Lessons for All Abilities

Students who are gifted and students who are disabled are going to be a part of the art classroom some students in these situations may be incorporated into the regular art classroom depending on what resources the school has available for you. There may not be a separate gifted and talented program class or a separate class for students with disabilities. Instead art teachers need to be able to set each child up for success in the classroom. So there may need to be a little more explaining or tweaking of the lesson plan for those students with disabilities, and for the gifted students there may need to be an extra challenge involved for them if they finish early. Take for example the gesture drawing that we did early in the blog series...

AND WE’RE BACKING IT UP!

        Yes! This gesture drawing blog entry! Take this gesture drawing lesson for example, some students are going to just gesture away. However! There may be students in your class who have a physical disability that prevents them from being able to control their motor function well; this lesson may actually be great for them! This could mean an exploration of movement and not having to control the movement.

What about for a student with an emotional disturbance? Well we might not want to give them the yard stick immediately if they get frustrated easily. See below. But they can still participate and you can gauge their level of frustration, and ability. You know your students best!

What about this lesson for a gifted or talented student? How can we challenge that student that needs to go beyond? For a gifted student a way to adapt this lesson is to make the student capture a range of movement in the gesture. Obviously you’ll have to break out your modeling skills. (or not) By getting a fellow student to partner up or get your gifted students to challenge each other with the competition of poses. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8PWg8pYST0

Also, here is an awesome video on Art Lessons for Children with Disabilities. There is a lot on younger children and this blog primarily focuses on secondary school age but, a lot of the information is still applicable!