Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Handicrafts; Creativity; Attitudes; Science-art integration;

Journal/Book/Conference Title Title

Journal for Learning through the Arts

Volume

11

Issue

1

Abstract

Arts integration in science has benefits of increasing student engagement and understanding. Lessons focusing on form and function of animal skulls provide an effective example of how handicrafts integrated with science instruction motivate students and support learning. The study involved students ages 9-12 during a week-long summer day camp. Students applied animal skull concepts of eye positions of predators and prey, relative eye sizes of nocturnal animals compared to tunnel-dwellers, shapes and functions of different types of teeth, and terminology and functions of different bones, openings, and structures of animal skulls in making moveable book pages. These pages featured pop-up constructions, a lift-the-flap page, and a turning wheel behind cut-out windows in a page to convey the skull concepts. Additional creativity was incorporated through making a three-dimensional cover related to the Mexican Day of the Dead with skulls made from pieces of recycled plastic bottles, drawing figural-transformations, and creating animal skull models from household or discarded materials. The lessons included classification of images of skull features on cards and examination of realistic animal skull models. Pretest-posttest science content results indicated large gains with a very large effect size; attitude surveys and student work showed high motivation and creativity.

Department

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Comments

First published in Journal for Learning through the Arts, v. 11, no. 1 (2015), 32 pages, published by California Digital Library. Permalink

Original Publication Date

2015

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, University of Northern Iowa, Rod Library

Copyright

©2015 Julie l. Klein, Phyllis Gray, Ksenia S. Zhbanova, Audrey C. Rule. The copyright holder has granted permission for posting.

Date Digital

2015

Language

EN

File Format

application/pdf

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