Field trips at Your Fingertips! episode 1

Arts integration is using art in curriculum to represent, express, and reflect content. Visual arts are important as we see before we read. Art can enhance classroom lessons by observation and analysis. Virtual museum tours provide field trip experiences and structured freedom for students. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History offers interactive exhibits online. Virtual tours expose students to new things and expand their knowledge. Welcome back to Field Trips at Your Fingertips, and this is your host, Ashley Morrison. Today, we're going to talk about visual art, assessing content through image. Experience through images. What is arts integration? Arts integration is the process of using curriculum through art. This includes representation, expression, and a reflection of both the content and the art form. In the book, Integrating the Arts Across the Content Areas by Lisa Donovan and Luis Pascal, they speak on the different content areas and adding in the arts. It goes on to talk about why visual arts matters. For example, we see before we read. We are drawn to things initially through sight before we comprehend what we are looking at. This applies to many students. Many students enjoy picture books before reading. They learn the alphabet through flashcards with pictures. Art is a vital part of many lessons, and it can bring so much more depth to a classroom. Observation and integration of visual images. You can incorporate so many lessons just by simply putting up a piece of art and asking your students to observe and analyze that art. What are they getting from the art? And everyone's perspective is different. Virtual museums with class benefits of virtual tours. You can take your whole class on a field trip simply by pulling up a museum and taking a virtual tour. I took a college course online that required us to visit a museum virtually, and we had to choose a piece of art, then research, analyze, and reflect on the piece. This was an exciting project that we had free range to choose a piece that we found interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed doing the project and learned a lot about art from different areas. I believe that this is a great way to give students structured freedom. There are tons of free museums online. One of my favorites is the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It feels as if you are truly there in the building, walking around the different exhibits, and the site has some interactive pieces with links to videos, additional images, or information based on the history of the exhibit. The website you can visit is naturalhistory.si.edu. There are a ton of current and past exhibits available with the touch of a button. This is a field trip that can be held in the comfort of a classroom and can expand student knowledge of natural history, art, and many other content areas. There are a plethora of opportunities to bring museums to your students. It will also create a wonderful environment to expose students to things that they may not see on a regular day. The importance of exposure to virtual tours for students. This episode was created, researched, scripted, edited, and published by Ashley Morrison.