Have you ever wondered how to make your lessons more engaging and interesting for students or maybe sometimes you struggle to keep students’ attention during the evening classes? Alternatively, you may be looking for some new ways to set a rapport in your classroom.

Art therapy can help a teacher to cope with all these issues.

Initially, this research area was under the monopoly of psychologists, as art therapy was primarily directed at diagnosis of psychological state of a person and its adjustment. However, nowadays art therapy has a broad range of application, especially in pedagogy.

Teachers can use different therapeutic activities to address a wide range of tasks. First of all, it is extremely useful in lowering the affective filter (complex of affective factors that accompany second language acquisition). Art therapy can reduce anxiety of students and boost their self-confidence. Therefore, students become more motivated and less afraid of making mistakes.

Secondly, art therapy can make your lesson more interesting and exciting. In the evening it is crucial to change the pace of the lesson as students quickly get tired, so this can be one of the possible solutions.

Thirdly, it creates an atmosphere of collaboration, as students share positive emotions. Consequently, art therapy can be used as a mean to create rapport.

Last but not least art therapy engages different kinds of multiple intelligence: visual, kinesthetic, tactile, and audial. Thus, it can enhance language acquisition for all types of learners.

Art therapy includes not only visual arts but also drama, musical therapy, fine and gross motor activities, fairytale therapy, etc. So you can use a variety of methods to achieve your goals.

Here are some ideas to use in your classroom (it is rather a canvas, which you can fill in with your ideas):

1) Collective drawing.

This technique can be used as a warm-up, revision activity for any vocabulary or grammar structures, as a lead-in, and as a part of elicitation ideas. Students will work together and thus set up good relationships. Moreover, it engages visual and tactile modes of learning and can be useful for revision of previous material.

You need a whatman and some drawing facilities (e. g. paint, pencils, flat pens).

Procedure

1. You have to set up a topic and a time-limit.
2. Students have to pass the paper and draw one item related to the topic (or it may be a collective cartoon).
3. After the picture is finished, you can use it in multiple ways – to discuss it, as a tool for a memory game, as a visualization of some topic, etc.

2) Fairytale therapy.

This activity can be used for practicing reading and speaking skills, and to learn new vocabulary. Fairytales engage students’ imagination and creativity and if acted include a kinesthetic type of multiple intelligence.

You need a printed fairytale or story (may be some additional pictures), prepared tasks or worksheets.

Procedure depends on a task.

You may ask students to fill in the gaps, to answer some projective questions, act out separate scenes or write an alternative ending of the story. It can be combined with the first activity if you ask students to make a visualization of a story.

3) Mind maps

This technique is useful for revising previous material, consolidation of knowledge, and elicitation ideas.

You need paper and some drawing facilities (e. g. paint, pencils, flat pens).

Procedure

1. You have to set up a topic and a time-limit.
2. Students work individually and draw everything that they remember which is connected to the topic. It might be a diagram, a grid or collage, whatever they choose.
3. Then you can make a discussion or TPS-activity.

To conclude, art therapy is an extremely useful and exciting technique that can address various pedagogical problems. Moreover, it is equally useful for children and adults.