The Arts for Learning Lessons Model
The Arts for Learning (A4L) Lessons Units are developed on principles of How People Learn* and the concept of Leveraged Learning. ** The design of an A4L Lessons Unit is guided by the IDEA model, with the letters serving as prompts to help students remember what is involved in each step. The sequence is:
- Identify and focus on the intended outcomes of the learning;
- Define existing knowledge and skills through teacher-led instruction and guided practice;
- Explore solutions as students accept responsibility for their own learning through independent cycles of artistic creation, reflection, revision and selection;
- Assess the solution through a culminating “Perform and Inform” presentation in which students show and explain their learning and connect it to other learning.
By using the IDEA model, students:
- “Learn how to learn” through the metacognitive process advocated in cognitive science research on How People Learn;
- “Leverage Learning” by drawing upon what is known to inform innovative new ideas for learning solutions;
- Transfer learning from teacher led to student acceptance of responsibility for their own learning;
- Develop learning and life skills that promote creativity, critical thinking and cultural awareness.
*How People Learn (HPL)
The HPL Framework represents the goal of creating a learning environment where all of the important factors that influence how people learn are present and in balance.
Developed under guidance of the National Research Council’s report on learning sciences titled How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School (National Academy Press, 2000).
There are four parts to the HPL Framework:
- Learner Centered involves:
- Students’ background knowledge
- Interests
- Social and cultural values
- Knowledge Centered involves:
- Providing rigorous content
- Helping students understand rather than simply memorize
- Community Centered involves:
- Fostering a collaborative learning community
- Building respect and connections beyond the classroom
- Assessment Centered involves:
- Reflection and Revision to enhance the quality of learning.
- Cycles of teacher-guided and then increasingly self-directed learning.
- Perform and Inform by reading selected texts, carrying out arts activities that require analysis of what was read, writing their own texts, and using an art form to present to others their understanding and ideas about the texts.
- Meta-cognitive skills for learning and for using what they know and can do.
 **Leveraged Learning, as used in the Arts for Learning Lessons, combines carefully selected arts strategies with important literacy objectives in reading and writing in such a way that the arts naturally enhance or “leverage” the literacy learning, or vice versa.
Arts for Learning Lessons “leverage learning” in four ways:
- Reinforcing prior learning;
- Devising new applications of prior learning;
- Developing new literacy skills built on prior learning;
- Utilizing learning in the arts to strengthen learning in literacy.
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