Musicians In Motion - 5th Grade

In honor of Spring concert season, I wanted to find a way to support and celebrate the hard work that students are doing in their music classes at my school. I bookmarked this lesson after I spied it on the  Art with Mr. Hall blog and was reminded of it when I was recently perusing "The Music of Painting," an amazing book I happened upon at a used book store.  The book provides a fascinating overview of the links between modern art and music and got me thinking a lot about how easily these disciplines hold hands.

To demonstrate the long history of artists finding inspiration from musicians, I shared the following works with my kiddos:

Charlie Bird Parker, Jean-Michel Basquiat

Philip Glass, Chuck Close

Three Musicians, Pablo Picasso

Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol

I played a short clip of each artists music and asked the kids to relate the sounds they heard to the visual information that each portraits contained. Watching the kids listening to music was a hoot and it really worked to activate their interest. We spent an entire class observing and sketching musicians from contemporary music magazines I borrowed from the music teacher. When choosing our final composition layout I emphasized cropping, simplicity, and block coloration. We added rich color to our compositions using oil pastels.

Exquisite Brainstorming with Exquisite Students

This week marks the beginning of the final nine week term at the elementary school where I teach. The time has come for me to brace for the reality that one of the finest groups of students that I ever encountered is moving on up to the high school. The 6th graders (who were my 5th graders last year when I took this job) are a remarkable bunch. If the art room were a sailing ship, and I the captain, I would endorse this group as a 100% sea worthy crew!

This week's art class allowed for some extra time after finishing the Surrealist collages (previously blogged about here) so I decided to wrap things up with a Surrealist method of idea generating called "The Exquisite Corpse." This game/brainstorming technique is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled by working on a rotating basis as an artist team.

 

The students begin by folding a 12" x 18" piece of paper into thirds. I gave each student a piece of vine charcoal so they could work quickly to achieve areas of dark value and shadowy details. Students began by creating the top half of any noun of their choice: a person, animal, object, or machine. After seven minutes, I explained to students how to make guide marks for the next artist,  hide their drawing, and pass the folded paper clockwise to the next artist at the table. This artist was responsible for creating a midsection or torso, and in the final seven minutes, the third artist sketched in the lower third. In the last five minutes of class students received their original drawing back and added final details and value shading. We ended class with a informal "gallery walk." 

The gallery walk simply entails the students neatly lining all of their creations up on two large tables so we can pow-wow as a group and talk about what we made. I led the group through a few key questions:

1) When you came to art class today, did you expect you would create an artwork that resembled the artwork you ended up with?

2) How is working collaboratively on one piece of art with another student different from working alone?

3) What is your reaction to completing "The Exquisite Corpse" process? What surprised you about what someone else at your table drew?

 

One of my students remarked that he thought the impulsive drawings of his tablemate was "fascinating." "Fascinating!" You hear that folks? I just about jumped up on the table when he said it. One of my 6th graders was bold enough to say in front of a group of his peers that he was fascinated by the drawings of others. His comment inspired a smile so robust you could have purchased advertising space on my incisors!

 

 It is also of note that as the students worked, blocking in each third of their communal artworks, the art room was absolutely silent. I did not mandate "Voices off" or "No Talking" the students just sunk into the process and drew. Gasps of surprise, giggles, kudos broke the silence once the students opened up the drawing to see what was created. I got to pay witness to this act of discovery, the ultimate reward of a lesson well-received.

 

None of the aforementioned events would be possible without students that approach their work with an open mind-- and that is what I think I will miss most about this group of kids when they move on. Doing "The Exquisite Corpse" exercise made me ponder the definition of the word "exquisite." Exquisite can be defined as  "a special beauty or charm," "admirable," "of rare excellence of execution," and "keenly responsive." All of these definitions seem apt descriptions of this group. It is so inspiring to be around students who are thirsty for knowledge, contemplative, and just over all really pleasant to be around.

Sometimes students teach their teachers things. During my first two years of teaching here in a new place these students where able to leave me with a few big ideas I won't soon forget.

1. Adopt a fearless attitude towards new things and you will never feel regret.

2. When you feel overwhelmed-- laugh, try to relax, and have fun.

3. The world is your oyster if you want it to be.

Assessment: Kindergarten Self-Portraits

One of my goals this year was to document the way I assess my students' artwork. I try to avoid assessing artwork solely on project completion but strive to find creative ways to measure understanding. I thought I'd share my thought process behind a very simple portrait lesson I tried with Kindergarten this year. I use the Getty Museum lesson planning template because the

Learning Objective-----> Activity-------> Assessment

trajectory is a logical thought process to me. They have a great "Lesson Building by Grade" which I find very helpful which you can access by clicking here.

Below are a few of the big ideas that I used to teach my Kindergarteners the basics of portraiture.

1) Learning Objective: Students learn about the life and work of an artist and speculate about his or her artistic intention in a given work.

Activity: Through guided looking, students learn about the life and portraiture of Frida Kahlo by viewing her iconic "Portrait with Bonito." Students then examine "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear" by Vincent Van Gogh and speculate about his artistic intention.

Assessment: Students can formulate a theory about why a single element or image is included in a work of art and support their theory either with information from the artist's biography, or information found in other works of art by the same artist.

2) Learning Objective: Students identify and categorize art into different genres and categories.

Activity: Students work in groups to sort a deck of art print cards into portrait and non-portrait categories.

Assessment: Students who can accurately sort their card piles demonstrate a thorough understanding of the portrait genre. Students who successfully sort less than half of the card deck need more practice.

African-Inspired Metal Tooling Masks

   I first learned about the art of repoussé or metal tooling when examining a copy of Tutankhamun's burial mask during a touring exhibit I visiting when I was in high school. It was hard for me to imagine such delicate work was done on one solid piece of gold. "How in the world did the Egyptians do that?" I wondered. It wasn't until a few years later while doing my student teaching, I had the opportunity to try my hand at the process. I found the meticulous balance between gentle and firm to be quite meditative and I thought it would be a really great project to try with my current group of 6th graders. When I found these encouraging examples from the There's A Dragon in My Classroom Blog, I budgeted for some 36 gauge metal and the rest was art room history!

    The goals of this lesson were to tool (push or pull) the metal from both the front and the back, to create a mask that showed symmetry, and to use a variety of textures and patterns within the design. Students were shown a variety of masks that were representative of twelve different tribes in Africa. A brief PowerPoint presentation demonstrated the different ceremonial uses of the masks. We contrasted the way masks are used in American culture (holidays, theater, safety) to African culture (communal ceremonies for various rites of passage, ancestral communication, blessings, hunting expeditions, celebrations, and funerals.) The students were asked to use the visual references as a jumping off point but to instill the mask with their own creativity.

   Students added color highlights to the mask with Sharpies and then emphasized the relief and depth of the masks by using a burnishing technique using black Acrylic paint. Students used raffia and wooden beads as a textural complement their metal work.

 

Medieval Architecture

 So the new music teacher at my school, Mrs. G,  is ridiculously good and does great work. This Spring she will be doing a concert with 1st & 3rd grade. A common theme in both plays is fairy tales. I've gotten a jump start on making some artwork that will serve as a backdrop for the stage where the students perform their songs.

The first project introduced 2nd graders to one of my favorite subjects: architecture. Castles were private homes built in the Middle Ages which started around 1000 A.D. They were different from regular homes of the time because they were made of stone instead of wood or plaster and they were fortified.

We focused on the different parts of a castle including crenelations, parapets, the keep, moats, and dungeons. While castles continued to be built well into the 1700's improved cannon fire made them more prone to attacks. Contrary to popular belief, castles were actually uncomfortable and undesirable places to live! In the 1800's castles started being built for the purpose of aesthetic beauty instead of military use.

I got the inspiration for this project from this post on Deep Space Sparkle. We used small rectangle sponges to make brick prints. I asked students to make sure they staggered their prints like a real mason does to make their walls strong. I wanted each castle to have a background so we used chalk pastels blended with a paper towel to whip up a simple sky.

 Students added details like windows, doors, knights, and trees using left over paste paper from a previous project and metallic paper. I absolutely love the results!

Unbeweavable Weavings

January has been a very productive month in the art room for 6th grade. We have been mastering the art of weaving by working on these woven pouches for four weeks! Inspired by this delightful and thorough weaving tutorial I found on Cassie Stephens' Blog this summer, I introduced this project to my 6th graders the first week back from school after holiday break. It didn't take the students very long to start referring to the pouches as handmade iPhone covers. Geniuses, I tell you, geniuses!

The project objectives were simple. By the end of this project I wanted students to be able to:

1) Identify the meaning of loom, warp, and weft.

2) Understand and use the “under, over” technique of weaving.

3) Create a functional weaving using materials, colors, and patterns that describe them as a person. 

For this project I cut my cardboard looms to 3.5" x 10." I told the students to weave the body of their pouch to a length somewhere between 4-7" and the flap anywhere between 2-3." In order to accomplish these lengths I did allow students the option to take their looms home to weave. Every single one of my students took me up on this offer which was mega thrilling! I gave each students a paperclip to weave with since I couldn't send them home with a weaving needle. This project was enjoyed by boys and girls alike. Our work sessions were almost silent because the students got so into it.

Additionally, the students all will walk away having learned how to thread a needle, stitch, and end a stitch which is a skill almost none of them had experience with before encountering this project.

Project Runway: Art Teacher Edition

Today I finally got to unveil my "Persistence of Memory" costume. It was, for the most part, a success though I did have a few Kindergarteners who I passed the in hallway ask me if I was going as a banana tree!?  My 5th and 6th graders recognized the iconic artwork so it was a good opportunity to teach them a few things about Salvador Dali and Surrealism. A fourth grader suggested I should have worn a Dali-esque glue mustache to complete the look.  C'est bonne idee, mon ami!

So I found out that sewing a garment is super hard. I tried my best to harness the spirit of Demetri from last season's Project Runway and bit of the shutspa of fellow art teacher blogger/vintage textile artist, Cassie Stephans, but oh my, a seamstress I am not. 

I think I had the most fun building and painting the puffy sculptural clocks. I do like sewing free-form objects, but as for the dress I was quite afraid I was going to bust a seam reaching down to pick up paper scraps! It was a wild day, as Halloween days at school usually are. Here's to you, Salvador Dali, you are too cool.