Shape Cows with Patterns

Hi all!  I feel like it's been forever since I've posted!  With everything going on lately, it's been very difficult to find time...plus, my internet has been down at home!  With that being said, I have A LOT of stuff to share with you.

The first thing I'll share is what my kindergartners just finished up.  We did shape cows and practiced our patterns.  This was a project that I did last year with them as well.  The one little change I made was to have them use black crayons instead of black Sharpie to outline everything, in part to reinforce the wax resist technique and also because I'm running out of Sharpies this year!  I also had them make their patterns in black instead of allowing them to use colored crayons...just to change it up a bit.

Again, this is one of those projects that aligns with the Common Core Math standards...the one where kindergartners are supposed to be able to identify shapes.  I didn't know this, but apparently they don't do patterns anymore in kindergarten!  Patterns are supposed to be learned in Pre-K now, so this was also a good review of patterns.

I must apologize for the photographs of these.  They are very wrinkly because my students started these with a substitute, who grabbed the wrong paper.  If you ever want to know what watercolor paint looks like on cheap, 60 lb. drawing paper, here it is!

Currently, my students are participating in the Common Core Listening & Learning strand about weather and the seasons, so our current project in the works right now is a spring project.  Students are drawing themselves under an umbrella, and then we will be blowing blue paint with straws to make the rain!  Hopefully I'll be able to share those finished projects next week! :)

Kindergarten: Secondary Shapes

The first project I did with kindergarten as I came back from my maternity leave was my secondary shape project.  This one is a staple that I do every year.  This year it didn't change much from last year, other than the fact that I found purple and green metallic paper for the students to use with the gold instead of plain construction paper.

So, here is the gist of what happens and why I like to do this project every year.  This does align with the kindergarten Common Core Math Standards...specifically with the geometry standard of knowing shapes.  This is usually a follow-up lesson to my primary lines project where students are introduced to tempera paint.  This year my substitute did not do the primary lines lesson to teach primary colors...instead she chose to do Mondrian collages instead (which I have yet to photograph and share with you), so this project introduced my kinders to painting with tempera paint.

The first day, we reviewed shapes.  I had the students draw a square, triangle, rectangle and circle on the back of their tag board while I got the paint palettes ready for them.  Next, I demonstrated how to dip just the tip of the brush into the paint before applying it to the paper.  We talked about rinsing the brush off in between colors, how to WIPE the brush on the edge of the water bucket instead of banging it and causing splatter, etc. etc.  I then tell the students that I want them to paint a variety of shapes, including big, small and medium shapes.  While I circulate the room, I tell students to create a good composition by filling the entire paper with different shapes and spreading out the colors they use.

On the second day, I gave each student three sheets of metallic paper.  We review scissor safety and I reviewed how to glue with "just a dot, not a lot" around the edges of each shape.  I have my little kinders glue one shape at a time, holding each shape down with their hand and counting to 10 (great for practicing counting too!).  Again, as I circulate, I encourage students to be creative with their placement of the paper and remind them of using up the entire piece of paper.

I have lots more to share with you...both from my maternity leave and what has been accomplished since I've been back.  This last Friday was the end of our 2nd marking period and I was FINALLY able to catch up on grading and photographing most of the artwork that has been completed so hopefully there will be plenty of more posts this week!

Studio Art: 2-D Media Unit: Painting! (If Picasso Painted Superheroes...)

Last week on Friday, we started the second portion of the 2-D media unit, which happens to be painting.  On Tuesday, we talked about what paint is made of, the three different water based paints versus oil paint, and painting surfaces.  We also started to dive into the art criticism process.

Then, on Tuesday this week, we talked specifically about Picasso and cubism.  I gave students an additional note sheet that had notes for Picasso, as well as the objectives, checklist and rubric for the next project..."What if Picasso painted a superhero?"  Before beginning this, I showed them the Superhero Series by Mike Esparza, which is a direct idea steal from Pinterest.

The students are REALLY enjoying this so far.  Here are the project objectives and the checklist I gave students with their rubric:

Project Objectives: 

By the end of this project, I will be able to… 

1. Describe the characteristics of cubism. 

2. Discuss how life events affected Picasso’s artwork during his three artistic periods. 

3. Create a cubist representation of a super hero using acrylic paint. 

4. Identify the order in which a painting should be constructed in. 

Project Guidelines: 

☐ You must choose a superhero or villain to depict in the cubist style. 

☐ Your painting must depict the subject from at least the waist up. 

☐ The subject needs to take up at least ¾ of your canvas. 

☐ You must use full color and value in your painting. 

☐ You must show knowledge of the cubist style: 

~ Multiple view points 

~ Use of geometric shapes 

☐ You must unify your background with the subject.

What's ironic is that the students were starting to complain at the drawing assignments because they were having to draw realistically and use lots of value...now they're complaining that it's too hard to try and intentionally draw their superhero unrealistically!  

So far we are two days into this painting.  On Wednesday students had to draw out their superhero.  Some struggled, and some did quite well.  I encouraged them to simply break down their figure into basic shapes, and then to move body parts to be where they aren't...turn an eye ball sideways, put an eye in the middle of the forehead, put the mouth on the side of the mouth, etc.  I also pushed the idea of the multiple view points, which is a little bit harder of a concept for them to grasp, I think.

I then also introduced the students to acrylic gel medium, which was new to them and actually new to me.  Last year, when I was grading post-assessments with another fellow art teacher, one of the projects she did used these gel mediums to give texture, and I loved it!  I bought a large jar of the modeling paste and then three each of the coarse pumice and fine pumice gels.

We applied the gel medium using paint knives...

My painting is on the left.  I gave students a demonstration today on how to paint by blending colors on the canvas instead of in their paint palette.  A few students started painting their backgrounds today.

This was just a quick preview of these projects...tomorrow I am taking a day off for my 34 week sonogram.  I anticipate that the students will start finishing these up by Wednesday and Thursday next week.

On a side note, the Art 7 students have finished their first tag, but after I hung my brick wall today at the end of the day, I forgot to take a picture of it to share!  That will have to wait until Monday!

Revised APPR Assessments Part 1: Kindergarten

I didn't really share the outcome of my post-assessments last year, mainly due to the fact that there was some confusion around them with calculations.  In the end, I "passed" and did all right, but my results weren't exactly where I wanted them to be for the post-assessment scores.  Thus, I revamped two of my assessments.  Last year, I did my SLO assessments in 5th, 2nd, 1st and Kindergarten.  My LLO was in 4th grade.  Lucky for me, I have one less to do this year!  This year, my SLO assessments are with Studio Art, Art 7, and 1st grade and I chose to use Kindergarten for my LLO so I could revamp my rubrics.

Today is our first Staff Development day and luckily, I have no place to be except in my classrooms working on my SLOs and LLO, which are technically due today!  In the next few posts, I'm going to share with you my old assessments from last year and what I plan on doing differently this year.  I'll also share with you how I am setting my goals, as I am doing something completely different this year as well.

Last year I did a cutting and gluing rubric and I had a 97% success rate at students passing, which was great, but made it seem as though the assessment wasn't quite as rigorous as it should have been.  So, this year, I changed up my plans for the Kindergarten assessment, and I've actually changed my mind twice about the pre-assessment.  Back in September I shared a post with my ideas for this year, which you can see here.  I originally gave students a shape sheet with fewer shapes and then a quiz that quizzed them on shapes, lines and basic color theory.  I was struggling to figure out how I would make sure those kinders could read their color words by the end of the year to take a "quiz" (since I would essentially have to create a test bank), and then I decided to scratch that idea, after I had already given out that assessment.

Now, I've decided to continue using the shape sheet for cutting and gluing but also the Hey Diddle Diddle Shape Cow project we just did.  This way, I am still assessing their cutting and gluing skills, but also their ability to draw shapes, their use of crayons and how they color.  As I looked at all of these projects, I realized that even though I was trying to teach them how to use the shapes and how to color properly, it's going to take a while for them to improve, so I should still be able to show growth.

  

These are the two activities being used for the kindergarten pre-assessment...

And these are the two rubrics being used for the kindergarten pre-assessments...

At the end of the year, students will then be assessed on cutting & gluing, as well as their coloring and shape skills all in one project...the primary playground project!  In that project, students have to cut out their own shapes and create a playground.  It will assess their ability to cut out shapes that are discernible from one another, how well they glue the shapes down (still using the dot glue method), and how well they utilize their entire paper.  Last year I did this as a review projects for primary colors and shapes, but it'll make a great end of the year assessment, I think.  Instead of having the students do it on 9"x12" paper, I'll give them the bigger sheets like I did for their pre-assessment cows.

 

Two kindergarten examples from last year, done back in February.

And this is the revamped rubric for assessing the post-assessment.

I know these rubrics are hard to read...I'm doing this at school right now and don't have a nicer way of taking a screen shot, so you can find them on the SmARTteacher.

Kindergarten: Hey Diddle Diddle Shape Cows

Sorry about the lack of posts in a few days...I've been having troubles with my internet at home and there is just no time during the day for me to write a post during school!  We're finally finishing up our first projects on the elementary side, and the first I'm going to share are going to be our "Hey Diddle Diddle Shape Cows".

Let me precede this by saying that I don't usually start out with a project like this for kindergarten...meaning one where we jump right into drawing a big picture together.  I usually start with line and shape and the primary and secondary colors.  I usually incorporate a Mondrian collage at the beginning of the year too.  I like starting with those types of projects because they are easy for the students to be successful on, they are simple projects that I use to help train the students on clean-up procedures, and they tend to be one day projects instead of two day projects.

The reason I decided to start off with the shape cows this year is because of Common Core.  The first listening and learning strand the kindergartners start with is the nursery rhyme strand.  I got the idea for this drawing from the pattern shape cows I did last year with kindergarten so I combined a little bit of that lesson with a little bit of my normal shape lesson.

This project took some students two days to complete, and a few others need about 10 minutes at the beginning of next class to finish theirs.  On the first day, I passed out my shape practice worksheet.  We read the word of each shape (by identifying the first letter and the sound it makes), traced each shape three times and then drew the shape in the empty space on the right.

In the same class, I then passed out large drawing paper and we got to work drawing our cows.  I start by drawing a circle for the nose, then we had the head, triangle ears and horns, etc.  We use a rectangle for the body and legs.  Next comes the moon.  As I'm drawing this step-by-step on the board, the students have to draw each step on their own paper.  We talk about where I'm placing the cow and why (up at the top because it's jumping over the moon, which is in the sky), as well as how big I am drawing everything in comparison to the paper itself.  After the cow and moon were drawn, we did the dish and the spoon (circles and rectangles).  The last drawing step was their first introduction to the horizon line and how to use it.

On the second day, we reviewed the horizon line and then talked about having good details.  I asked them, "What else can you add to your drawing to make it interesting to look at?"  I received responses like the cat and the fiddle, a house, the sky, the grass, a tree...  Students got to work drawing some details.  Then we traced everything with Sharpie marker (which for some reason is a hard concept for some kinders to understand!) and then colored.  This is also where I introduced my craftsmanship rubric and we talked about scribble coloring versus nice coloring.

Here are some of the completed drawings! 

I must say that I was a bit surprised at the number of kinders in this group that had good control over their pencil and a little more advanced drawing skills than I expected!  A majority of the cows actually look like cows!  As I look these over and grade them, I'm actually almost thinking that I could use this project as a pre-assessment for SLO's instead of my normal cutting and gluing rubric.  I could assess the use of shapes, being able to draw shapes, and coloring craftsmanship very easily with this project.  All of these could be assessed at the end of the year with a similar drawing project and would make it like less of a test...something I will be keeping in mind on the back burner!

Something else I found out about the way I taught this (and teach other projects using the craftsmanship rubric) is that is connects with what the kinder teachers work on with coloring in class.  As I was showing their teacher these drawings, she mentioned that they do "3 start coloring" in class, where the (1) entire paper should be colored, (2) they must use neat coloring and (3) they need to try and use the true colors for objects.

Up and Coming Elementary Projects

Elementary project posts are going to be far and fewer in between this year.  Since I only see them once a cycle, it's just going to take that much longer for us to finish quality projects.  Here's an overview of what I am currently doing with the elementary grades.  Some projects are repeats of last year, and some are brand new projects that I am starting off with for the first time.

Kindergarten
The kindergartners just finished up their first listening and learning strand of nursery rhymes.  I decided to forgo my usually beginning projects of the primary and secondary colors to start with shapes.  To go along with their nursery rhyme unit, we are doing "Hey Diddle Diddle" drawings.  So far we have worked one day on this. I gave students my shape practice sheet and then together, we drew a cow jumping over the moon, and the dish running away with the spoon (made sure we got two rhyming components in the drawing...).  Next class, I'll have them trace all their pencil lines with Sharpie marker, we'll talk about craftsmanship when it comes to coloring with crayons, and they will finish up coloring their projects for display.









1st Grade
In 1st grade, we are starting out with the pumpkin unit, just slightly altered to try and fit it into 2 1/2 class periods instead of 3-4.  We've so far worked one class on this.  On the first day, everyone got a piece of Manila drawing paper and I asked them to draw a pumpkin patch in 15 minutes.  We talked about how they drew their pumpkins vs. how a pumpkin really looks (most drew them perfect circles and didn't attempt to show the texture).  Then, I demonstrated on the board how to use flattened circles to draw pumpkins.  Students then turned their papers over and spent the rest of class drawing more realistic pumpkin patches.  Next class, I'll show them how to use more than one horizon line (and we'll talk about size) to create depth.  They'll draw their pumpkin patches and start blending on them with oil pastels.

2nd Grade
In second grade, the students have also just finished up their first listening and learning strand, which was fairy tales and tall tales.  I started this art project with them when they were reading Beauty and the Beast, so their project is designing Beast's castle.  We are VERY lucky to have a real Louis Tiffany stained glass window in our school.  It was bought and donated to the school by one of the original founders of the old school building (in memory of his mother).  I took this as an opportunity to talk about stained glass windows and to educate the students about how lucky they should feel to have a REAL artwork by a FAMOUS artist in their school!  So, for this project, students have to design a radial stained glass window (we are using transparency paper and Sharpies).  I created a simple castle pattern that students traced and then sponge painted brick patterns on (similar to how we did it for our 3rd grade castles last year).  So far, we have worked two periods on this project.  For the last class, students will cut a hold in the top of their castle to add their colored stained glass window, and they will get to cut out a draw bridge door and roofs for their castle towers out of construction paper.




3rd Grade
For 3rd grade, I'm sticking with an oldie.  We're doing our fall birch trees.  Only change is that this year I bought watercolor pencils, so we will be using those instead of crayons.  So far, we have worked one class on these and we have taped off our birch trees.

4th Grade
4th grade is also doing a repeat.  We're starting off with value and will be doing fall value drawings and then doing the linocut leaf prints around the border.

5th Grade
Another repeater.  I'm skipping the painted color wheels this year (because those took forever last year).  We've spent one class doing the plate color wheel so they have a color wheel to reference and take notes of the different color families on the back, and now we are going to jump right into the complementary colored checkerboards.  Next class, we'll roll out our slab boards.  This year, instead of glazing/underglazing them, I'm going to have them paint the boards with acrylic paint.  Less waste of the more expensive materials.  They'll also be making their checker pieces out of model magic instead of kiln fire clay.  Again, less waste of the more expensive materials.

6th Grade
Finally, 6th grade will be starting off with cave art.  They are currently doing geography in social studies, but afterwards they will be doing the prehistoric world.  My unit should give them base knowledge for that (great way to connect curriculum and get common core points!).  Last year we didn't do a cave art project.  This year, we've spent 1 1/2 class periods on it.  For the first 1/2 period, I gave my power point and we talked about cave art and took the virtual tour through Lascaux Cave.  For the first whole period, we rolled out a huge piece of brown butcher paper, wrinkled it to make it look like a rock, and then used chalk pastels to "age" it.  Next class, we are going to mix our own egg tempera, so they can get a feeling of what it's like to make their own paint.  I will be hanging their rock on my display strips and we'll go down and actually paint on the rock wall, just like a real cave artist.

Special Education Classes
I have two separate special education classes this year; a K-3 class and a 3-6 class.  The K-3 class did complete their first project all in one class period, and I must say that I was extremely impressed with the progress (and maturity) they found over summer!  In their classroom, they made leaves for a bulletin board, so I continued with that theme.  I asked them to draw a fall tree with good details (similar to what I have 4th grade do).  I was SO HAPPY to see them using the "y" and "v" technique to draw realistic trees!  Then, I pulled out my rubber leaves and I had them make a leaf print border around their drawings.

The 3-6 class is starting off with learning about the history of NYS in their classroom, so on a whim, I decided to do a Statue of Liberty project with them.  A majority of the students in the class have been there for a year or two, and they learned about the Statue of Liberty before, so this was a bit of a review.  We talked about the statue and then I taught them a little bit about Keith Haring.  We ended on Haring's Statue of Liberty artwork.  I am having these students do a Keith Haring-like rendition of the statue on Styrofoam to my Styrofoam prints.  This should only take one