Making Connections!

I love gathering ideas and using social media to connect with educators, bloggers and artists from around the world. To continue the sharing, here are a few helpful and interesting links that I have found during my explorations!

15 Reasons Why Artists Keep Visual Journals A great article from the School of Media Arts about visual journals and why they are useful and important. I really like #5: Style is a process of evolution.

French and Spanish Earth Day Resource and Videos Liz's Lessons is a fabulous blog filled with resources and ideas for second language classrooms. With Earth Day approaching quickly, I really like the environmental videos that are found on this blog. Some of the resources on this blog cost money, but they are well worth it.

100+ Ways to Creatively Reuse Old Magazines Always Chrysti is a great blog with tons of creative ideas and DYI projects. I particularly love this post about reusing magazines! Gotta love more collage ideas!

Exploring the Great Artists - 30+ Art Projects for Kids Another awesome blog dedicated to "bringing color and art to children's hearts". I have not used any of these project ideas in my classroom yet, but I love connected projects to famous artists and artworks.

Collage Portfolio

I really enjoy creating themed portfolios for my students, rather than one project at a time. I try to make each portfolio centered around a theme, utilizing a few different techniques, or media, or project styles. Each portfolio usually has 2-3 different projects, ranging in difficulty and effort, along with a open project, that must incorporate the theme.

I like this approach for a few different reasons.
ONE From what I have seen so far, every student can find something within each portfolio that they will be successful at, that they will find challenging and that they will be able to explore and feel creative. I feel that is so important for younger students, to get ample opportunities to express themselves, to confront challenges and to feel success.
TWO If a student does feel challenged or stuck at a certain project, they could set it aside and work on a different piece.
THREE I enjoy seeing students make connections that they may not have thought of before. Providing different projects around a particular theme, gets these connections started.

Here is an example of a recent portfolio that we just completed with my Grade 7 students, The Collage Portfolio. This portfolio had students practicing color theory, highlights and shadows, collage, and color matching.

Project #1: Collaborative Color Wheel - In small groups students were to design a complex color wheel, utilizing primary, secondary and tertiary colors. They then used magazines to find the color matches.

Project #2: Color Collage - Students were to choose a picture from the picture file that had a wide range of tones, highlights and shadows. Again, using magazines and their complex color wheel, they had to color match and recreate the image.

Project #3: Greyscale Collage - Students now had to transfer their knowledge of color, highlights and shadows to a greyscale. On scrap paper, student had to create crosshatched greyscale, then tear that up to create the collage.

In reflection, the process of this portfolio was great. It was a little too much collage though. I noticed the students getting sick of it by the end, which is never the reaction you want. If I were to do it again, I would make the required size smaller for the last two collages. I had them do it on 81/2x11 paper, this was just too big.

For the students who worked hard though, they created some amazing pieces! Here are a few more fabulous examples!

Project #1

Project #2 (sorry for the glare...)

I will be posting more examples for portfolios that I have done with my students, along with examples.

What Makes You Proud to be Canadian?

In my first year of teaching art, all I want to do is foster creativity. I want my students to leave that art room everyday saying, "wow, that was awesome, I had no idea that I could create something like that!" I want each one of them to know that whatever their style may be and however they create; it is amazing and it is theirs. I want each one of them to feel good about their creations. I want them to feel confident about their own individual expression. I want to drill this in now, before they get into the adolescent years, and begin to question themselves, as we all do at some point.

I struggle with this concept, because to do this, I need to create open-ended projects; projects that may be completed in any way they can imagine. The complications of these kinds of projects in an art room of 32 Grade 6 students, is that you end up with 32 different kinds of pieces, 32 different medias, 32 different styles, and accordingly, 1 million questions about techniques. Am I doing them a disservice by not teaching them all a particular technique? Are they missing some key outcomes by doing these open-ended projects?

I am not sure of the answer here, because when I get to see the finished creations of my open-ended projects, all unique, all different, my heart bursts. Below is the most recent example of this awesomeness.

I received an email about a Canada wide artistic contest called 'Here is Canada'. The prizes are awesome, and so I thought, what a great way to motivate the kids, on a theme extremely pertinent to them? The guiding question was, "what makes you proud to be Canadian"?

Take a look at just a handful of the amazing artwork that these students created...

Pencil drawing of a woodsman with snow frozen in his beard :)

Indian ink and watercolor paint :)

Mixed media collage :)

Mixed media puzzle pieces that are raised off the black paper :)

This kid is so cool... a walking stick carved with different images such as a peace sign, maple leaf, beaver, etc. :)

This girl is super talented... large acrylic painting with smaller attached canvases and leaves made from yarn :)

Watercolor painting :)

Another amazing piece... Acrylic paint on canvas

Can you believe that these pieces were created by Grade 6 students?! The talent and love for art in that room blows my mind every single day. I love it :)

So, I am not sure what the right answer is, but I know what I'm doing can't be completely wrong. How can it be when artwork like this is the result!? And so, my learning curve continues...

The art room, also known as my second my home...

Ever since I was a child, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. Well, that is not entirely true. From birth until high school, my real dream was to be a cartoonist for Disney. Cartooning was my thing as a kid. The teacher thing was always there though. I remember in elementary, my friends and I would make tests for each other, take each others tests, then mark them. This was a regular Friday night thing for us (I wasn't the coolest kid). It wasn't until high school when the idea of becoming a teacher became my dream. What happened in high school? My art teacher happened...

In my high school art class, I discovered that there was so much to art than just cartooning. It was my teacher who helped me to discover these things. He took interest in us. He had real conversations with us. He was funny, real and laid back. He provided us with constant praise, balanced with suggestions, tips and hints to improve our work. He was what a teacher should be, and he was what made me decide to become an art teacher.

So, this brings us to this year, my first year in an art room. It is my third year teaching, but I feel like I have been waiting decades to get here. Of course, like everything, the situation is not quite perfect. I only teach two Art courses, Art 6 and 7. I then teach 5 other courses in another room. This divides my time unevenly, and unfortunately, because I teach more courses in the other room, that room has gotten most of my attention. Secondly, I share the art room with another teacher. She is great, and we get a long well, but the space is not 'mine', and has been solely hers for quite a few years. I often feel like I am teaching in 'her' room, and so I do not want to step on her toes.

Yet, as the months have passed, and my comfort level has increased, I have really started to come into my own in that room. My lessons are getting stronger, and I am beginning to do little things to make the room mine too.

Here is my most recent addition on the side cupboards! A voting station to compare the kids preferences in artwork! I have started with a portraiture theme (our next portfolio in Grade 6 is portraiture), and I have chosen 4 portrait paintings from known artists with completely different styles. #1 is Tamara de Lempicka, #2 is Chuck Close, #3 is Leonardo da Vinci, and #4 is Picasso. I plan on changing the theme every 2 weeks or so! The kids love it so far, and #3 is winning last I checked.

I am going to keep dedicating time to creating more of these kinds of things and developing my Art lessons and plans. It is important for my students, and important for my own development as an Art teacher.

Welcome et Bienvenue!

Every day I walk into the Middle School that I work at, and I get excited for the day ahead of me. I actually love my job. I view it as more than just a job, it is an integral part of my life. I am passionate about not only the teaching that I do in the classroom, but the wealth of other things that are behind the scenes to an outsider; the relationships that we build, the intricacies of the human brain, the developmental stages of adolescents, the complexities of learning and understanding. The list goes on and on, and that is why my job is so exciting and interesting. No one day is ever the same, and no one day will ever be the same. Not many people can say that about their career.

The reason for my choice to begin a blog now surfaces. There is so much going on every day. There are so many thoughts, ideas and questions, swirling around in my brain. There is so much that I want to think about, collect, and write down. This is the perfect place for it all. I visit a number of other educators' blogs on a regular basis, and I find it reassuring to read about similar problems and dilemmas. I become inspired after reading about positive experiences and those magical moments that happen in their day. I become informed by exploring the links and resources that they post. Most importantly, I feel connected and in a small way, like I am sitting down around a table, sharing ideas with educators all around the world. Blogging is an opportunity for professional development, relfection, acknowledgement and collaboration. That is an amazing thing, and something that I have decided to actively participate in.

Here it goes!