Using simple, easy-to-follow instructions, supported throughout with clear diagrams and examples of children's work, Paul Johnson demonstrates how scores of different book forms can be made from a single sheet of paper.

Accessible and hands-on yet grounded in research, this book addresses the "whats," "whys," and "how-tos" of integrating literacy instruction and the arts in grades K-8. Even teachers without any arts background will gain the skills they need to bring music, drama, visual arts, and dance into their classrooms. Provided are a wealth of specific resources and activities that other teachers have successfully used to build students' oral language, concepts of print, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing, while also promoting creativity and self-expression. Special features include reproducible worksheets and checklists for developing, evaluating, and implementing arts-related lesson plans.

This book explores the many dialogues that exist between the arts and literacy. It shows how the arts are inherently multimodal and therefore interface regularly with literate practice in learning and teaching contexts. It asks the questions: What does literacy look like in the arts? And what does it mean to be arts literate? It explores what is important to know and do in the arts and also what literacies are engaged in, through the journey to becoming an artist. The arts for the purpose of this volume include five art forms: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts. The book provides a more productive exploration of the arts-literacy relationship. It acknowledges that both the arts and literacy are open-textured concepts and notes how they accommodate each other, learn about, and from each other and can potentially make education ‘better’. It is when the two stretch each other that we see an educationally productive dialogic relationship emerge.

This book extends traditional language arts content by offering multiple communicative channels for expressing, representing, and responding to ideas. The book equips teachers with ways to maximize children's creative potential and critical literacy through activities involving “the arts” (visual arts, music, dance, drama and film including video, TV and computer technology). The author provides thorough coverage of literacy products, process strategies, procedures, and resources not typically found in language arts texts. All of the literacy tasks presented, which fit into Howard Gardner's framework of multiple intelligences, recognize children's different abilities, talents, needs, learning styles, interests, and cultural background.

"A comprehensive look at how the arts (broadly conceived) can improve teaching, learning, and curriculum for all students, written in accessible language for non-academics and non-experts. It contains many evocative examples to illustrate the power of the arts to change education"--

In The Power of Pictures book and companion DVD, Beth Olshansky introduces teachers to her innovative art-based approach to literacy instruction. Widely practiced in classrooms across the country, the model has been proven by research to improve literacy achievement with a wide range of learners, especially those who struggle with verbal skills. At the heart of her approach is the Artists/Writers Workshop. Through study of quality picture books and hands-on art experiences, students learn to visualize, “paint pictures with words,” and ultimately create their own extraordinary artistic and literary work. The book and DVD explain how any teacher can successfully use this process to enable all students, particularly low performers, to make dramatic gains in both reading and writing.

The teaching of the arts and literacy in schools is often at odds with one another. The desire for schools to improve results on high-stakes testing can lead to a narrow view of literacy rather than one that acknowledges the unique and distinct literacies that exist in other curriculum areas including the arts. With methods of communication becoming increasingly complex, it will be more and more important for students to be able to utilise all semiotic modes. Developing Literacy and the Arts in Schools investigates this key issue in education and offers a solution to the negative relationship between the arts and literacy. Drawing on interview data and evidence from diverse classrooms, it explores the pedagogies of effective arts practitioners and teachers, and how they relate to theoretical frameworks, to unpack the key elements of effective practice related to literacy and the arts. A model of arts-literacies is provided to assist arts and literacy educators in developing a common language that acknowledges and values these distinct arts-literacies. Themes of multimodality, diversity, aesthetics and reflection in relation to the arts and literacy are foregrounded throughout. This book will be of great value to postgraduate students of Education specialising in arts and literacy, education academics, teacher educators, and classroom and preservice teachers.