Improvisation is an important element of global musical practices. However, musical improvisation is often neglected in K-12 and collegiate music education programs, with some music educators suggesting that improvisation cannot be taught. Rather, improvisation must be facilitated, enabled, and fostered. In this review of literature, I examined…

This article contains 15 "takeaways" about how to teach organic creativity, from actual teachers with several hundred total years of experience. Teachers of English, physics, Advanced Placement Calculus, science, theater, the visual arts, dance, school administration, school counseling, educational psychology professing, world languages,…

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effectiveness of creative narrative technique on students' listening comprehension skills. The current study employed action research. The study group consists of 21 second grade students, six of whom were refugee students, at second grades in the school chosen through convenience sampling. In…

Individualized instruction and differentiation are fundamental concepts of the Dalcroze approach to music education. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze believed that students learn to be musical by different modalities. His three core branches, eurhythmics, rhythmic solfège, and improvisation, are intertwined with active listening, positive self-expression,…

This article presents a pedagogical-visual process developed in a traditional frontal-format course with a multi-identity group of students set in a large lecture hall. It examines an assignment that required students to analyze a meaningful personal photograph and connate it culturally, while internalizing visual general patterns utilizing a…

It is important to find the means by which struggling writers can find success in the English Language Arts. For students struggling with reading and writing, the visual arts may be a way of accessing and expressing their ideas and ultimately opening up a world of creative possibilities. This article explores drawing and painting as a pre-writing…

Artworks that are circular in nature are often referred to as mandalas. "Mandala" means center, circle, or circumference. Mandalas are created in many cultures for a variety of reasons, most of which are related to self-expression, ritual, and religion. In this article, the author describes how her students created mandalas. She also provides…

As a Certified Laban Movement Analyst and a classically trained ballet dancer, I consistently weave the Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals (LMA/BF) theories and philosophies into the ballet class. This integration assists in: (1) Identifying the qualitative movement elements both in the art of ballet and in the students' dancing…

This article provides a practical framework for infusing a body-listening or somatic approach into the dance class. Although the concept of body listening is not revolutionary or ground breaking, it has been underemphasized in the dance technique class and needs revisiting. From reflection on current research, as well as from several years of…

Describes how having students draw both their own and a literary character's reality not only introduces students, quite painlessly and concretely, to a large number of literary terms, but also suggests that literature appreciation demands an imaginative extension into the life of another. (MM)

To develop an adequate methodology for helping children to express themselves poetically, two alternative programs for the teaching of poetry writing were developed. The "free" approach, which attempted to encourage the writing of poetry through exposure to "good" poetry, consisted of a series of poems arranged around selected elements of poetry…

A discussion of ways an adult can encourage and participate in a child's self-expression through movement and dance. (BD)

Suggestions for teaching improvisational dance in a nonthreatening way are offered. (DF)

Describes how three groups of twentieth-century U.S. artists--Landscape and architectural artists, pop artists, and the photo-realists--used the object as the primary image in their artwork. Maintains that this approach to studying still life may be more relevant for teachers and students today. (KM)