School on Saturday?

Once in a while, Mr. Wales teaches on Saturday! Last Saturday I helped present a workshop to librarians in Massachusetts. The workshop was Graphic Novels: Comics in the Classroom and my part was to demonstrate how comics can be used to teach the essential skills of writing of dialogue, writing conventions, and literary devives (onomatopeia, alliteration and hyperbole) -- not to mention important art concepts!

"Librarians Listening"

Lesson Plans -- Week 11

"The arts enable us to have experience

we can have from no other source

and through such experience to discover

the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

The arts’ position in the school curriculum

symbolizes to the young

what adults believe is important."

- Elliot Eisner

Lesson Plans
Week 11: November 26, December 3-5, 8-9.

Kindergarten.
Ocean Art. Learning about ocean animals and making projects that show what they know.
913D. Demonstrate the ability to define objects, express emotions, illustrate an action or relate an experience through creation of works in the arts.

First Grade.
Watercolor Techniques. Demonstrate salt painting and open wash. Students will experiment with both techniques.
9.1.3.A. Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.

Second and Third Grade.
Collage. Give students 12x18 oaktag paper. On this paper they have drawn an ocean animal. They have begun a collage within and without that shape using construction paper, wallpaper, stickers, etc. – anything they found in the big blue scrap box.
When students are finished with the above project, they will choose a book from the ocean animal collection. They can read the book and make a drawing based on what they read.
913D. Demonstrate the ability to define objects, express emotions, illustrate an action or relate an experience through creation of works in the arts.


Fourth Grade. Pointillism. Mount marker drawings on colored construction paper. Students will read about the animal they drew and then write a brief poem about it.
913C. Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the arts forms.
913D. Use knowledge of varied styles within each art form through a performance or exhibition of unique work.
913F. Identify works of others through a performance or exhibition

Fifth Grade.
Posters. Students are working in teams. They are creating displays that will provide the viewer with facts about an ocean animal, with illustrations they’ve made.
913K. Know and use traditional and contemporary technologies for furthering knowledge and understanding in the humanities.

All the World's a Stage

This week our school is putting on a play, The Little Mermaid. The art department helped a little.

This year we made two giant stretched canvases to be used as backdrops for school plays. This is one of them. It is about 5 foot by 8 foot. Dr. Anabel made the frames, and I stretched the canvas over them. Here some fifth graders are painting the canvas with gesso -- a material that prepares a surface to hold paint.

Now some kids are starting to paint with acrylic paint. A bunch of kids helped paint an underwater scene. The camera wasn't available so I don't have many process shots.

Here is the finished backdrop. Mr. Mancester used his mad MacGyver skills to hinge the two panels together and attached the legs. The plan is to just paint over this every year, for whatever backdrop we need. I didn't have anything to do with these costumes, but they are great! We have some talented parents that do a lot to help the school.

Mrs. Jacoski is an artist with colored duct tape, as you can see below.

Here's the whole cast singing "Under the Sea".

This boat is very impressive!

We're doing a lot of Ocean themed stuff in the school this year. The drama club, the music and art programs will all use the theme throughout the year. It will be what makes this year special, plus we can reuse some of the stuff we make for a variety of things.

Lesson Plans -- Week 10

"The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.

When children are invited to disclose

what a work of art helps them feel,

they must reach into their poetic capacities

to find the words that will do the job."

-Elliot Eisner

Lesson Plans
Week 10: November 18-21, 24, 25.

Kindergarten.
Draw an underwater animal. Color with painting crayons. Paint over drawings with water and brush.
Colored pencil drawing with ocean theme.9.1.3.A. Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.

First Grade.
Colored pencil drawing with ocean theme.
9.1.3.A. Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.

Second Grade.
Fish Collage. Make a fish shape. Create a collage within and without that shape using pages from magazines and other found materials.
When students are finished with the above project, they will choose a book from the ocean animal collection. They can read the book and make a drawing based on what they read.
913D. Demonstrate the ability to define objects, express emotions, illustrate an action or relate an experience through creation of works in the arts.

Third Grade.
Ocean Animals. Drawing and coloring with markers.
913D. Demonstrate the ability to define objects, express emotions, illustrate an action or relate an experience through creation of works in the arts.


Fourth Grade. Pointillism. Review concepts and finish projects. Use markers to color using pointillistic technique. Demonstrate how colors can be mixed optically. (Example: an orange area might have yellow and red dots as well as orange.) Students who arecan write a brief paragraph about the animal they drew.
913C. Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the arts forms.
913D. Use knowledge of varied styles within each art form through a performance or exhibition of unique work.
913F. Identify works of others through a performance or exhibition

Fifth Grade.
Students are working in teams. Students have chosen an underwater animal to research and make drawings and paintings of. The first project is a watercolor painting of the animal they choose.
913K. Know and use traditional and contemporary technologies for furthering knowledge and understanding in the humanities.

Lesson Plans -- Week 9

"The arts teach students that small differences

can have large effects.The arts traffic in subtleties.

The arts teach students to think through

and within a material.

All art forms employ some means

through which images become real."

- Elliot Eisner

Lesson Plans
Week 9: October 31, November 1—15, 18, 19.

Kindergarten.
Draw an underwater animal. Color with crayons.
9.1.3.A. Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.

First Grade.
Finish angelfish drawings with painting crayons. Paint over with water.
9.1.3.A. Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.

Second Grade.
Ocean Pictures.
Students have made a drawing of an ocean animal. They have dictated a short story or description of their drawing. I will then print those out and the students will rewrite their sentences in their best handwriting. They will mount the sentences on colored paper and give the picture a title. They can decorate the sentence card with ocean designs.
When students are finished with the above project, they will choose a book from the ocean animal collection. They can read the book and make a drawing based on what they read.
913D. Demonstrate the ability to define objects, express emotions, illustrate an action or relate an experience through creation of works in the arts.

Third Grade.
Paul Klee. Continue unit of study on this artist. Look at samples of his artwork.
What are the three ways to look at artwork? What are the major elements of this artist’s style? Students will experiment with making fantastic fish scenes with oil pastels. Finish the drawings and write three sentences that describe the picture.
9.3.3.E. Recognize and identify types of critical analysis in the arts and humanities: Contextual criticism, Formal criticism, Intuitive criticism
913F. Identify works of others through a performance or exhibition
923B. Relate works in the arts to varying styles and genre and to the periods in which they were created.

Fourth Grade.
Pointillism. Review definition. Look at examples. Choose a photo for reference from the box marked “Ocean” – or one of the library books on ocean animals. Draw in pencil. Use markers to color using pointillistic technique. Demonstrate how colors can be mixed optically. (Example: an orange area might have yellow and red dots as well as orange.) Second week of coloring using the technique of pointillism.
913C. Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the arts forms.
913D. Use knowledge of varied styles within each art form through a performance or exhibition of unique work.
913F. Identify works of others through a performance or exhibition


Fifth Grade.
Students will choose a partner they can work with. Students will choose an underwater animal to research and make drawings and paintings of. The first project will be a watercolor painting of the animal they choose.
913K. Know and use traditional and contemporary technologies for furthering knowledge and understanding in the humanities.

Porcupine Fish Drawings

Meet Pokey -- my kids brought him home as a souvenir from Ocean City, MD -- but they said he could live in the art room for a while. Pokey is a preserved porcupine fish. This kind of fish can fill up with water or air. This prevents predators from getting them into their mouths. Another deterrant is the needle-sharp spikes. When the fish puffs up, the spikes go straight out. Ouch!

In kindergarten classes we looked at this and read a book about it. Students then made their own drawings of porcupine fish.

Secret Messages -- Third Grade Oil Pastel Drawings

Remember how we were learning about the art of Paul Klee? It's almost as if he used symbols to make hidden messages in his paintings -- and never told anyone what the meanings were! I asked third graders if they wanted to hide messages in their oil pastel drawings. If you decipher Colin's drawing below, it shows you step-by-step how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. McKenna told me the secret message in her drawing below: "No one can judge you for the things that you love."

The Origami Whiz Kid

About 14 years ago I had a ninth grade student who was really into origami. His name was Jayson Merrill. (At that time I taught half the day at the high school.) No matter what the assignment was, he wanted to do origami. "Well", I said on the first week of class, "the assignment is to make a creative color wheel" -- and he made this.

The next assignment was to learn about Pop Art and then make some kind of Pop Art. He made a polyhedron out of Starburst wrappers.

For every assignment we had, he tried to find some way to use it as an opportunity to make origami. It was totally independent study, too, since I have never been good at it.

About a week ago, somebody said to me, "Do you remember Jayson Merrill? He's written a book on origami. I saw it at the gift shop at the Air & Space Museum in DC." I have to say, I wasn't surprised, but it was neat to hear that something that was such a passion for a student has provided continued opportunities for achievement.

The Art of Paul Klee

Because our Living History theme this year is the 1930s, we'll be learning about artists who were working during that time period. Third graders are learning about artist Paul Klee. One of the interesting things about this artist is that he was one of the first modern artists to recognize the importance of children's art and give it equal place among the other fine arts. He often borrowed directly from children's drawings. Here's what he had to say about it:

"Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The
more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish
us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age. " -Paul Klee

I think what he was getting at is that maybe sometimes we are in too big of a hurry to get them to draw like grown-ups. Artists like Klee and Picasso envied the way children freely and spontaneously created such lively images. At first glance, some of Klee's work looks like a child did it, but they are full of symbolism and ideas.

The PA Standard for this lesson is:

9.3.3.E. Recognize and identify types of critical analysis in the arts and humanities: contextual criticism, formal criticism, intuitive criticism, contextual criticism, and formal criticism. That sounds like quite a mouthful, but it's actually a benchmark for third grade. It actually sounds more complicated than it really is because it's written in Educationese. Here's how I describe it.

There's three ways to look at a picture:

1. What do you think? (Intuitive criticism). When we look at art and talk about it in this way, there are no right or wrong answers. Sometimes it's fun to look at art and explain what we think is going on. For instance, someone looked at this painting by Paul Klee and called it "The March of the Pajama Bottoms". That's not really what the artist had in mind, but it sure is a fun way to look at the painting.

2. What do you know? (Contextual criticism). This is when we learn more about the artist, what was going on during his or her lifetime, and what did they have to say about their art. Sometimes from reading about an artist we can learn things that help us to understand and appreciate the art more. In the painting below, I didn't realize until I read about it that there's something unusual about the numbers on the clock. The numbers 1,2,9 and 5 are in red. It was painted in 1925. Maybe the secret message is, "The Time is Now!" It looks like there's a net or fishing pole trying to catch the clock, but the fish are all going on their way, business as usual. It's as if there's a secret message in the painting, but Klee never told anyone what it was. I think he wanted us to decide for ourselves.

3. Let's talk about the design (Formal criticism). This is when we look at a work of art and analyze it based on the elements and principles of art. We might describe colors, shapes and lines and talk about how the artist arranged them into a composition.

Lesson Plans -- Week 8

"The arts make vivid the fact that
neither words in their literal form nor numbers

exhaust what we can know.
The limits of our language do not define
the limits of our cognition."

-Elliot Eisner

Lesson Plans -- Week 8: October 31, November 3-7.

Kindergarten.
Use paint rollers to roll dark blue paint on light blue paper. The wavy lines will help create the illusion of water. Use fish foam stamps to stamp fish designs over that. Put on drying rack to dry.

9.1.3.A. Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.

First Grade.
Trace angelfish patterns onto paper. Outline with black permanent markers. Color with “payons” or painting crayons. Paint over with water.

9.1.3.A. Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.

Second Grade.
Ocean Pictures. Students are making a drawing of an ocean animal. They are choosing whether to draw the animal in a cartoon style or a realistic style. As they color with markers, students will bring their drawings to the teacher one at a time. They teacher will type as they dictate a short story or description of their drawing.

913D. Demonstrate the ability to define objects, express emotions, illustrate an action or relate an experience through creation of works in the arts.

Third Grade.

Paul Klee. Begin unit of study on this artist. Look at samples of his artwork.
What are the three ways to look at artwork? What are the major elements of this artist’s style? Students will experiment with making fantastic fish scenes with oil pastels.

9.3.3.E. Recognize and identify types of critical analysis in the arts and humanities: Contextual criticism, Formal criticism, Intuitive criticism
913F. Identify works of others through a performance or exhibition
923B. Relate works in the arts to varying styles and genre and to the periods in which they were created.


Fourth Grade. Pointillism. Define. Look at examples. Choose a photo for reference from the box marked “Ocean” – or one of the library books on ocean animals. Draw in pencil. Use markers to color using pointillistic technique. Demonstrate how colors can be mixed optically. (Example: an orange area might have yellow and red dots as well as orange.)

913C. Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the arts forms.
913D. Use knowledge of varied styles within each art form through a performance or exhibition of unique work.
913F. Identify works of others through a performance or exhibition

Fifth Grade.

Look at examples of artist signatures. How does each signature the character uses express a different type of personality? Why is it important how an artist signs his or her name? Most artists use the same signature everytime. Why? (It is similar to the logo of a product. Recognizable. Compare to the Pepsi logo.) In your sketchbook, go to the next empty page. Fill a page with your own signature – experimenting with using a different one each type. Look at the examples for ideas. Notice how the artists sometimes have the last letter underline the rest, or run letters together in a creative way. Note: few artists sign just their first name! Now circle the one you like best. This will be your “artist signature” you use for the rest of this year! With a black permanent marker, sign your acrylic painting with this signature and put it on display.

913K. Know and use traditional and contemporary technologies for furthering knowledge and understanding in the humanities.