How can art activities be structured for students with disabilities?
Students with sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and physical disabilities are entitled to the creative learning opportunities that the visual and performing arts can provide. Music, art, and dance can be vehicles that accommodate other areas, such as phonological awareness for reading, playwriting project for writing, and theater role plays for public speaking. The arts can enhance learning in other ways, too: • Recalling facts: students restate facts from stories using visual arts activities • Understanding the main idea: students draw or sculpt the main idea of a story they have read or heard • Relating details to main idea: students explain the art work that depicts details of a story they have read or heard • Sequencing events: using art materials, students recreate sequential events through activities such as folding papers into obvious boxes and share with others how the story evolves • Characterization: A wonderful opportunity for students to express how they think characters look
