Styrofoam Statue of Liberty Prints

In my 3rd-6th grade 12:1:1 class, we started out the year by doing sytrofoam prints of the Statue of Liberty, based on the art of Keith Haring.  We spent approximately three class periods creating these.  Due to the nature of this class, it's difficult to do a project that aligns with what they are learning as they are all learning different things.  At the time we started this, the classroom teacher was simply doing a review of New York State until pre-assessments were completed, so I figured these prints would fit in nicely.

On the first day, we looked at my power point about Keith Haring and looked at his screen print of the Statue of Liberty.  Students then had to draw their own version of the Statue (after, of course, we talked about how big she is, what her crown stands for, and other characteristics of the statue).

On the second day, I approved their drawings and let them draw their designs onto a piece of styrofoam with a wooden stick.  We used styrofam that was donated to the classroom (it came in the form of cleaned and sanitized meat trays!).  Students then experimented with making prints.

On the last day, we had mini critiques at each table.  Every student received a chance to lay out all of his or her prints for discussion.  Students talked about color choice and how clear the print turned out.  Once they had their best print picked out, we matted them using pre-cut mats.

I had the students draw a border around their print before cutting to ensure there would be enough paper to tape to the mat (some prints were a bit smaller than the frame opening).  I showed them how to tape it from the back, and then we signed our prints using the artist's name, a title, the edition number and the date.

The students were really proud of these, and considering the multiple ranges of abilities, I'm pretty happy with them as well!

Sorry about the bad coloring on these...they looked fine on my camera when I photographed them, but when I uploaded them, the computer really changed the colors!

The following is the rubric that was used to grade these projects: