TAB- Choice Based Art
TAB is an amazing method of art education that I have incorporated into my elementary school art classroom this year.
To truly understand how TAB-Choice Based Art works you would need to do lots of research and preparation but, just to give a bit of an an explanation: Tab stands for Teaching for Artistic Behavior. It is about teaching students how to think. It is about teaching an understanding of the artistic process. It is about letting the children make mistakes and move on from there. It is about allowing the children to do art that they are drawn to instead of what I as the teacher set out for them.
Giving the children choice of art through various centers is how they they begin to develop this artistic behavior as they explore and create with various media in the various art centers. One of the biggest issues some teachers may have with doing TAB is that you truly need to allow the children to create at the level they are capable of.
This means that you may not have really beautiful artwork to send home or to display from many of the children as the focus is on thinking, problem solving, discovering new media, deciding what they want to create art about, learning how to use the various media and techniques and creating beautiful artwork is something that takes time.
If you are a teacher that has no time to wait for this, needs uniformity and predictability, is not very flexible flexible, doesn't see yourself working with children individually then TAB-Choice Based Art is probably not be for you. You also cannot do Choice Based Art if you are teaching from a cart, you must have your own classroom to do this.
Below are various posts that show how I am running my centers along with resources for you to delve into it.
It is and continues to be an ongoing exciting journey for me as I discover more and more about TAB and its benefits for the children. It's a delight for the children as they revel in being able to choose the mediums they love to create with as they discover the many ways to be creative.
For more of my experiences as a new TAB teacher see posts below.