CORE Learning Experiences

This brief article explores the elements of CORE Learning Experiences. These experiences form the core of the approach to arts integration advocated on this website. The descriptions below for each of the four elements (Complex, Organized, Reflective, Engaging) draw extensively from educational research and theory, underscoring how vital each element is for effective, meaningful, and memorable instruction. Together, the four elements form the acronym CORE to further emphasize that the arts are an important part of the core curriculum nationally and in most states. Plus, regardless of curricular requirements, the arts constitute a vital core element of human cognition and experience. 

COMPLEX

Think of an everyday arts experience such as listening to a song while driving in the car. This may seem like a basic kind of experience, but upon closer inspection it is rather complex. You probably like the song because of something in your cultural and personal background. Listening is a way for you to develop a sense of who you are and connect with others. While you listen, you might tap the steering wheel, move your body, or sing along with the music, all while maintaining careful control of your car. Taken altogether, there's a lot going on.

Authentic arts experiences like this are naturally complex in a variety of ways.

First, they involve multiple senses, especially sight, hearing, or touch. Some also include smells and tastes. One important sense that is often overlooked is proprioception, the kinesthetic sense (perceiving your body in or moving through space).  

Second, art experiences often involve all three domains of learning (affective, cognitive, and psychomotor) identified by Bloom and others in the 1950s and 1960s. Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels serve much the same purpose as Bloom's taxonomy for the cognitive domain, helping us think about the many facets of cognition. One way to think about the three domains is to think of children as a combination of hearts (affective), brains (cognitive), and bodies (psychomotor). Focusing strictly on the cognitive domain, seeing students simply as little brains rather than hearts and bodies, can be alienating for students and lead to boring instruction. 

Third, arts experiences typically engage multiple intelligences (Gardner) in a single experience. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences reminds us that intelligence is diverse, there are a lot of different ways to be smart. The eight intelligences include musical, visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, logical/mathematical, verbal/linguistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. Keep in mind that everyone is smart to varying degrees in all of these ways and everyone can become smarter in all of these ways. Please don't confuse multiple intelligences with learning styles; they are two different things. 

Complexity does NOT mean that arts experiences take a lot of planning or last a long time. Sometimes they can happen rather quickly and take no special planning. For example, let's say that you are reading a book to children about a tree. At one point, you have them make an action and sound for the tree moving in the wind. At this point, you have engaged multiple senses, multiple domains of learning, and multiple intelligences. It's a complex CORE learning experience involving the arts (drama, dance, music/sound) that takes very little time or effort on your part, but has a positive impact on student learning.

ORGANIZED

Short arts experiences can be included as part of longer classroom experiences without a lot of formal planning. Longer arts experiences, however, do require careful forethought and organization so that they will not become chaotic or messy. Transitions into and out of the experience, materials, and steps to completion should be thoroughly planned. This cannot be emphasized enough. Too many arts experiences "flop" because of inadequate planning. We are teachers. We can teach students how to behave during arts experiences. This may mean expanding the repertoire of classroom procedures to include elements associated with arts experiences. In fact, once a procedure is firmly established, students can function with few reminders.

​Here's a basic outline for setting up an arts experience.

• Carefully plan the procedure, taking into account as many potential problems as possible. Choreograph in your mind where students will go, what they will do, and how long it will take.
• Prepare all materials in advance.
• Get the students' attention. Seriously, be sure that everyone is paying attention.
• Give the instructions in a step-by-step format. Give as many instructions up front as possible. If there are too many steps to remember, repeat this process with the next set of steps later in the experience. Write down the steps on the board, give key verbs with each step, and/or associate actions with each step.
• Make sure the students understand, by asking them questions about what they are going to do and in what order. This is an important step. Don't skip it. It will decrease the need to answer a bunch of questions while the students are going through the steps. This is where a written list of the steps can be particularly helpful.
• If this procedure is something that might be repeated throughout the year (e.g. clearing the room for movement, using water colors) it is especially important that the students practice and internalize the steps so they become automatic.

Organization also applies to planning how the experience fits within your curriculum and larger integrated units. A carefully orchestrated arts learning experience will address multiple curriculum standards at once, in a way that feels natural. This can also include standards not included in the curriculum that you feel are important (getting along with others, hard work, creative expression, etc.). In fact, because of their complexity, CORE learning experiences typically have some very natural connections to other curriculum areas and, with some minor changes, can address even more. On another page, I have outlined Five Steps to Integration using CORE learning experiences.

REFLECTIVE

It is noteworthy that, of the four strands in the National Core Arts Standards (creating, performing/ presenting/ producing, responding, connecting), the latter two rely primarily on some sort of individual and/or collective reflection. In other words, half of the arts curriculum standards involve thinking, talking, and writing about the arts! This makes the arts ideal curricular partners to language arts and social studies especially, but also to math, science, health, media arts, and PE. The arts can be reflective in two ways: reflecting ABOUT the arts and reflecting THROUGH the arts. In this first way, children can answer questions about an illustration in a book or discuss a song they are learning. In the second way, for instance, students could paint a picture with water colors representing what they did during vacation. CORE arts experiences include ample opportunity for reflection, including the use of open-ended questioning, small group discussions, and written reflections/journaling (classroom discussion possibilities: www.cultofpedagogy.com/speaking-listening-techniques/).

It is important that children understand how the arts are situated in historical and social context, especially how the arts relate to their own lives. It is also imperative that arts experiences are culturally authentic and appropriate, aimed first at deepening and then broadening cultural perspectives. Think about how this particular arts integration will be meaningful to these particular children. Every child has a basic right to experience their own culture and, thereby, have their own cultural background validated in school. No matter how engaging and interesting an experience might be, if it does not engage the cultural interests of students, they might opt out. 

ENGAGING

Related to the complexity of CORE learning experiences, students are actively engaged physically (flexibility, balance, fine motor, coordination, axial and locomotor movement), cognitively, and emotionally/expressively. Because of this complexity, we can also think of these experiences as naturally differentiated. Everyone can usually participate together at their own level. Think, for example, of a game of charades with children and adults playing together. Although we might give some of the easier words to the children, everyone can play and have a good time.

CORE experiences are intrinsically motivating. This is because they are synergic satisfiers of basic pscychological needs (Deci & Ryan)—meaning that a single experience often satisfies many needs at once. According to self-determination theory, we all have three basic needs: relatedness (love, belonging), competence (developing skills), and autonomy (freedom, creativity, choice). Edward Deci and Richard Ryan and associates have conducted extensive research in the development of self-determination theory which outlines the importance of intrinsic motivation in human well-being. They also describe how extrinsic motivation can have an overall negative impact when applied to experiences that are naturally fulfilling. In other words, it is critical to let CORE arts learning experiences serve as their own motivation. When including the arts, teachers should focus on what is intrinsically satisfying—experiences in which children will likely want to participate.

Finally, arts experiences are also engaging because the help students develop what have been identified as  21st Century Skills (the four C's: communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking). 

Here's rubric for CORE Learning Experiences

C stands for Complex

• Multiple senses (including proprioception)
• Multiple intelligences (spatial, musical, interpersonal, interpersonal, mathematical, linguistic, kinesthetic, naturalist)
• Multiple domains (affective—the heart, cognitive—the brain, psychomotor—the body)

O stands for Organized

• Clear procedures
• Connects to standards (including standards that aren't in the curriculum, but that are important)
• Addresses multiple standards at once

R stands for Reflective

• ​Reflect ABOUT the arts
• ​Reflect THROUGH the arts
• Culturally responsive

E stands for Engaging

• Satisfy basic psychological needs (autonomy, relatedness, competence)
• Intrinsically motivating 
• 21st century skills (the 4 C's: communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking)

​To be a CORE learning experience, it is not necessary that everything in the rubric is addressed. The purpose of the rubric is simply to give a way to think about how to enhance learning experiences.