Visual and Performing Arts
For learning to draw, paint, sculpt, dance, sing, act, play and express ourselves in other ways!
From the Introduction to the Standards...
Five Artistic Disciplines Each of the artistic disciplines--dance, music, theatre, visual arts, and media arts—is a core subject in its own right. Subject-centered arts instruction focuses on developing discipline-specific skills in each arts discipline. In addition, interdisciplinary approaches connecting the arts disciplines are facilitated by the way these connections are already built into the standards for the five artistic disciplines. Study and practice in two or more of the artistic disciplines is mutually reinforcing and demonstrates the underlying unity of the arts. Interdisciplinary approaches connecting the arts and other content areas enhance learning for students and support integrated and deeper learning. The Big Picture:
Philosophical Foundation and Lifelong Goals The Arts as Communication In today’s multimedia society, the arts are the media, and therefore provide powerful and essential means of communication. The arts provide unique symbol systems and metaphors that convey and inform life experience (i.e., the arts are ways of knowing). Artistically literate citizens use a variety of artistic media, symbols, and metaphors to independently create and perform work that expresses and communicates their own ideas and are able to respond by analyzing and interpreting the artistic communications of others. The Arts as Creative Personal Realization Participation in each of the arts as creators, performers, and audience members (responders) enables individuals to discover and develop their own creative capacity, thereby providing a source of lifelong satisfaction. Artistically literate citizens find at least one arts discipline in which they develop sufficient competence to continue active involvement in creating, performing, and responding to art as an adult. The Arts as Means to Well-Being Participation in the arts as creators, performers, and audience members (responders) enhances mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Artistically literate citizens find joy, inspiration, peace, intellectual stimulation, meaning, and other life-enhancing qualities through participation in all of the arts. The Arts as Community Engagement The arts provide means for individuals to collaborate and connect with others in an enjoyable inclusive environment as they create, prepare, and share artwork that bring communities together. Artistically literate citizens seek artistic experiences and support the arts in their local, state, national, and global communities. The Arts as Profession Professional artists weave the cultural and aesthetic fabric of communities and cultivate beauty, enjoyment, curiosity, awareness, activism, and personal, social, and cultural connection and reflection. This fabric strengthens communities as a whole, enhances the lives of individuals, and inspires the global community. Artistically literate citizens appreciate the value of supporting the arts as a profession by engaging with the arts and by supporting the funding of the arts. Some artistically literate individuals will pursue a career in the arts, thereby enriching local, state, national, and global communities and economies. |
How to Read the Codes for the CA Arts Standards
Note: Certain Music Standards may have an additional code at the beginning to indicate proficiency.
For example: "Nov" = Novice Four Artistic Processes
1. Creating Conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work. 2. Performing, Presenting or Producing Performing (for Dance, Music, and Theatre) Realizing artistic ideas and work through interpretation and presentation. Presenting (for Visual Arts) Interpreting and sharing artistic work. Producing (for Media Arts) Realizing and presenting artistic ideas and work. 3. Responding Understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning. 4. Connecting Relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context. 11 Anchor Standards (aligned with the 4 Processes)
Creating 1. Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work. 2. Organize and develop artistic ideas and work. 3. Refine and complete artistic work. Performing, Presenting and Producing 4. Analyze, interpret, and select artistic work for presentation. 5. Develop and refine artistic work for presentation. 6. Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work. Responding 7. Perceive and analyze artistic work. 8. Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work. 9. Apply criteria to evaluate artistic work. Connecting 10. Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art. 11. Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding. Process Components, Enduring Understandings, and Essential Questions
Process components are the actions (expressed through verbs such as imagine, plan and make, evaluate, refine, present) that artists carry out as they complete each artistic process. These process components accompany clusters of performance standards. Students’ ability to carry out these actions empowers them to engage in the artistic process independently (NCCAS 2014, 16). Enduring understandings and essential questions focus on the big ideas and important understandings in arts education. They work together to support an inquiry-based approach to arts education, an approach emphasized in college- and career-ready standards across all the content areas. Enduring understandings are statements summarizing important ideas and core processes that are central to a discipline and have lasting value beyond the classroom. They synthesize what students should come to understand as a result of studying a particular content area. Moreover, they articulate what students should value about the content area over the course of their lifetimes. Enduring understandings also enable students to make connections to other disciplines beyond the arts. A true grasp of an enduring understanding is demonstrated by the student’s ability to explain, interpret, analyze, apply, and evaluate its core elements. Examples of enduring understandings across the arts disciplines for one artistic process and one anchor standard are shown in Table 4. Essential questions guide students’ inquiry into these enduring understandings. Reflecting differences in traditions and instructional practices between the arts, the specific enduring understandings and essential questions addressed by their standards also vary somewhat. |