Arts and Literacy

From the beginning, The Learning Alliance recognized that teaching children to read couldn’t be limited to phonics and worksheets. They believed integrating the arts—music, movement, visual expression, and performance—was essential to unlocking literacy, especially for children who had been historically underserved.

Over more than a decade, and with the dedicated work of arts integration specialists, they embedded the arts directly into the literacy curriculum—not as an add-on, but as a core strategy.

This episode explores how the arts ignite both learning and imagination by:

• Achieving high levels of student engagement and supporting brain development

• Using arts integration specialists to reinforce literacy goals through creative methods

• Activating multi-sensory learning—where children don’t just read words, they feel them

• Bringing language to life through theatre, storytelling, and performance

• Partnering with the local arts community to widen the circle of support and spark joy

In Indian River County, the arts aren’t extra—they’re essential. And in that creative space, reading becomes not just a skill, but an invitation.