Inside the Art Classroom by Elyse Jordan

Although some may think art would be the easiest content area for the ELL student, this is not the case.  Art is a universal language, but it can be deeply steeped in the culture of the host country.  An example of this is the art of Diego Rivera and Rita Kahlo.  Also there is still a language barrier with art instruction.  As with any subject matter there is specific content matter and technique to be mastered, and one has to overcome the language barrier to be successful with this.

Teaching art to the ELL student is a double-sided coin.  ELL students can see the artwork, and analyze it.  A picture of a chair is still a chair in any language.  These students however may have difficulty explaining what they see, and using the technical terminology becomes another obstacle.  Students are required to have preconceived ideas of the culture and the symbolism that may be associated with the host country in order to analyze works of art.  In this way, art may be a great teaching tool for the ELL student.

Art can be taught collaboratively with another subject matter.  Art can be used to greatly increase the understanding of the subject matter as well as the language.  Having students draw pictures of the concepts you are talking about helps aid in this.  If you are teaching an art class on figure drawing, it would be beneficial to collaborate with the English Language Arts teacher to come up with subject matter for said students.  For example, they could be assigned more specifically to draw a scene out of whatever the literature was they were reading in class at the time.  To collaborate with science, they could be asked to create a collage of a cell or other applicable structure.  Scaffolding activities in this way could greatly help break down language barriers.

Art can be used as a great assessment tool as well.  One might not think the student is learning anything, but we cannot be absolutely sure this is the case.  Language may be the barrier that is keeping the student from doing work, or doing it correctly.  Students that do poorly in the way of written assignments or reading assignments may shy away from completing them because of the difficulty.  If we as art teachers collaborate with other content area teachers, or encourage our colleagues, we might find more assignments getting done.  We also may find the students have a much better understanding of the content than we originally thought.  We as art teachers could and should be advocates for our ELL students.  They have a lot they could bring to our classroom.

In the same sense, we want to nurture the native culture of the student.  Art can be a great vehicle for this learning as well.  Art is very much about cultural awareness and understanding.  A lesson plan could be created to assign different countries to different students.  You could have students create a work of art to represent that culture.  Students could learn a lot and we could nurture the culture of the ELL student in this way. 

Resources:

 Goldberg, Merryl, “Using the Arts to Support English Language Learners” http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/how-to/supporting-individual-needs/supporting-ell-with-the-arts.aspx