School and Teacher Resources

TMA offers a wealth of materials and activities based on our collection and special exhibitions for preK-12 educators.

Enrich your teaching practice through workshops that explore intersections between visual literacy and core curriculum. Throughout the year, Museum offers a variety of professional development opportunities for pre K-16 educators.

Early childhood teacher professional development training is supported in part by Patricia Timmerman.

Materials for Educators

Teachers can use these downloadable resources to help bring the TMA collection into the classroom. Use these materials before and after your visit to prepare your students and extend the learning. These resources use hands-on, activity-based approaches to learning inspired by project-based learning models to share visual literacy with audiences of all ages.  At TMA, visual literacy is defined as being able to read, comprehend, and write visual language. The skills used for visual literacy are the same as those that are used for reading and writing text. Visual literacy skills foster critical thinking, problem solving, and development of empathy.

ABC’s of Art

The resources presented here are part of a workshop series called the ABC’s of Art designed for early childhood educators. These teacher resources provide early childhood educators with tools and teaching strategies to help preschool students pre-literacy development through art. Research has shown that when works of art are a part of arts-integrated efforts to teach language and literacy development, students develop new connections to the material by absorbing the visual content and translating it into new knowledge.

These resources will allow you to lead your students through a close looking exercise to introduce and practice using the Language of Art. WordShop is a 90-minute field-trip program for 3rd-5th grade students at the Toledo Museum of Art. The program aims to support students’ visual literacy and writing skills through explorations of the TMA collection. The Wordshop experience includes a pre-visit activity and post-visit materials to extend learning. Each activity is aligned to Ohio’s English Language Arts Learning Standards.

Pre-Visit

Post-Visit

The materials presented here are developed with middle school students in mind. The focus is on social studies, English language arts (ELA) and visual arts content. All lesson plans are aligned to the Common Core Standards.  Picturing History is a field trip program offered by the TMA for 6th-8th grade students. The program aims to support students’ visual literacy, historical thinking and writing skills through the exploration of the TMA collection.

Picturing History Teacher Resources

Summer Institute Teacher Resources

These resources are part of a workshop series called Art & …. Designed for K-12 educators. The materials presented here provide educators with tools and teaching strategies for cross-curricular and arts-integrated learning. Art, Geometry, Music, Optics, and Biology are the emphasis in these resources and are aligned with Ohio’s Learning Standards. Research has shown that cross- curricular teaching is an effective way to teach students transferable problem solving skills, give real-world meaning to school assignments, and increase engagement through meaningful connections.

Looking to introduce your little ones to the wonderful world of art but don't know where to start? TMA is here to help! Visit the Curiosity Corner; a video series featuring works of art from TMA's collection designed to help elementary school-aged kids become curious about art. In under 5 minutes, each fun and lively video focuses on one work of art from our collection, introducing art vocabulary, art history, close looking, and suggestions for at-home art projects. Showcasing a diverse selection of works by artists from different backgrounds, time periods, and cultures, Curiosity Corner will help turn your little ones into true Art Explorers!

Enrich your teaching practice through workshops that explore intersections between Visual Literacy and core curriculum. Throughout the year, the Museum offers a variety of professional development opportunities for pre K-16 educators.

Enrich your teaching practice through workshops that explore intersections between visual literacy and your core curriculum.

Summer 2023

Exploring a work of art’s story, symbolism, and context can shape our perceptions of the world. The Toledo Museum of Art’s week-long summer institute will help K-12 teachers develop skills and teaching strategies to facilitate their students’ investigations into Native American and African American perspectives and contributions to American History through visual culture.