Abstract

According to the Ohio Academic Content Standards for Social Studies “...effective social studies necessitates an interdisciplinary approach because inquiry into any real-world matter related to citizenship is holistic and multidisciplinary in nature.” As a university professor of students who will become art teachers, one of my goals is that they learn to make holistic learning connections between the visual arts and other school subjects. This paper will describe an in-depth research project in which I collaborated with a 6th grade teacher of youngsters in a low income, primarily nonwhite, urban neighborhood. Drawing and other hands-on activities were used to enhance learning of the teacher’s interdisciplinary social studies curriculum. Outcomes of these learning activities and recommendations for thematic approaches to cross-curriculuar learning are reported.