Drawing the Line(s and dots)

I can't be sure but I'm fairly confident in making the assumption that ALL classes love art. My memory of art at primary school was that it involved coloured paint and cartridge paper. It was all very practical and, if I'm completely honest, left this super nerdy kid wanting more. I enjoyed it, but wanted to know more about the artists, the techniques, how to show variation in shading, about different styles and periods... Which all leads me to the Australian Curriculum's version of the Visual Arts.

The Australian Curriculum website says:

Learning in Visual Arts involves students making and responding to artworks, drawing on the world as a source of ideas. Students engage with the knowledge of visual arts, develop skills, techniques and processes, and use materials as they explore a range of forms, styles and contexts.

Through Visual Arts, students learn to reflect critically on their own experiences and responses to the work of artists, craftspeople and designers and to develop their own arts knowledge and preferences. They learn with growing sophistication to express and communicate experiences through and about visual arts. (Visual Arts Overview, Australian Curriculum, accessed September 6th, 2015.)

This actually describes exactly what I wanted as a child. Now, as a teacher, I'm excited to be working within this framework.

Our school is lucky enough to have an onsite Art specialist teacher with whom each class has one lesson per week; clearly not long enough to teach the entirety of the five subjects within the Arts Learning Area.  I probably shouldn't be so excited by this but I am. I HAVE to teach Art. Oh darn. What a shame!  *Happy dance*

Earlier this term, I  guided my kiddos through a short unit of learning in Visual Arts about line and shading.   I started the unit without telling the class what we were going to be learning about. Sounds a bit odd but just go with me for a moment.  I shared four artworks with the kiddos and asked them to pick the odd one out, and to justify their choice.  Which do you choose? Why?

All images are taken from the public domain.

There are, of course, as many different answers as there are people in the conversation. I was looking for some group consensus though about the use of line to create shading. There are a couple of very cluey (and arty) kiddos in the class who started asking questions and requesting to look at the images up close. Without much help from me the class concluded that the burger was the odd one out because it as no shading and is made from all block colours.  It took them about 5 minutes of free discussion to come to this conclusion. How fantastic!

We moved on to look closely at hatching, crosshatching and stippling as the three main ways of using line to shade (as exemplified in the pieces above). Lots more discussion, viewing images and having a go. We rounded out our first session by coming up with a definition of the technique and creating a sampler of 3D shapes using these three techniques.  Just as my personal tip to you all: the sound of 25 pencils all tapping repeatedly on tables is not for the faint of heart or sore of head. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Art working wall at the end of our first session.

The following week we started with a 'Silent Word Shuffle' (first time I'd ever done one with my class). I didn't put any restrictions on using iPads or the working wall to work out the categories and so there was a very high sense of engagement. The kiddos knew they could figure it out - even if they had to struggle to get it. Perfect example of encouraging a growth mindset!

We moved through a range of learning activities, and then I showed the class some examples of student work to inspire them in developing the success criteria for their art piece. (I have to admit here that I have completely lost the url of the website on which I found this student work.  If it is yours or belongs to someone you know PLEASE tell me so that I can credit you, and find the website again because it was brilliant!)

We constructed this project design using a democratic
process that ensured all voices were included.
You can see how closely our project mirrors the example.

Here are some of the final projects.

Student line and shading art work from Markeeta Roe-Phillips

The kiddos presented their finished pieces on the big screen at a whole school assembly. I'm not sure whether the big screen or the actual art itself  but my kiddos were very chuffed with the repeated 'oohs' and 'aaaahs' from the the junior primary children.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

Picture Clues or Clue Pictures?

I take LOTS of photos while I'm teaching. I take photos of kiddos to share with them (and eventually their parents), I take photos of evidence of learning (often for the kiddos to print and glue in their workbooks), I take photos of processes we're working on, I take photos of assessment products (to grade later at home, or just to have on hand later), I take photos of things I find funny, I take photos of books I want to remember, I take... Well, you get the picture. (Ha! No pun intended, honestly!)

The upshot is that I have a BUCKETLOAD of photos that aren't necessarily all 'keepers'. I need to develop a system for sorting them quickly, but until then I'll continue using Evernote (when I remember) or just making folders (also when I remember and have time). All of this is my way of saying that today whilst going through some photos I found some photos from a lesson that was great fun and full of fantastic discussions. (My husband would tell you that me taking a long time to get to the point and visiting various other points along the way is NOT unusual. Meh. I'm cool with it, I know when I need to rein it in.)

So here they are anyway.

I used this lesson with the same Reception group you may remember from my second space adventure. We'd been talking about using clues in pictures to help us understand a story so I decided to give them part of a picture and let them tell the story by making the rest of of the picture. I had a range of animal images with more or less detail and directed children accordingly. I was fortunate enough to have SSO classroom support during this lesson and so we were able to offer quite individualised support to our students with special needs. The results were all fantastic... Here are three.

I love that this fish was leading the rest
 of his school to school. 

This giraffe was eating and swimming. Very clever!

It was cloudy,  so this lion was looking
at the sky to see if was going to rain.

Here is the original pinterest post that inspired this lesson. (Yep, another pinterest inspired lesson. Sense a theme developing?)

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities
Standard 1.6 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability.
Standard 3.3 Use teaching strategies  

Fractured circles

Robert Delaunay, 1912-1913,
Premier Disque
Private collection

Another art lesson I enjoy teaching on relief days is called Fractured Circles. Well, that's my name for my version of this activity because it reminds me of a series of quilts my mother made with the same name. It's based very loosely on a number of paintings by Robert Delauney, an artist who helped introduce colour into Cubism.

Fractured circles is another simple activity that can be finished in one session with loads of potential for expansion. The finished products look great on their own but even better displayed as a group.

The premise is quite simple: the children each create an artwork of concentric circles which are then cut into quarters and swapped with other children. The resulting artworks are all connected but also fractured. The class I was teaching the day we created the art in the photos had a broad range of fine motor development and so there was a range of support given in that regard. The concept of the patterns continuing around the whole circle also required a LOT of discussion.

I've created templates that I'm happy to share (just leave a comment and I'll email it to you - I'm still trying to learn how to link to a document... tips are also most welcome).

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students

Standard 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities

Standard 2.1 Content & teaching strategies of the teaching area 

Standard 3.5 Use effective classroom communication

Standard 4.1 Support student participation

Positive and negative space

I spent two fascinating days relieving in a grade 2 class right at the end of last term.  Amongst some other cool teaching and learning activities we made positive and negative space art pieces.  They were great fun to make and look fantastic.  

As you might have come to expect, the inspiration for this came from Pinterest (here).  I pinned this some time ago and promptly forgot that there were instructions. When the time came to use the idea I just ran with the visual image and 'had a go'. Oh well. Ours are a little different!

I started the lesson by introducing the concept of positive and negative space in images on the interactive whiteboard. (I found this website helpful to refresh my understanding of the art concepts.) We pointed out negative space in the images around the room and talked about how important it is to forming the positive images we see.  I demonstrated the very first steps of the project and talked explicitly about my expectations. We also talked about symmetry (the shape needed to be symmetrical and drawn with the axis of symmetry on the fold mark so that it could be easily cut out) and patterns (I asked for the coloured paper to be covered in an artistic pattern).

Being a grade 2 class the range of fine motor skill development was quite wide. You may be able to see the range of complexity in the patterns the children created. The challenge of cutting out the shapes amused the whole class for a few minutes, before becoming quite challenging for some children. I helped those who needed extra support with both the cutting and positioning of their positive and negative spaces. 

This particular lesson worked well in a relief situation for a number of reasons:

• It was reasonably quick so we could start and finish it in one session.
• It's not a messy activity requiring huge quantities of resources.
• It introduced and developed understanding of an important and discrete art concept.
• It allowed all students to be successful.
• It could be linked to other maths concepts (symmetry, pattern etc.) very easily.
• It could be used to look at other art concepts (colour etc.) easily.

I can see myself repeating this lesson with other classes. Do you have a  great relief art lesson you re-use?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students

Standard 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities

Standard 2.1 Content & teaching strategies of the teaching area 

Standard 3.5 Use effective classroom communication

Standard 4.1 Support student participation

Alphabet posters

I had a contract earlier this year with, as I mentioned last time, a group of wonderful 5 year old people. I walked into this class with no background knowledge other than 'their regular teacher was away on a cruise and the teacher originally booked to cover this period had a family tragedy and was, at the last minute, unable to take the class'. I had all of one day to prepare so our first day together was a whirlwind of formative assessment couched as getting to know you activities.

I'll admit that I found my first day in this class terrifying! Aside from walking in with only generic plans (and feeling woefully under-prepared), these children had already experienced a week of a relief teacher and come from a community that doesn't welcome strangers particularly readily.  Let's just say that they didn't share my enthusiasm for getting to know each other. And why should they? They already knew each other!

That being said, we pretty quickly settled into a routine of morning literacy and numeracy blocks.  We ran explicit class discussions followed by 5-6 work stations through which the children moved.  Several mornings each week I was incredibly lucky enough to have in-class support for the two children with special needs. This allowed me to work with small groups in 'guided reading' type activities. (In as much as guided reading is possible with children who are still in the early days of letter/word recognition.)

One of all of our favourite literacy stations was creating alphabet posters. We made a few varieties ranging from cutting jumbled letters and pasting them into order, to a space themed poster (letters were written on stars and planets) during our space week.

Everyone's favourite poster was inspired by a pin that you can see here. (What a surprise that I found inspiration on Pinterest!!!) It was basically a grid with each 'hole' containing a letter written in a different colour crayon and painted with a water colour wash.

 It's not a particularly difficult process but it does take lots of patience because there are a few steps.

1. Draw the grid. (I draw one before class and photocopied it because I know myself well enough to admit that I simply do NOT have the patience to have helped every child with theirs individually, and also to admit that I'm a perfectionist and wanted these to have reasonably regular grids.)
2. Write the letters in each hole. We wrote ours in pencil first and then traced over with crayon but if you're brave confident enough you could go straight to crayon.
3. Trace over the grid lines with crayon. (I had to help some of my little guys with this because drawing along the edge of a ruler actually requires quite some fine motor control.)
4. Carefully paint each grid hole with different coloured watercolour paint. If you're a perfectionist (like me... Are you starting to sense that this was not the best project choice for me?) then it's best to walk away at this point because if you're working with 5 year olds they WILL use too much water/paint and the colours WILL mix. I worked REALLY hard to keep smiling and calmly repeat "not too much water, wipe your brush on the edge" over and over and over and over... In the end the children did a marvellous job and I was able to breathe easily again.

 When I photocopied the grids I also trimmed the pages a little so that I could mount them on coloured paper more easily. We thought they looked great.

What's your favourite alphabet art activity?


(Art Projects for Kids is the blog where this project was originally published and is quite brilliant, but I suggest you make a cup of tea and pull up a comfy chair because it's a treasure trove so you'll want to settle in for an afternoon of oohing and ahhing!)

Shooting for the stars Mach 2.

Some of you may remember that I taught a unit of work about space to a group of reception children last year. I loved it. They loved it. Happy dances all around.  (If you can't remember, or never read about it, you can here.) Since then I've put together a much more involved grade 5 unit of work on space and have pinned about 9 gazillion awesome space resources (they're spread through my Classroom Coolness: Science board if you're interested). I've also revisited my reception unit of work with another class.

Let me set the scene: towards the end of the third week of a four week contract, in another reception class, the students were using their bodies to make letter shapes and I was using my tablet to capture their attempts. The students reviewed the photos and modified their letters as they saw fit. Being five years old these students were, naturally, curious to see the other photos on my tablet and so they stumbled upon the photos of my first space unit*. (Remember those cool photos of the children creating a solar system with their bodies? That's what piqued my class' interest.) 

"Why did you teach them about space? When are you going to teach us?"

Well there's actually no answer to those questions that are acceptable to most 5 year olds!  We had one more week together and no pre-arranged commitments so I threw caution (and my plans) into the wind and announced that the following week was to be Space Week. 

We completely immersed ourselves in learning about space, becoming space explorers who visited at least two planets a day. We read, wrote and drew about stars and planets. We created art work and made human models of the solar system. It was, like last time, a fantastic experience.  

How was it different to last time?

1. We concentrated on Space (to the exclusion of everything else) for one week instead of focusing on it for a session a day over four weeks. There are advantages to both, but I understand that this way is certainly not often possible or desirable.
2. The students were much younger (mostly in their first (or second for a couple) term of reception) and so relied more heavily on me for guidance with their writing. 
3. The prior knowledge was much lower, so I started very differently. I used a community of inquiry approach to determining the prior knowledge. The students LOVED this experience because I talked it up as something that we, as teachers, use to share our understanding. They really stepped up to the plate and made sure their contributions were well considered. (If you've never used the community of inquiry method, here's a good place to check it out.)



Our inflatable solar system.

4. I approached the learning from a narrative perspective. Each day we climbed inside our space ship, put on our space helmets, buckled our belts etc., before zooming off to the next planet. I hung an inflatable solar system in our room so that we knew which planet we were looking for each trip. As we pulled up our space ship we made observations about what we imagined we could see and record these. We compared our observations with recorded information on posters, in books and on websites. We were often surprised at what we learned in these comparisons.
5. There was less writing (although we wrote plenty - more than for the whole other three weeks put together!) and more art. These children LOVED their art. Check out some of these amazing solar systems they created.
   
   And some of the wall hangings:
   
   
   
6. We went outside to create our solar system rather than drew it on the carpet. (Don't get me wrong: using chalk on the carpet is an amazing use of a very under-utilised space and we did loads of carpet drawing in this particular class BUT it was a sunny day so we went outside. Where better to pretend to be the sun than out in the sunshine?)
7. Our leadership team bought into our explorations and often popped into the classroom to see which planet we were visiting. The children LOVED sharing their learning and showing off how much they'd learnt. (I loved watching them share their learning and showing off how much they'd learnt EVEN more than they enjoyed doing it.)
8. We were able to share our learning with the other junior primary classes who all came to see our space journals, solar system hats, solar system wall hangings and art during one big exposition on the final day. Boy were we proud!

So, whilst it felt a little like I was cheating (because I was able to recycle a bunch of my resources and planning) my second space unit was really quite different.  I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to teach an older group about some space related topic. It's such a fun topic!

How do you teach about the solar system and space?

*I only use my tablet at school and am very careful around which photos remain accessible in this way.

Artists in the making...

Met oorverband
Vincent Van Gogh 1889
Courtauld Institue of Art, London

At the end of last year, I taught a short unit about Vincent Van Gogh. Very short! In just under two weeks we learnt a little about him as an artist and person, viewed a number of his pieces and recreated one. Well, we didn't so much as recreate it as use his style to create our own.

Van Gogh is a great artist to look at in terms of engaging student interest. For a start he was mad! Not in the wearing funny clothing and liking alternative music way but in the needing professional support way. The children in my class were quite savvy about issues around mental health and were all very curious to know exactly what he was experiencing. Of course, we'll never know for sure but these students had plenty of suggestions (most of them sensible).

And of course, building on this point: cutting off a body part to send as a token of affection aimed at winning back an old girlfriend is always likely to capture the attention of middle primary students. Yep, that's the story they heard and ran with... Let me share that they didn't hear this story from me but another staff member at the school who was visiting our room at the time. My version, whilst not quite as exciting, seems to be the prevailing belief in the art world at the moment though: he'd been drinking with Gauguin and suffered from something like an epileptic fit brought on by the absinthe and accidentally cut off his ear. I'm pretty sure they'd have enjoyed that story too! 

Following this discussion we listened to Starry, Starry Night. (As proof that my husband is correct in claiming that I rarely listen to the words of the songs I enjoy, I never realised that Starry Starry Night was about Van Gogh. Yep, I just admitted that publicly. I'll never live it down now.)  

We viewed and discussed a range of art in small groups and discovered that over time the colour palate changed and so did the subject matter. I found outlines of a number of pieces so that we could see the way Van Gogh used lines to create movement and shape. 

 Stilleben mit 12 Sonnenblumen
Vincent Van Gogh 1888
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Examining the sunflowers

Finally, we moved to our own creation. It was early summer at the time so the husband who'd laughed so mightily at my earlier ignorance redeemed himself by having sunflowers delivered to our classroom for us to examine before and as we created our own versions of  Van Gogh's Sunflower series.








I purchased a canvas for each child so that we could double up and use these as the end of year gifts for the families. (In a school with such high enrollments of children from religious backgrounds other than Christianity I was pretty keen to send home a gift that wasn't exclusively about Christmas.) I guided the children through the drawing of the horizontal line and a rough vase shape and then encouraged them to create their own interpretations.

I'd never heard such quiet painting!

Cooperation in colour blending.

The children rotated through our wet area in small groups in almost absolute silence as they painted their sunflowers. They cooperated to mix paints, and shared beautifully. It was an absolute joy to watch.  (And terrifying at the same time, the potential for trouble was HUGE!)

Most children chose to outline and add detail to their painting with a fine black pen.

 Each painting is unique yet remains a tribute to Van Gogh's work as inspiration.  Here is just a small selection of the finished works.

 Pretty amazing aren't they?