Literacy in Visual Arts
“Generally, the most common use of the term ‘literacy’ has been to denote one’s ability to read and write in the language of the dominant culture at a functional/grade 5 level.”
To be literate in visual arts, students will be able to:
• Understand, interpret, and evaluate how artists use technologies, processes, materials, and environments to create and communicate ideas.
• Explore various mediums by combining and arranging them with elements, principles, and image design strategies.
• Create personally meaningful artistic works that demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of social, cultural, environmental, and historical contexts
Multimodalities
When learning, students use different senses to acquire, retain, and use knowledge. Different students use different modalities in which they learn best. The most common modalities that teachers focus on are visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic.
Visual learners use their sense of sight. This is the most prominent sense used in visual arts, although all the other modalities are important. These learners have increased attention to detail, and have an easier time with visual representations.
Auditory learners use their sense of hearing. This is modality is crucial when giving verbal instruction on tasks or assignments. These learners tend to do well at verbally presenting or giving verbal requests for an answer.
Tactile learners use their sense of touch. This sense is important in art making as the learner enjoys doodling and are often artistic in nature. They enjoy tangible representations of learned material.
Kinesthetic learners move and act as they learn. Art is all about exploring different mediums, which involves a lot of movement with various mediums. These learners prefer hands on activities as they retain content during movement.
Assessment
Both formative and summative assessment are important when evaluating student success.
Formative assessment lets both the students and teachers know how to improve in both teaching and learning. It monitors the student's learning by ongoing observation. Students will understand their strengths and weaknesses, while teachers will better understand how to guide them. A formative assessment tool that I will be using in my art classes are sketch books. These are great tools for students to document rationales, research, explorations, feedback, and reflections. Rationales show the student's goal of the current art project. Research and explorations portray the student's thought process/ critical thinking and effort. Feedback and reflections display if goals were met, or how a student succeeded or needs improvement.
Summative assessment is used to evaluate the student's learning. It is based off of a pre determined standard, either made by the teacher, or collaboratively with the students. Rubrics are often a tool that are used for summative assessment. I plan on using rubrics for art projects, papers, and tests so that my students know exactly what is expected of them.