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Tag: art

Art Education at the Phillips Collection and Art Integration (Lessons Learned)

June 6, 2017 / / 0 Comments

My wife and I are fortunate to live near Washington, DC, especially for the museums and what they offer for educators. Our recent visit to the Phillips Collection connected to my wife’s upcoming series of field trips she is organizing for a student group at her high school to learn more about civil rights. After viewing the Migration Series on African American migration to the north, my wife is adding the Phillips to her list of learning places for the field trips.

An additional bonus is the Phillips Collection incredible art education resource site that offers strategies for art integration in an interdisciplinary approach to art education. The student-generated art and examples of conceptual understanding are lovely! The PRISM.K12 site contains thinking routines and exemplars of student application of their learning.

It was incredibly informative during our visit to see student work from several schools showing their responses to the instructional strategies. Look to follow the documentation on Twitter with #migrationexperience. 

Primary sources and research connect to our Information and Communications Literacies (ICL)approach to inquiry and how students on the Migration Series also engaged their ESPRAT+G during their learning journeys.

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Art Integration (Lessons Learned)

Art Integration (Lessons Learned)

I have been a fortunate educator able to partner with art teachers on various projects. Here is a Lessons Learned review of some posts on the Innovative Practices blog during my time at Alexandria Country Day School.

Image Sources: PRISM.K12 | Strategies | Student Art

End of the Year: Design and Creativity

June 26, 2016 / / 0 Comments

portrait

“Mr. Carpenter, I finished my summer slideshow, could I draw a picture of my friend?” The image above is what the First Grader created as time ran out for our class. Wow! What a talented student who so benefits from the teaching of Kim Norton, our incredible art teacher.

Soccer

The above image is one slide pulled from a Wixe presentation in which my labels show how the First Grader pulled and inserted a photo from Britannica ImageQuest to then put a layer on top of it to engage her drawing skills and use of the Wixie image library. Brilliant mashup of media if you ask me. 🙂

duck architecture

Speaking of Kim, what you see above is a Second Grader’s depiction of Duck Art. Kim met with me at the start of June to collaborate in having the Second Graders respond to the idea of using architecture to depict everyday items, specifically ones to be sold. Kim uses prompts to have her students think, reflect and write about the art they create. It was an excellent transfer task to have them think in advertising and design terms to create their Duck Architecture.

The school year ended with students in First to Fourth Grade constructing a slideshow to communicate their goals and plans for the summer. My SMART goal for the year was to improve our Fourth Graders’ design skills significantly. The goal applied to grades 1-6, but I needed to focus on only one grade level.

I used my Multimedia Rubric to assess the slideshows while also doing reflection on the dispositions and other skills the students learned. Besides expanding their Personal Learning Systems, I saw many students become much more confident as they worked with generative tools, databases, and Google Apps to show what they knew.

Here are a few slides pulled from Fourth Grader slideshows to paint the picture using image-rich slides either pulled from Image Quest or drawn in Wixie.

airport

artcreative

creativeimage

splitimages

PYP Unit of Inquiry: Imagination Through Art and Music

July 27, 2015 / / 0 Comments

wolf image

Overview: Our Fourth Graders worked with their art and music teachers to apply their imaginations in a project that came together using the Explain Everything app on the iPad. They also reflected in their language homeroom classes, writing about their thinking as they created their multimedia project.

Here is a short video reviewing the teaching and learning for the “Imagine This” unit of inquiry. It includes a sample screencast by one of the students.

Process: The art and music teacher wrote up overviews of their lessons. Here they are.

Art: Laura Evangelista

The students learned how composition (the placement of objects within a space), shapes, colors, and lines communicate messages to the viewer. We first focused on how people associate specific body movements when they hear a particular sound. Students were instructed to stand up around the large table in the Art room. They were told to remain quiet, and when I told them a specific sound, they were to mime and act out the sound for 30 seconds. They responded to the sound of popcorn popping, a sizzling steak, a heavy metal band, and thunder. The students were then asked what they saw among their classmates when the students acted out sounds. Were the classmates’ bodies in jagged motions? Were the bodies close together? Far apart? They were then given a worksheet listing nine different sounds, and using only a pencil; they needed to come up with compositions that would visually communicate each sound.

After we understood how composition plays an essential role in communicating messages to the viewer, the students inquired into the color wheel and began analyzing color combinations. We spoke about how the primary colors are solid and robust while connecting them to the world and where we see those colors. We spoke about the secondary and tertiary colors and then went into color combinations. We reviewed paintings with complementary, analogous, and monochromatic colors and spoke about how different color combinations communicate different sounds. Students took notes in their sketchbooks.

Finally, lines! I asked them questions about particular sounds and had them draw in their sketchbook the types of lines that came to mind when they heard their sound. Next, they applied lines to their worksheet to show the sound’s type, pitch, and volume in the correct color. They then colored in their worksheet with the type of color combinations for each sound so they could focus on how colors play a significant role in communicating messages to the viewer.

Music: Mireille Nasr

The launch of this unit in music class started by sharing with the students’ examples of music that illustrate how imagination motivates and drives us to break conventions and surpass reality to promote growth and advancement. Students listened to several excerpts of different genres and styles of music. Then they described their feelings while listening and trying to guess the message the composers hoped to convey through their compositions. Students also described the mood, tempo, dynamics, instruments used in the composition, and their respective timbre.

The student analyzed several artworks from different styles and historical periods. They discussed the colors used, the subject(s) of the painting, the style as well as the message the artist tried to convey through the painting. The students then worked to match paintings and musical excerpts and justify their choices.

They also learned about timbre while acquiring the vocabulary they needed to describe the nature of sound as bright, dark, resonant, rounded, complete, thin, reedy, choppy, harsh, etc. descriptors.

The next step was to have each student identify an idea they would like to express in music and artwork. Each student used various digital media to express their idea in music:

-GarageBand

-Digital Keyboards

-Various musical instruments

-Sound-making objects

The students created multiple tracks in GarageBand Students mixing and editing the different timbre of sounds. They learned to fade in and out, finding the correct pattern of sounds, frequencies, and vibrations to communicate their idea.

Image Source: Finn

PYP-ICL Exemplar and Personalized Higher Edu

February 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

PYP Teachers

PYP teachers tell their story of a inquiry, collaboration and ICL integration. Look to watch the video.

Check out an excellent Washington Post article on MOOCs and personalized higher edu. The timing of our Ed Tech Co-Op podcast team could not be better. We will soon be posting another episode with Jeff Nugent, Director of Academic Technologies at Colgate University as we speak to his work with edX.

30 Day Art Challenge- Creativity Unleashed!

February 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

art challenge

Laura Evangelista continues to find novel ways to challenge and engage her students to be creative and expressive. Each student received a sketchbook and 30 days of prompts to get them thinking and creating. The following are a few of the daily challenges students responded to in their sketchbooks.

Day 1:  A day in the life of YOU!

Day 2: ART! What do you think about ART!

Day 3: Draw 1 object 6 different ways

Day 4: If you were a cartoon character…

Day 5: FOODs you CRAVE

Day 6: Circles as doodles!

Day 7: Anything BLUE

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Laura provided the following videos to help guide her students.

Organic Art Journal Page

ABC Art Journal Series

Art Journal Page

Art Journal & Mixed Media

Screencasting and Adaptations

December 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I am working with a group of students, having them research sound design principles that they will use to create a presentation to share their findings. While working in the computer lab, several students decided to use both their iPads and the computers. Some reviewed the provided Web sites on the iPads while recording the notes into a Google Doc on the computer. Others did the opposite. Some took bullet-form notes, while others had more free-flowing short paragraphs. Each student adapted the technology and information processing to meet their personal learning system best.

Second Grader Opening Scene of Screencast on Hanukkah

Much is in the blogosphere about how helpful screencasting apps are for helping students communicate their understanding. Our First and Second Graders use the ScreenChomp app on their iPads. I am in awe at how well they can use their drawing and verbal skills to make their thinking visible. While the final products provide valuable measurements for understanding, the student processing and constructing their learning while creating the video is necessary.

I previously posted about Suzy Tacktill, our art teacher at Alexandria Country Day School, and the field trips she leads for all our grade levels throughout the school year. Our most recent trip was to the National Gallery, where the students viewed landscapes. Suzy taught them how to analyze landscapes, leading to incredible discussions as I watched the students interact with the art. As before, Suzy set aside some time for the students to use their iPads in the museum to apply what they had seen on their tour. Here are some more examples by our Third Graders to go with the one at the start of this paragraph.

 

Technology Supported Art Field Trips

October 26, 2012 / / 1 Comment

I am working with our Alexandria Country Day School art teacher to design a series of field trips to Washington DC, art museums. Working to leverage the most student learning from field trips is a big goal in my professional development, so the opportunity to work with an incredibly creative art teacher is exciting.

Suzy Tacktill, our art teacher, has organized nine field trips for this school year. We took our first trip this week to the National Portrait Gallery. Our school has a buddy system with older students mentoring younger students. The 7th Graders and their 4th Grade buddies were the first group to participate. The main goal for the first trip was to have the students interact with their art and their buddies using analysis and art terms to describe art.

The trip took place over 90 minutes with the students and their buddies divided into two groups. One group visited the presidential portrait gallery, while the other visited the Bravo! and Champions exhibits. The groups then switched exhibits. The last portion of the field trip took place in the covered courtyard of the museum.

The 7th Graders prepared for the trip by downloading images we screen-captured from presidential portraits the students would be viewing in the museum. This meant that each student would have an image of a hand, a section of a face, etc., on their iPad. The next step was to have each student import the image into the ArtStudio app on their iPads and manipulate it to a canvas section. Once the student finds the portrait in the gallery and analyzes it with their buddy, the buddy team will digitally paint a new painting, starting with the presidential partial image.

Here are some examples of the art our very creative students digitally painted.

   

 

 

 

 

Here are the directions that Suzy wrote up for the students to structure their interaction with the presidential images and for their interaction with their buddies.

  • Buddy groups look at all of the portraits of the presidents and then find the portrait that corresponds with your photo segment.
  • Study the painting carefully.
  • In ‘Pages’ on your iPad, make notes of adjectives that describe the painting of that president.
  • Also, make notes of adjectives that describe the artist’s style. Here are some adjectives that may help you get started: happy, sad, mad, scared, frustrated, energetic, serious, relaxed, silly, calm, content, young, old, short, tall, pretty, handsome, lazy, beautiful, ugly, formal normal, elegant, sloppy, powerful, proud, kind, determined.
  • Read the written explanation that accompanies the painting.
  • Create a layer in ‘ArtStudio’ and complete a portrait painting around the segment of the painting that you have saved on your iPad.
  • Compare your list of adjectives with those of another buddy group who was studying a different painting.
  • Also, compare the styles of the artists.
  • Video yourself and your buddy looking at and talking about the art.

Here are the directions for the students in the Bravo! and Champions exhibits.

  • Notice and discuss the difference between portraits that are painted, photographic portraits, and sculptural portraits.
  • Think about what each method of portraiture captures about the subject.
  • Think about how the style of the artist influences how the portrait looks.
  • Pay attention to the “bio” (biographical information) written near the portraits.
  • Choose a portrait you and your buddy like because you think the person featured is interesting. Please take a photo of it. Also, photograph (or note in “Pages”) the picture’s name and the artist.
  • Choose another portrait because you like the style of the artist. Also, photograph (or note in “Pages”) the picture’s name and the artist.
  • Video yourself and your buddy looking at and talking about the art.

The final stage of the field trip took place in the courtyard, where the focus was on the buddy experience. Each student took a photo of their buddy and inserted it into the ArtStudio app. Drawing on one’s knowledge of their buddy, each student would then draw a new background around the photo of the buddy that depicted what they had learned about one’s buddy. After spending the previous 60 minutes viewing portraits, photographs, and sculptures of individuals, it was an excellent transfer task.

Kindergarten Art Curriculum

May 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

My wife and I have been very fortunate to work with outstanding art teachers in our schools. My current school is the same. As part of the Kindergarten curriculum, the students study the artistic styles of Miro, Picasso, and Pollock. The Kindergarten students just completed their Pollock interpretation, which provided some beautiful paintings. A minor technology connection is that the students used the Mr. Picassohead drawing site as a follow-up to their Picasso unit of study.

Here are some examples of their work, including a newly painted book cart for the library.

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