What is Arts Integration?
Arts integration is a research-based instructional approach in which students construct and demonstrate
understanding through the aligned study of an art form and another academic discipline. Rooted in the
Kennedy Center’s definition and supported by national bodies such as the Arts Education Partnership,
NAEA, and Project Zero, arts integration requires intentional connections between content standards in
both areas so that learning in each discipline is strengthened rather than diluted.
This approach positions the arts as active partners in inquiry, creativity, and meaning-making, engaging
students through multisensory, cognitively rich experiences that deepen comprehension and cultivate
transferable habits of mind. Across K–12 settings, early childhood programs, and STEAM environments,
arts integration functions as a powerful strategy for engagement, equity, and interdisciplinary learning,
supported by decades of research demonstrating its impact on student achievement, motivation, and
creative problem-solving.
Arts Integration Toolkit
Science
Visual Arts
3D Model
What it is: Students build a 3D model to visualize structures and explain interrelationships.
Why It Works: Hands-on modeling improves retention and conceptual understanding by engaging spatial reasoning and tactile learning.
Materials: Clay, foam balls, cardboard, beads, labels, paint.
Sample Application: Have students create a model of a plant or animal cell using art supplies, incorporating accurate scientific details like organelles.
Illustration
What it is: Students create detailed scientific drawings to strengthen observation and precision.
Why It Works: Drawing slows perception, increases attention to detail, and improves scientific accuracy.
Materials: Sketch paper, pencils, magnifiers, samples.
Sample Application: Students create detailed drawings of various plants, learning scientific observation and precision.
Collage
What it is: Students build collages using natural or printed materials.
Why It Works: Collage supports conceptual categorization and helps students visualize systems.
Materials: Leaves, flowers, magazines, paper, glue.
Sample Application: Students create collages of ecosystems (e.g., desert, forest, ocean) after studying biodiversity.
Music
Instrument Project
What it is: Students build instruments to explore sound waves and acoustics, forces and motion, materials science, energy transfer, etc.
Why It Works: Music provides a concrete way to understand abstract properties.
Materials: Rubber bands, boxes, straws, bottles.
Sample Application: Students create musical instruments and demonstrate the principles of pitch, volume, and frequency.
Rhythms
What it is: Students create rhythms to explore sound and vibrations, patterns and cycles, fractions and ratios, energy and motion, etc.
Why It Works: Rhythm supports memory encoding and sequencing.
Materials: Drums, sticks, body percussion.
Sample Application: Students perform rhythms based on different body movements or organs (e.g., heartbeat rhythms).
Soundtrack
What it is: Students compose music representing scientific processes.
Why It Works: Music supports pattern recognition and conceptual mapping.
Materials: Instruments, digital music tools.
Sample Application: Students compose a short piece of music that reflects scientific concepts such as planetary movement or the water cycle.
Drama / Media
Digital Storytelling
What it is: Students create animated or illustrated stories explaining scientific concepts.
Why It Works: Digital storytelling strengthens communication, sequencing, and conceptual clarity.
Materials: iPads/laptops, animation apps.
Sample Application: Students use digital tools to create an animated or illustrated story explaining a scientific concept.
Dance
Movement
What it is: Students use choreography and body movement to explore abstract scientific concepts like sun–earth relationship, inertia and gravity, weather, animal behavior, etc.
Why It Works: By integrating dance, science lessons become more embodied, memorable, and accessible, especially for kinesthetic learners, while reinforcing both content understanding and creative expression.
Materials: Music selections, music source and speakers, projection or printed cards showing dance terms, projection or printed cards showing scientific terms.
Sample Application: Students demonstrate the weather forecast for the next three days by creating a series of dance movements that represent different aspects of the forecast.
Math
Visual Arts
Geometry in Architecture
What it is: Students design buildings using geometric principles.
Why It Works: Architecture provides authentic application of geometry.
Materials: Graph paper, rulers, cardboard.
Sample Application: Students design their own building analyzing the angles and shapes.
Fractal Art
What it is: Students create artwork inspired by fractals.
Why It Works: Fractals build understanding of patterns, recursion, and scale.
Materials: Drawing tools, digital fractal generators.
Symmetry in Nature
What it is: Students identify and recreate natural symmetry.
Why It Works: Symmetry builds spatial reasoning and classification skills.
Materials: Cameras, sketchbooks.
Sample Application: Students draw or photograph examples of symmetrical patterns.
Drama
Tableau (Frozen Picture Scenes)
What it is: Students use their bodies to create a still image that represents a concept, moment, or relationship.
Why It Works: Embodied learning increases retention and comprehension and requires students to analyze relationships, hierarchy, and meaning.
Materials: Open space, prompt cards.
Sample Application: Represent geometric vocabulary (parallel, perpendicular, acute, obtuse).
Music
Musical Mappings
What it is: Students create a short melody or soundscape that represents a concept or narrative.
Why It Works: Music enhances emotional engagement and memory and helps students map patterns, cycles, and changes over time.
Materials: Classroom instruments or digital music tools (e.g., GarageBand, Chrome Music Lab).
Sample Application: Map increasing/decreasing functions to rising/falling pitch.
Dance
Dance and Fractions
What it is: Students use movement to represent fractional relationships.
Why It Works: Embodied learning improves conceptual understanding of part-to-whole.
Materials: Music, open space.
Sample Application: Use movements and choreography to demonstrate fractions, angles, and symmetry.
Geometry and Choreography
What it is: Students choreograph dances based on geometric shapes.
Why It Works: Movement reinforces spatial concepts and angle relationships.
Materials: Floor tape, music.
Sample Application: Students create dance routines that focus on geometric shapes and angles.
Literature / Language
Visual Arts
Illustrating a Scene
What it is: Students visually interpret a scene or character.
Why It Works: Drawing deepens comprehension and inferencing.
Materials: Drawing supplies, text excerpts.
Sample Application: Students illustrate a scene or character, interpreting literary text into visual imagery.
Character Portraits
What it is: Students create portraits based on textual evidence.
Why It Works: Portraiture strengthens close reading and evidence-based reasoning.
Materials: Paint, pencils.
Sample Application: Students draw or paint portraits of the main characters.
Storyboarding a Scene
What it is: Students break a narrative into sequential panels.
Why It Works: Storyboarding supports sequencing, summarizing, and structure analysis.
Materials: Storyboard templates.
Sample Application: Students create a storyboard demonstrating understanding of narrative structure.
Drama
Acting Out Scenes
What it is: Students dramatize key scenes.
Why It Works: Drama enhances comprehension, empathy, and fluency.
Materials: Scripts, props.
Sample Application: Students act out key scenes to explore character motivations.
Character Interviews
What it is: Students role-play as characters and answer interview questions.
Why It Works: Interviews build inferencing and perspective-taking.
Materials: Interview prompts.
Sample Application: Students create an interview scenario where they play the role of a character.
Creative Adaptation
What it is: Students adapt text into short plays.
Why It Works: Adaptation strengthens writing, structure, and interpretation.
Materials: Script templates, stage space.
Sample Application: Have students adapt a story or scene from a novel into a short play.
Music
Rhythm & Pattern Mapping
What it is: Students translate academic patterns into rhythmic sequences (claps, taps, spoken beats).
Why It Works: Music activates multiple brain regions, improving retention and helping abstract concepts (fractions, cycles, formulas) become concrete.
Materials: Hand drums, sticks, shakers, body percussion, metronome or beat app.
Sample Application: Identify meter in poetry or create rhythmic summaries of chapters.
Dance
Movement Pathways
What it is: Students use simple movement to embody processes, relationships, or sequences.
Why It Works: Kinesthetic learning improves understanding of systems and sequences, helps students internalize processes (life cycles, plot arcs, number lines), and reduces behavioral disruptions by channeling movement productively.
Materials: Open space, music (optional), visual pathway cards.
Sample Application: Move through plot structure (exposition → climax → resolution).