Andrew Weed

Dr. Dredger
READ 420
21 September, 2014
Teaching Literacy through the Arts Chapter 1 Response
Incorporating the arts into education is crucial for motivating students to learn for many
reasons. It brings the content being taught to life. It helps students relate to the content. It can
be formatted for most lesson plans. To take the arts out of education is to take the passion for
learning out of the students.
Imagine a teacher planning a lesson for students to read and understand the content of
Shakespeares Midsummer Nights Dream. From my experience as a student, the teacher has
almost always had us pick a character and read the dialogue aloud in class. This helped bring the
characters to life in order to give us a better understanding of the content. Perhaps we could
have related to the content better if we physically acted out the parts, as well as reading the
dialogue. This is not the only lesson that the arts could be incorporated into. Tying music,
visual art, poetry, theatre, etc. into lessons of any subject is possible. History lessons would be
empty without these, English lessons would be lackluster, Science would be black and white, and
Math would be dreadfully dull.
Every teacher should take the responsibility to at least try to motivate their students to get
into the content being taught. In order for a student to learn, truly learn, there must be some sort
of passion for the subject. For many students, this passion is not present without some sort of
artistic aid to lessons, whether it be aural, visual, physical, or oral.