ACCELERATOR RESOURCE SAMPLE

Arts Integration Placemats for Students

5 Min Read  •  Arts Integration

When it comes to our classrooms, student resources are always at a premium.  But there is limited wall space and storage for papers in our rooms.  That’s why student placemats are so helpful.

Many teachers use these as a quick reference for everything from letters to equations.  The idea is for students to have a card or reference guide to pull out and use as they are working on various content.  But what do you do when you are working on an arts integration or STEAM lesson?  It’s impractical to have students referencing multiple cards.

To alleviate this, we’ve created an Arts Integration Student Placemat that is available for our Accelerator Members.  This helps students quickly refer to the elements of the arts, as well as visual literacy strategies, math standards of practice and the engineering design process. And it’s perfect to use with our IntegratED Curriculum, which is included with membership.

Arts Integration Student Placemats

How to Use Student Placemats

To help these placemats last, we recommend printing them in color and laminating them if possible.  This way, students can use them as both a reference card and as a mat for working with various materials like clay.  They can even draw on it with dry erase markers and then erase their references if you laminate it.  Plus, it’s just sturdier.

You may want to distribute them for an arts integration lesson and then collect them and store in a central location once the lesson is over.  But if you can, try to let students keep these out all the time or at least have access to them all the time.  After all, the idea is to have the help students see and understand integration opportunities.  It’s hard to do that when they are limited to use during a specific integrated lesson.

This placemat is a great reminder of each of the elements of arts and can even help students to visually see the connections between the art forms.  Students can also use this to help them make connections between the arts and E/LA, Math and Science.

About the Author

Susan Riley is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM. This is the world’s largest online resource for educators interested in integrating the arts. She has presented at events and authored articles for many educational organizations including The US Department of Education, Palmetto State Arts Education, Edutopia, Education Week, Americans for the Arts, ASCD, and NPR. She regularly presents at national and international events each year. She is the author of three books and is a sought-after collaborator for innovative educational projects around the globe. Susan brings creativity, practicality, dedication and passion to the education landscape. She is well-respected for her pioneering work in the fields of Arts Integration and STEAM education with a standards-based approach. As an educator who taught for 10 years in public schools, as well as served in central office leadership, she understands the fast-paced change, challenges and promise of 21st century schools. As an entrepreneur, she has successfully taken what was once a simple education blog and developed it into a rapidly-growing and highly-respected educational institution. Her team of 15+ teachers, leaders and coaches support over over 500,000 educators each month worldwide. Susan holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from the prestigious Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ and a Master of Science in Education Administration from McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. She lives in Westminster, MD with her husband and daughter. Email Susan

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