“So what is “Arts Integration” anyway?”  Have you heard this from a fellow parent or even wondered yourself?  St. Anthony Catholic School is a member of the Mississippi Whole School Initiative and has be awarded grant money to further implement an arts integrated approach that enhances student engagement and develops our goal of increased critical thinking and problem solving for our students.  Although many may confuse arts integration as just art activities added to regular instruction to make it more appealing or fun. It is NOT!  For St. Anthony, arts integration is about the actual teaching of all standards not just in isolation but tandum with and connecting to other subject areas and real-life.  Arts integration allows the students and teachers to explore and engage the arts to create expressions and demonstate mastery of student learning. But more importantly, “arts integration requires critical thought and original research when activated around big ideas, challenging themes and interesting questions that bring the content standards to life.”  No wonder St. Anthony scored in the 80th percentile nationally on the Standard Achievement Test in Thinking Skills.

Old Testament Figurative Sculpture

6th grade students demonstrated their skills developed previously in science & art class as they created three-dimensional figurative sculptures representing contour and proportion of the human body.  During religion class, the students manipulated the scultures to represent the historical figures within the Old Testament.  Students added details and specific content so that the individual figures could be easily identified.