While we await the outcome of the government’s Curriculum Review, this blog considers the enormous value of the arts to a child’s learning and development and ways that we can inject more arts learning into a packed curriculum.
Carolyn Hopkins (December 2024)
Carolyn Hopkins was a primary teacher for 20 years and is now Senior Lecturer in Expressive Arts for Primary ITE at St Mary’s University. She is passionate about supporting trainees to have the skills and confidence to teach primary arts and understand the power of the arts in the development of the whole child.
Christmas comes but once a year...
It’s December in a Year 5 classroom and, amidst a wonderful cacophony of art and craft materials, an excited cry is heard, “This is the first time I’ve seen paints since last Christmas!” Asking how we have come to this is like unpicking the tangled strands of wool in the school craft tray. More helpful to ask here is, ‘What value do art, music and drama bring to a child’s learning and how can we make more space for these subjects?’
The importance of the arts
It is often through arts lessons that we really come to ‘see’ our pupils. The child who lacks confidence in academic subjects but lights up when given the opportunity to role play; the child who struggles to articulate their thoughts and feelings verbally but finds the power of self-expression through art; the child who has left everything they know and understand about the world at the school gate, but begins to belong when they can hear, or share, art, or music from their own culture. The non-verbal child who learns to speak through the power of music. These can be, and should be, stories of every day in school.
These experiences, facilitated through teaching and learning in the arts, support a child’s growing confidence and sense of self. This translates into greater wellbeing, a feeling of belonging and, by default, higher academic attainment (CLA, 2017). There is no substitute for weekly skills-based lessons in art, music and drama, however, there are also ways to exploit the benefits of these subjects in transitions and ten-minute windows every day.
Short bursts of whole class body percussion, an action song in assembly, or singing in a round activates virtually every neural pathway in the brain (Jensen, 2001). Making music together fosters collaborative skills, concentration, and releases endorphins. It enhances spatial reasoning, mathematical thinking and problem solving (Hallam & Himonides, 2022). Listening, with intention, to music improves our ability to differentiate tiny units of sound; this supports the development of reading skills and our perceptual abilities (Hall & Robinson, 2012). The use of drama strategies (freeze frame, thought tracking, hot seating) for storytelling and story making, across the entire curriculum, support children’s speaking and listening skills. Indeed, The Oracy Commission (2024) powerfully advocate for the use of a drama-based pedagogy to learn to talk, through talk, and about talk.
Perhaps most crucially, drama has a positive impact on social and emotional learning (SEL). An impactful way to incorporate drama is by regular use of quick whole class drama games. They are fun, build relationships (and thereby belonging) and develop core SEL skills (EEF, 2021) such as impulse control, accurate self-perception, and identifying and solving problems.
Supporting wider learning
Art also has a formidable role in the learning process. The practice of art gives form to feelings and is a powerful vehicle to support a culturally sustaining pedagogy (Buffington, 2019). Choosing a work of art to explore together (one weekly artwork and five minutes of discussion each day) to support questioning skills, visual literacy and vocabulary development (Anderson,2002). Drawing is not just for artists, it is a life skill (The Big Draw, 2014). Microbiologists, for instance, use drawing to visualise shape and space in structures and we all use quick sketches to communicate ideas. Five-minute drawings, using an object or person as a stimulus, will enhance visual perception, hand eye coordination, organisation, fluency of ideas, and skills of self-expression (Jensen, 2012).
Amid growing concern around the continuing decline of children’s mental health (The Children's Society, 2024) the benefit the arts bring to the development of the whole child cannot be overstated. They provide a natural opportunity for a richly dialogic classroom and development of metacognitive skills. By focusing on arts provision in primary schools we significantly improve the life chances of all children.
Now the handmade cards have gone home with the children and the last costumes and percussion instruments have been slipped back to the hall cupboard. The longest term, with its glorious celebratory ending is over. It is time to ensure this wonderful, creative, messy learning is not over for another whole year. The arts are for every day, not just for Christmas.
References
Buffington, M.L. (2019) Changing practice: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in Art Education. Art Education, 72(2), pp. 20-25.
Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA). (2017) Imagine Nation: The value of Cultural Learning.
Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). (2021) EEF SEL Core Skills.
Hall, S.N. and Robinson, N.R. (2012) ‘Music and Reading: Finding Connections from Within’, Journal of Music Education, 26(1), pp. 11–18.
Hallam, S.& Himonides, E. (2022) The Power of Music: An Exploration of the Evidence. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
Jensen, E. (2001) Arts with the Brain in Mind. Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Oracy Commission Education. (2024) We Need to Talk. Oracy Education Commission.
The Big Draw (2014) Why is Drawing Important? 19 May 2014.
The Children's Society. (2024) The Good Childhood Report. London: The Children's Society.