This book is set up as a text book, with anticipatory guides, questions and activities for the reader to do. I was expecting a book with too many ideas, but instead this book is for those that aren't familiar with the arts or how to incorporate them into the classroom. There are better books out there, and this is more of a stroking of the authors' worth than anything else. I was very disappointed with this book.
If you have no clues about what art is or how to use it in your lessons, than this book is for you, but if you have any background using art at all, ignore this book. Teaching Literacy through the Arts (Tools for Teaching Literacy)
I have used this text in my undergrad course for the last couple of years. It is written in real language with lots of practical suggestions for elementary and middle school teachers. I wish I had had textbooks like this when I was in college!
I like this book and will use it with a class on arts methods in education. It divides the arts in four main domains: visual arts, theatre/drama, music, and dance, and each chapter is chock full of ways to use these domains in the K-12 classroom. At the end, they feature three lengthy integrated units that center around a single work or theme, kind of like Leonard Bernstein's arts-based curriculum. One of them is a unit on jazz study, which I thought was a great idea. A few of the explanations are tedious, some statements needed a few citations to hold up, and the anticipation guides could be answered correctly by anyone with a brain, but these are small quibbles. Mainly, it's a good book to get teachers thinking about the wide range of arts-based activities they can promote even without special training.'
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