In the Tall, Tall Grass: a Musical Exploration

This lesson for 2nd Graders integrates scientific vocabulary from nature with beat, rhythm, and musical structure with non-pitched instruments.

Students will perform ostinati as a full class, or in small groups.

Arts integrated adaptations

This lesson uses music and movement to review the function of animal beaks.

Next, students stamp animal track mandalas inspired by visual artists, Carl Gombert and Sandy Brunvand.

Last, students write poetry related to biomes

K-6 Book Arts Integration

This video highlights ways to use book forms from the University of Utah’s Marriott Library.

Samples include: seasons, animal migration, place value, money, historical periods, and more.

Story Walks with Swirl by Swirl

In three lessons with a 4th grade classroom, students created a music and story walk highlighting the spirals in their school community.

Students created a soundscape using the text Swirl by Swirl and the environment of their building.

Plots and Pathways

In this lesson plan, small groups of middle or upper grade students pick shared novels. Using elements of the plot of the respective novel, they demonstrate three dancing pathways - curving, zig-zag, and straight.

This lesson provides incredible ELA integration and is student directed.

Arts integrated landforms

This lesson reviews positive and negative space with movement.

Next, students create landforms with scissors, glue, markers, and crayon.

Last there are literary springboards to continue the discussion through informative writing.

Jack & the Beanstalk Shrink Film Castles

This presentation for the Utah Art Educators Association explains how to make castles for the school garden or to bring planting into the visual arts classroom.

Students illustrate and shrink their castles before planting with magic beans.

Poetry springboards

This is a compilation of poetry by Shel Silverstein that underscores Utah’s SEEd standards for second graders.

Students can use the poem as a starting place for posing questions, creating hypotheses, and developing engineering plans.

AI Art-making in K-6

Use the presentation below to learn about AI tools for K-6 visual art and general education classrooms.

The presentation is in constant flux as tools grow, but there are lesson springboards for habitats and biomes using DALL-E2.