Songs, music, drama, role play, drawing, painting and various other art forms will soon be used in classrooms for teaching to make learning a joyful experience for children studying in elementary schools.

Setting the stage for a nation-wide effort to “re-orient” the existing school education system, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has formulated comprehensive guidelines and a framework for the integration of art in pedagogy to create an atmosphere of “experiential and joyful learning” in the classrooms.

They also provide a list of tools and techniques for the teachers to assess the students progress under the new pedagogy.

“Art Integrated Learning (AIL) is a teaching-learning model which is based on learning ‘through the arts’ and ‘with the arts’. It is a process where art becomes the medium of teaching-learning, a key to understanding concepts within any subject of the curriculum,” the NCERT noted in its 84-page guideline.

The council suggests that while all the education at this pre-primary stage should

be through arts like drawing, painting, clay modelling, singing, actions or movements, 90% of the curriculum at this stage must be art-oriented.

“While planning activities for this stage, focus should be on using locally available, age-appropriate materials such as pebbles, seeds and beads, leaves, flowers, sand, clay, seashells, feathers, wood sticks, tree barks, natural colors, etc” the guidelines suggest.

At the primary stage, arts should be integrated with all the subjects and used in schools as an approach for teaching and learning of different concepts.

“The art-integration in classes 1-3 and 4-5 should be 80 and 70 % respectively,” the guidelines state. At the upper primary stage, emphasis should be laid on the use of students’ own imagination and the development of their creative expressions.

Prior to its implementation as a pedagogical tool, the art integrated learning framework has been “field-tested” at different schools across the country for its viability and efficacy in making the teaching-learning process meaningful and joyful, it added.