This book offers new ways for classroom teachers to broaden the definition of literacy to include music, dance, poetry, and the visual arts. Information about incorporating the fine arts into the daily curriculum includes how teachers can help students use the fine arts as a bridge to reading and writing, and as a valid way of interpreting the world around them. Drawing on the work of Howard Gardner, Elliot Eisner, and others, the book investigates fine arts curriculum as viewed as a "methodology" for helping students interpret what they know and understand. It begins by describing the authors' own program: how they set up a learning environment conducive to the fine arts, how they reclaimed poetry as a natural response to learning, and how they focused upon drawing for understanding. The volume explains how, through immersion "workshops," students "get inside the skin" of creative artists and think about the unique ways these people approach learning. The book considers how students use music, dance, and the visual arts to develop multiple perspectives on their learning of science, mathematics, and the language arts; experiment with movement to interpret thinking; create student operas as a response to story; and live and work in workshop environments to view learning from the inside out. Chapters include: (1) "Building a Foundation"; (2) "Creating a Languages-Rich Environment with Music and Movement"; (3) "Poetry Immersion"; (4) "Art as a Visual Response"; (5) "Artist Workshop"; and (6) "Opera Workshop." Contains an epilogue, appendices, and extensive references. (BT)