Masks, 5th Grade

I have done this lesson many times, and students always love it.  I begin by showing students examples of Native American masks.  Students then create a animal, monster, or alien mask to represent their alter ego.  This year my students had to write an artist statements to explain their work.

Portraits, 5th Grade

These portraits were created by my fifth graders.  The focus of this lesson was on using the correct proportions of the human face.

Overall, I think these turned out great.

Family Portraits, 2nd Grade

 This lesson was focused on families.  Students drew their families, their home, and some drew their neighborhoods.  I asked students to focus on overlapping.  This overlapping brought depth to their drawing.  I found the idea for this lesson on the blog Apex Art.

 I think these turned out wonderful.

My Two Sides, 4th Grade

 I have been trying to teach differently this year.  Instead of focusing solely on skill based art lessons, I am now attempting to take a more meaningful approach to teaching art.  This year my lessons will be focusing on the theme, My Place in This World.  The idea is to have students create art that relate directly to their life, their experiences, their feelings, and their world.

My fourth graders spent about a month working on these paintings. In this lesson, students created a self portrait that shows both who they are on the outside, and how they feel on the inside.  In order to understand the meaning behind their art, I am having all 2nd through 5th graders write artist statements about their work.

I really like these, and my students are very proud of their creations.  I am still learning to loosen up my teaching style, and allow for more creativity, but I think this was a good start to this years theme.

School Starts Tomorrow

 School starts tomorrow, and my art room is ready.  This will be a busy school year because I will be teaching art full time as well as working on my thesis for my master's degree.  I will try to keep this blog updated as much as possible through this crazy busy school year.

In my school, I teach 6 classes a day for 35 minutes each.  I see a total of 30 different classes each week.  Keeping track of all my students is probably the biggest challenge of my job. Organization is the key to survival in my classroom.

 I did about four bulletin boards in our hallway this school year, and here is a picture of two of them.

In order to maintain order in my classroom, I utilize a voice level chart, and students earn "Art Dollars" for good behavior.  Four times a year students get to spend their art money on prizes.

Summer at Boston University

I have been working on a Master's degree through Boston University.  Most of the classes are online. However, this summer, I went to Boston to take a few studio courses.   I took two classes: Wire Sculpture and Printmaking.  All of these techniques were wonderful to learn, however in order to apply them to my elementary classroom, I will need to simplify the techniques and materials.

 This is the wire sculpture I created during my time at Boston. This was a very time consuming process because it involved twisting and bending thick sharp wire.  If I were to do this with my elementary students, I would need to use softer wire.

 We created a variety of monoprints during my time in Boston.  This monoprint was created with water-soluble crayons on plexiglass, which was then printed on wet paper. This process can also be done with oil paints or watercolors.  While I don't have a press in my elementary classroom, I would be able to do a version of this by simply rubbing with a spoon.

 This was a woodcut I created.  The colors were added by printing several times using stencils to block out the parts I didn't want inked.  While woodcutting would be inappropriate for my elementary classroom, a similar process could be done with styrofoam or E-Z cut.

This last one was a pronto print.  It was created by printing a photo on pronto paper using a laser jet printer.  Then I used a brayer, and added ink directly to the pronto paper. Next, I used a wet sponge and wiped the pronto paper.  It was printed using a press.  I am not sure if this is doable for my elementary students.  I will have to see if this process works without a press first.