Focus Questions
This resource was designed to prompt deeper reflection, focus reading, and support learning. Discuss these questions with colleagues who might stimulate new ideas and insights.
- The Common Core Standards in English language arts focus strongly on close reading and on questions that elicit text-dependent responses from students in the upper elementary grades. Students must cite evidence from the text to justify each observation they make about what they have read. How is visual art used in this chapter to practice the skill of close reading?
- Consider the ways in which the science/arts lessons discussed in this chapter intersect with our health and everyday life. How can these intersections support students’ interest in these lessons?
- Most students in grades 3-5 remain in what Piaget referred to as the “concrete operational” stage of cognitive development. Until the age of eleven, students typically have difficulty applying logic abstractly (without visible cues). How might the concrete nature of the arts help students this age to more easily grasp concepts like the relationship between the rotation of Earth and time of day?
Additional Resources
- Thinking about Thinking (PPT)
- How the Arts Support Science Learning (PPT)
- Winter Solstice (PPT)
- California Wildfires (PPT)
- Science of Santa (PPT)
- Common Core English Language Arts Standards for Reading
- Getty Museum Arts Integration Videos for K-5 Teachers
- “Developing Common Core Habits” video (5:47 min.) featuring literacy specialist Jill Jackson
- “Rolling the Dice for Participation” video (2:16 min.)
- Next Generation Science Standards
- In “A Private Universe” Harvard Graduates Discuss Cause of the Seasons (1:47 min. video)
- Overview of “A Private Universe” (20 min. video)
- New Zealand “Must-Do” Experiences
- Lighting of Beacons from “Return of the King” in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2:39 min.)
- Visiting Lord of the Rings Locations in New Zealand
- New Zealand Climate and Temperatures
- NASA explanation of the seasons
- Summer Solstice in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres
- March of the Penguins, winter (3:25 min)
- What is FOSS?
- Alphabet Song (on YouTube)
- Thirty Days Has September
- Ecosystem videos (video at top of page, 19:40 min.)
- Ecosystem lesson plans
- Circulatory system video (top of page, 22:17 min.)
- Circulatory system lesson plan
- Get Your Motor Running: Circuits and Motors (middle of page, 11:44 min. video)
- Circuits and Motors Lesson Plan