Gifted and Talented Resources for the Arts

The Rockford Public Schools District #205 through its current programming in the arts is able to meet the needs of many.  For students who exhibit skills and knowledge in the arts slightly beyond grade level, there are many opportunities to help build a program that meets the students’ needs.  The Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) program provides in-depth arts opportunities at two sites- Ellis Academy for the Arts and Auburn High School.  Click on the school site for additional information about the CAPA programs.


Suggestions to assist students in the arts include:
*Enrichment activities
*Arts classwork integrated into other content areas
*Cluster or flexible grouping
*Independent study (genre, composer/artist, and/or career studies)
*Mentoring
*Acceleration
*Differentiation of instruction


Many students will thrive in nurturing educational environments utilizing these strategies. Here are additional resources to investigate and consider for use with students.
10 Big Ideas in Visual Arts for GT
10 Big Ideas in the Arts for GT
10 Big Ideas in Various Content Areas for GT
Gifted and Talented Resource Guide - WSMA and WI DPI

Serving Students with Special Needs

Providing age and level appropriate educational experiences for all students is a goal that comes with some preparation. Understanding our students overall needs, the tools/resources that will best enhance their development, and ways we can best connect activities and these elements together are important to investigate.

Here are a few resources which may help in your instructional plans working with students with special needs. If you have additional resources to share, please post with this information. Thank you again for helping all students thrive in the arts.

Student with Special Needs Resources-

Art Lesson Ideas

General Special Education Information

Disability Awareness Guide- VSA publication

Very Special Arts- Wisconsin

New School Year

We're off to a great start!  It's the beginning of the school year. Students' eyes are sparkling with anticipation as they walk through our classroom doors. What an exciting time of year!
Here are some helpful articles for the school year. If you have additional articles to share, please post.
Best wishes for a fantastic school year!


A Checklist for Teachers
Music Content Standards
Arts Edge- This site allows the visitor to find resources by grade level and content area.
Artsworks- Miscellaneous listing of lesson plan ideas for review.

Eisner- Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

I hope you enjoy this posting. Feel free to share additional articles that highlight how the arts create sparks of creativity and joy within all of us.

Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

• The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
• The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
• The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
• The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem-solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and willingness to surrender to the work as it unfolds.
• The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
• The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
• The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
• The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
• The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
• The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important. 

Elliott Eisner, in Beyond Creating: The Place for Art in America's Schools. Getty Center for Education in the Arts. 1985 p. 69.