Kind of Follow-up to Common Core Question - Drawing

My kids public elementary school is an arts-integrated school, so drawing and all arts (music, dance, etc) is incorporated into almost everything that they do. It is extremely cool. A couple of times a year the whole school participates in a half day art project, the results hung on the walls of the school.

One of the coolest things is they integrate it into STEM, making it STEAM. They talk about drawing a bird in an artsy way vs a technical way. It helps to view the world in different ways, understand that different people see/notice different things (even when observing the same exact thing), and it will help them notice and maybe even create beauty every day.

They are incorporating writing into math, so why not art into everything else. Although, incorporating into spelling seems a bit much. It would be cool to use it to identify different homonyms (draw a "hare" vs "hair" with the appropriate spelling for each).

I think it is the same logic that learning to play an instrument helps with math.

http://www.effectivemusicteaching.com/articles/directors/...

I'm not skilled at explaining 'why' so hopefully this generation of common core kids can explain why.

I think drawing is a fine motor skill that engages the right side of your brain, and is definitely helpful in "real life".

The arts are important, including visual art. There's a ton of research showing why, too much to delve into in this forum.

Maybe it's meaningless for your kids, but the visual aspect is very important for other learners. And I agree with the poster below who mentioned being well-rounded. Also, many kids enjoy the art component of a project.

They do it through high school, in one form or another.

My seventh grader is currently making a comic strip for Spanish class as I write this. I don't think it ever ends...

So, I am a teacher and there is a lot of research that supports the integration of multiple medias to not only let students get the information IN in different ways, but it also lets them get the information OUT. I am guessing that your kiddos are good at paper/pencil type work and tests. I am a terrible draw-er and so I know exactly how you feel!

But, the reality is that many many people are not good at paper/pencil work. They need to be able to express themselves in other ways, and drawing or art is a great way to do this. The idea is that by incorporating other ways to show that you understand the material then each student can earn the grade they deserve instead of the one they default to when they bomb a test because of anxiety, etc. This movement was not new exactly, but cutting edge when I was in graduate school about 15 years ago.

If you want more information look into Multiple Intelligences and Bloom's Taxonomy. Both of these are a good place to start.

The spelling thing I too thought was weird when I saw it the first time, but the idea is that the more a person works with and incorporates a new idea the easier it will be to remember. 1. Writing the word 2. writing the definition 3. drawing a picture of the meaning of the word (using color is even more impactful) 4. using the word in a sentence So, but using this method, a student will interact with a new word at least 4 times before they ever leave the classroom and have to study it for the spelling test at the end of the week.

I hope this helps you understand some of the science behind it and that the teacher is following great teaching practices for all of the students in her class, even the ones who learn through other means besides paper/pencil. And, your kids are learning more too, even if they don't like it or know it.

If the drawing is too hard, maybe try printing out pictures they might like to use and have them either trace them or color them with the outline under the paper they are drawing on. This way it isn't exactly tracing, but is using a template to support them. An art light box is a good investment if this is the case. Art doesn't stop before college if the schools are any good, and some teachers are starting to use it in college too. It really is best practice.

http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_taxonomy

I could see it would be annoying if you have limited drawing skills. For some kids, it helps them learn the subject matter if they do various visual reinforcements. Visual thinkers really need that. Plus, like it or not, it's all about presentation in life. If your presentation is pretty, you will get far. Drawing is another way to exercise your brain..like music or language. Also, down the line, being able to visually communicate your ideas is important. Either you will need to sketch a basic drawing of your new company logo on a napkin, or you will need to draw a decent graph on a whiteboard. It can't hurt to practice.

Kids in middle school still draw pictures as part of their assignments.....

Many kids like to have the chance to be creative, and often, if they are having to illustrate a concept, it helps show that they do understand the concept.

However, the teacher doesn't grade based on how WELL they draw the item..... it is often part of the rubric ("draw 3 illustrations, etc."), or is a completion grade.

I remember making dioramas and drawing pictures all the way through elementary school, at least. Decades before the common core. I am in the medical field. I draw pictures all the time to explain things like how a kidney works or what a heart does to my clients.

Regarding your ETA: they probably had them draw the words/actions to further require the kids to THINK about the words they are spelling.

Original post:

I didn't really start enjoying drawing until I was an adult. My ex-husband is an artist and being around him, watching him draw, I sort of picked it up.

My son and I love to sit and draw together. It's one of the ways in which we can spend time, be engaged-- we have painted, created together since he was very small. He's in second grade and I hope they continue to offer it as part of his school days.

One thing drawing does is that it can help a person learn to observe detail, learn how to use objects or other artwork as a reference. Some drawing and art is taught as a 'step by step' process at the school to teach the children to mind each step and pay attention to their work and the demonstration.

If your daughter is daunted by drawing, try looking up "how to draw a ___" on Google. Really, it's very helpful. I've used these when I have to draw something I've never rendered before. Kiddo's "pin the tail on the donkey" poster was made that way. Also, consider getting a good eraser; one of the white ones often work better than the pink or colored erasers. Teach her to erase 'with' the lines instead of going across them. I do a lot of sketching and erasing before inking and a good eraser really helps a person feel better about their work. Teach her to do small sketches first, "thumbnails" to compose the picture before actually drawing the finished product on good paper.

For me, I'll add that I do see this as a life skill because sometimes, communicating my ideas to others is more easily done with a sketch than just verbal or written information.

Art is a great way to express yourself. You don't have to be great at it and it can be in a variety of forms. It makes me sad it's been eliminated at most schools.

Honestly, I only use elementary-level math in my daily life and science never, but I still had to learn them all the way through college. You do a variety of things in school that may never apply to your adult life, but that's part of having a well rounded education.

i don't know about CC (which for the most part i loathe) but i don't see how drawing is such an onerous task. are they being graded on the quality of the drawing? that could be a pickle, but if they're just being asked to supplement their book report with some visuals, that's actually terrific. it's not so much about being a good artist, it's more about having them use their brains in a variety of fashions, to think about the concepts spatially and visually as well as linguistically (to put it into education-ese. i became the master of doing THAT when i homeschooled and had to present a portfolio of my kids' work to the BOE every year.)
it's about forging neural pathways.
i suggest you don't over-compartmentalize the different skills. they really do enhance each other. as for your kids not liking it, my older boy was so not interested in music. the BOE insisted that i 'instruct' him in music because the public school kids his age were still getting music at that point and they so desperately (and fruitlessly) wanted our homeschool experience to mirror the public school's. so i rolled my eyes and made him write an essay on beethoven. bam. done.
dang kid went on and got his bachelor's in music performance. and after all my efforts!
:D
khairete
S.

I've seen illustrations on projects well into 5th grade. I don't remember when SD had to do a time line, maybe 6th? and she drew pictures. I think teachers should just look for effort and who cares if it looks a bit like Picasso in his cubism period? For kids like my DD, pictures keep her engaged and help her enjoy book reports and such because she isn't really interested in writing long sentences. Your kid doesn't like to draw. Mine doesn't like to write. I think it all evens out, and it predates Common Core. My DD is a tactile learner and drawing helps her with words and reading. It helps her associate the letters with the meaning. Even if the different techniques don't appeal to your kid, they may help other kids. My DD is good at math and doesn't need it broken down into steps, but for kids who can't do it in their heads, each step is important.

Well, I do see a correlation in real life with art and the language arts. Just ask anyone that goes to buy a book. The cover art sells the book in most cases. Ask any kid if they would want to read a book with pictures or without. What do you think they would choose? So art in language arts is important, and go hand-in-hand.
Now, I doubt the teacher kids expect the kids to be a Picasso or anything, but the drawing does help them think about the overall concept of what they are writing.
To answer your question-I had a group project my senior year of high school where we had to write a short story that have to have cover art. I drew it. It wasn't perfect, but it got the point across.
I have found I needed some small level of artistic/creative ability at various points in my professional career and personal life whether I wanted to do it or not. I think this might be why these skills are touched upon in school projects.

I teach high school and often have my kids draw symbols, stick figures, comics, etc so they can learn and remember content long after the test. My students often dislike it at the beginning of the course but get used to it and complain when I don't have them do it. I teach government to seniors in high school and they have to draw symbols for each of the amendments, comics about court cases and symbols for vocab words. It really is helps them visualize the content later on. Common Core did not change my standards at all besides adding in some literacy elements so this isn't a Common Core thing. It is a sound teaching practice.

Our schools just adopted common core last yr so I don't think this is part of it. My oldest are sophomores in HS. They draw pictures for their classes and have all through school. The most recent assignment had to do with how they see themselves. It is a way to show how they express themselves. I think the drawing and learning how to express ideas and other things is very important to life itself. I cannot draw for anything but my girls are very good. My son still does stick figures.

It's not common core as far as I know.
We've always had to draw pictures.
I did when I was a student and our son does it even now in high school.
Why?
At least in elementary school it's not for the sake of the spelling itself - it's for using hand muscles and gaining better small motor control - and that helps you in printing and writing.

If you're truly interested in knowing the answers to your questions, DRAW. Really draw, decide what to draw and try to draw it, then do it again and again and again.

Why would your children like it when you don't.

I'm glad to hear that schools are having kids draw because it's so enriching. When drawing the brain has to think in a different way. There has to be fore thought, one has to think of movement and gesture. Thought and mood has to be caught in the drawing, in color. It must express meaning and speak of a mood or idea. It can tell you whether the child understands the lesson. It can tell you much about the child's thoughts and emotional state. A person that draws well or likes to draw, practices drawing learns to observe carefully. They take in the environment with a sense of space and color and livingness. This can only lead to intelligence. Drawing/painting and the like can help a person in many ways and it certainly brings on a fuller and more enriching interior life, for what ever you draw or paint you study. You study its curves, its lines, its tones and hues, the way it moves the way it grows, and on and on. You become a part of it in a way by feeling and thinking about what you're drawing.

All Subjects overlap and combine with each other to some degree or another. Everything is inter-dependent, there is nothing not connected to something else. Even in Math one is using language.

Education is a whole picture for whole children. People are not just a brain in a body or a body with a brain.

I feel for ya for not being able to give your child an answer. But consider that she is speaking what she senses from you first and foremost. If she doesn't like to draw because she's unhappy with the results it only makes it harder when she knows it is not valued by you, her mother. You could tell her that drawing does help her spelling because she is now using color and gesture to show words. How would it look if we couldn't use the letters in words and only used drawing how we show it?" You could also say something like, "Isn't it nice to have some time to draw now instead of only writing out words."

Drawing, painting, modeling, sculpting has always been used in a proper education as part of the whole education. It produced a real Knowing of subjects. Any good scientist or teacher and many others that keep records or research journals always draws their findings along with their written work.

In many prep schools, charter schools, private schools have students draw throughout school. Waldorf education has drawing as part their education from beginning to end. Again this opens up pathways in the brain that other wise would have little exercise and therefore thinking is expanded, problem solving is exercise, because drawing is one big exercise is problem solving.

This is just the gist of it even though I've written much.

Help yourself and children by embracing drawing and maybe painting too. Let them experience a mom that can change, grow, expand and experiment. Just Draw.

My 10th grade son just wrote a story for Language Arts that required a detailed character drawing, so he had is very talented friend create a pencil drawing of a female Assassins' character, with his guidelines. My son gave his friend full credit. The LA teacher is so impressed with the quality that she's taking it to the Art Teacher to give his friend extra credit.

If it were up to my son, he would draw stick figures and unfortunately he has been marked down slightly on the drawings associated with such assignments, as the pictures are really pretty poor. He's a very gifted writer, but has zero illustration skills.

Essentially, the drawing assignments go on through high school.

I am a painter and how dare you, nothing is more important than art!!!! :) Joking.

You're right, I'd be miffed if the English teacher asked my kids to do a few math problems at the end of a writing assignment..well not really because it's always beneficial to do something vs. not do it if you possibly can....

I don't know if this is common in schools as my kids are not those ages yet. Drawing is valuable as a way to build hand eye coordination combined with interpreting language to images one could argue. It certainly isn't harmful or worthless. And it doesn't need to be museum material. Some basic cartoons are the very best illustrations of ideas...movies rely on sketched story boards. Even if they're done on computers, you need a sense of spatial arrangement on a flat surface which drawing creates..even if your kids need mathematical, technical drawings one day to be architects or builders sketching out ideas, practice certainly helps. And if you're one of the schools that has had cursive and handwriting emphasis lobbed off then drawing is very valuable practice enhancing the same brain-to-hand areas those do....

But if you are just like, "Drawing is a totally unnecessary skill and my kids should not have to do it" then I would diplomatically explain to the teacher that you don't approve and you'd like to have your kids not doing it. Maybe they'll work with you. Personally I love seeing my kids picture interpretations of things, even if they're super primitive. Maybe I won't hate Core so much after all :)

I'm not a teacher, this is just my opinion. Art is for some students but not all, just like any other subject. Some kids are really good at it, and it makes them feel good about themselves. Just as other students are good at math but can't draw at all, math makes them feel smart and good about themselves.

There is more to Art than drawing, I wish students did have more fine arts in their school curriculum. I just read an article today about this autistic 5 year old and her paintings are her way of talking, since she doesn't. They are so incredible, they are even selling for thousands of dollars. Just Beautiful, the feeling is incredible and it's from a 5 year old child. Amazing!!!

As for your younger child, drawing is a fine motor skill, if they are learning to spell, their drawing isn't probably that good either, so it just repetitious of using the pencil or markers. Again, I'm only assuming here.

Even in High school there were some art required for projects in the
Language Arts, Different History classes etc. And our daughter took Honors and then AP classes. It is the effort that counts.

They were studying Dantes Inferno her Freshman year and as the project portion they painted a round library table with the
"Nine Levels of Hell". The teacher loved it and asked the girls if she could keep it. They gladly left it with her. It is still in her classroom and those girls graduated in 2008!

I recall even in College our daughter had some sort of project that required some art in some of her Psychology classes. Of course she had no problems since she was a double Major, Visual Arts and Psychology..