items: Multiple choice, true-false, matching, enhanced choice
• Brief constructed responses: Fill in the blanks (words, phrases); write short answers (sentences, paragraphs); label a diagram or visual representation (web, concept map, flowchart, graph or table, illustration)
• Products: Produce an essay, research paper, log or journal, report, story or play, exhibit, project, artwork, model, dance, video or audiotape, or a portfolio
• Performances: Make an oral presentation, dance, sing or play an instrument, offer a demonstration, dramatic reading enactment, debate, recital, teach a lesson
• Process-focused: Perform oral questioning, an observation, interview, conference, process description or demonstration, think aloud, write a learning log

Arts instruction should be modified to encourage the successful participation of students with disabilities. The advent of theatre for the deaf, wheelchair dance, museum tours for the visually impaired, and access by touch to musical sounds makes the arts more accessible. Special education staff can collaborate with teachers to plan, suggest, and recommend modification.

Sample lesson

Literary Response and Analysis: Tiered Activity - Grade 2
This interdisciplinary lesson addresses Visual and Performing Arts content standards in Artistic Perception: Theatre. It matches a version of the activities to the learning needs of each student. Evaluation is likewise differentiated to identified groups of students.

Standards resources

California Department of Education California Content Standards
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/index.asp (outside link)
Content standards define the knowledge, concepts, and skills each student should acquire at each grade level.

California Department of Education Curriculum Frameworks
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/allfwks.asp (outside link)
Each of the frameworks outlines how instructional programs can be directed to meet the needs of providing students Universal Access.