The Center for Educator Development in Fine Arts (CEDFA) is thrilled to present the Texas Fine Arts Summit XIV Presenters. The Presenters for this year’s summit were all members of the Texas Education Agency Fine Arts TEKS Review Committee. They were all nominated by the State Board of Education to serve on the review committee for their discipline. These presenters were at the table and have first hand knowledge of the procedures and policies that were followed in this process. They also were the ones that recommended innovative courses be taught by Fine Arts teachers and given Fine Arts credit. It is our honor to introduce our 2013 Texas Fine Arts Summit XIV Presenters.
Revised curriculum standards for all fine arts instruction for kindergarten through 12th grade received preliminary approval from the State Board of Education today (Feb 1, 2013). The curriculum standards outline the topics to be covered in art, music, dance and theater classes.
The current standards, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), have been in use in the state’s classrooms since 1998. Final approval of the revised standards is expected to occur at the board’s April 19 meeting. The updated standards will be used in classrooms beginning with the 2015-2016 school year.
The Online Registration for Music and Media Communications is now open. Register Here!
The University of Texas (UT) at Austin College of Fine Arts is partnering with the Texas Cultural Trust to offer an opportunity for high school music educators (band, choir, and orchestra) to explore the curriculum of a new innovative course, Music and Media Communications. This course has been approved by the Texas Education Agency as an innovative course that may serve as elective credit toward high school graduation. Furthermore, this innovative course has been included in the draft of the revised Fine Arts Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Music. If approved by the State Board of Education, Music and Media Communications will serve as fine arts credit toward high school graduation in addition to elective credit, effective the 2015-2016 school year.
In these three-hour professional development sessions, elementary or secondary science and math educators explore ways to use fine arts content and strategies to teach science or math objectives. These interactive face-to-face training sessions will involve participants in an inquiry-based learning experience using integrated model lessons designed by teams of fine arts and science or math educators. Each model lesson addresses a science or math concept with which many students struggle.Read More…
For more information about when this training opportunity will be in YOUR Regional Education Service Center follow this link to the CEDFA – Rider 42E Information Center.
A Harvard-based study has found that children who study a musical instrument for at least three years outperform children with no instrumental training – not only in tests of auditory discrimination and finger dexterity (skills honed by the study of a musical instrument), but also on tests measuring verbal ability and visual pattern completion (skills not normally associated with music).
While these results are correlational only, the strong predictive effect of training duration suggests that instrumental music training may enhance auditory discrimination, fine motor skills, vocabulary, and nonverbal reasoning. Alternative explanations for these results are discussed.
PLOS ONE publication archives of the October, 2008, report.
Download the PDF report
Children exposed to a multi-year program of music instruction involving training in increasingly complex rhythmic, tonal, and practical skills display superior cognitive performance in reading skills compared with their non-musically trained peers, according to a study published in the journal Psychology of Music. According to authors Joseph M. Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University, data from this study will help to clarify the role of music study on cognition and shed light on the question of the potential of music to enhance school performance in language and literacy.
The report is sponsored by the Dana Foundation Arts and Cognition Consortium. It is a collaboration of studies conducted by neuroscientists representing seven universities from across the United States pertaining to the association of arts training and higher academic performance. The consortium’s findings provide an understanding of the possible causal relationships between arts training and the ability of the brain to learn in other cognitive domains. The results of the studies should be helpful to students, parents, educators, and the general public in policy-making decisions as related to the importance of high quality arts education in our schools.
