Skip to main content

My First Post!

Welcome to my elementary art blog. I will be posting various lesson plans and resources used for teaching k-5 Art. Check back regularly as I intend to update this weekly with videos and other resources that help in my classroom and they can help in yours too.

One thing that has been transformative in my teaching is video demonstrations of key skills. I started making videos after coming to the realization that when I did a live demonstration of clay or origami, half the class could not actually see what I was doing. By recording video, I could project it larger so kids could see better, but I also found that it freed me up to focus on my students and my instruction better. I no longer had to worry about the creation of a sample project, I could simply focus on the explanation while also looking at my students to find signs of confusion, anticipate problems etc. If you have not flipped your art room, I highly recommend it.

In addition to the relative ease of direct instruction, creating video resources has been helpful in aiding students to become more self-directed learners. As I go I will try to post each lesson tagged with media and grade level to make this more easily searchable. There is a lot of the TAB (Teaching Artistic Behaviors) philosophy that I find appealing. After years of creating video and other resources to aid in my teaching, I have found given the proper support structure, students can navigate those resources to personalize their learning.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who ARTed - New Podcast Coming!

Since the new(ish) National Core Arts Standards were adopted,  I have been giving a lot of thought to how I can get kids engaged in connecting and responding to art. While I love art history, it can be difficult to carry on a sustained conversation with the class. A number of students find history interesting, but a much more significant number of my students will join in a class discussion by asking "can we make art now?" Since I switched to format of my class to what I refer to as a "Gamified TAB" classroom, students have been happy and engaged in creating all sorts of different projects. Students pick their projects and earn their marker badge, clay badge, printmaking badge etc. The problem is in my initial rollout, almost everything was centered on the creation aspect of art. Now I am creating new badges for investigation, presentation etc. I created a comfy corner in my classroom where students can read and relax because exploring art history is a perfectly...
Post a Comment
Read more

First Grade Slab Animals

My students love clay, and over the years I have come to love it (if for no other reason, because their love of the material means I will have an easy class period anytime I get out clay). In the spring, I always seem to end up doing more clay projects. Kids are more used to clean up routines, so it goes more smoothly. Kids ask to make things they can give for Mother's day gifts and such. And as a practical matter, I like to use up all my clay by the end of the year so it doesn't get too dry and hard to work with; I know I could re-wet the clay, but I find it more trouble than it's worth. I wanted to do a little work with my first grade students to practice hand building techniques. The challenge was to create animals using shapes cut from a slab. In my experience, giving kids the opportunity to build animals by assembling shapes to make the various parts helps to teach them the foundational skill of imagining complex figures as a collection of simple shapes. This is help...
Post a Comment
Read more

Arts Madness Round 2

I am about half way through the second round of voting in my Arts Madness tournament. It has been a tremendous success so far. I am seeing students come in asking about who is still in it and who has been eliminated, I hear students talking about who they think will win and discussing why they pick one work over another. I was really surprised by some of the giants of art history who were eliminated in the first round. Picasso, Warhol, Rembrandt and Pollock were all knocked out. Students were delighted when I shared that Pollock was actually eliminated by his wife, Lee Krasner. I didn't think of this when I first started the tournament, but it has provided a hook to get students more interested when I can share tidbits and connections among artists. My entry routine for a few years has been for students to come in and there would be a 5 minute student-led discussion about a work of art on the board. From now until the end of the school year, students come in and scan a QR co...
Post a Comment
Read more