This past month in eastern Massachusetts has indeed been challenging! It has snowed every weekend, with over 6 feet of snow on the ground and below-zero temperatures that prevent any melting. We have missed 6 days of school, 2 days per week for 3 weeks, and then left for a week of vacation. Monday and Tuesday kindergarten classes are 3 weeks behind the other kindergartens and I haven’t seen Tuesday’s first and second graders in a month. At least one kindergartener enjoyed our massive snow storms, as illustrated in his enthusiastic drawing below!
Fifth graders are challenging their drawing abilities with a series of exercises aimed at skill development. Drawing Boot Camp is one among five WOW (Wonderful Original Work) choices that students could make for a 5-class intensive study. These students draw frequently and have shown interest in expanding their skills to bring more realism to their drawings.
In the first class we discussed line quality and students practiced contour line drawing. This involves a single line to describe an object–the artist looks only at the object, not the
paper—and results in a gestural representation of the object’s form. This is difficult to do without looking and requires tremendous self-discipline. Students observed both the object and shapes defined by negative space around the object in order to describe the object in contour line.
The following class highlighted shading. An arrangement of geometric forms, including spheres, cones, cylinders, cubes and rectangular prisms was lit from the side for contrast in tone. Students selected a small section to draw, focusing on nuances to distinguish lighter and darker areas. They also observed the shapes and directions of shadows to portray them accurately. Gummy erasers and blending stumps were added to the arsenal of drawing tools for shading.
What’s next? One-point perspective!
Artists observe their environment to get ideas for their artmaking. The book, Studio Thinking (Hetland, et. al., 2007) includes Observation as one of the eight Studio Habits of Mind that artists regularly employ in their work. During class we talked about observation as a means of noticing, what Hetland calls “alertness.”
I ask students, “What did you observe in art class today?” They respond: I observed…
…that it’s cold outside so I made a hot chocolate mug.
…how the marble went through the maze.
…a bent piece of cardboard that gave me the idea to build a bench.
…that the paint on my sculpture doesn’t always fill the holes so I repainted some parts.
…that the hot glue did not always do what we wanted.
…a stack of stools that became the top of a building in my drawing.
…that water makes the clay feel smoother.
Developing awareness of one’s environment helps young artists to utilize all available tools in service to art making.
After several months of waiting, third graders have finally gotten onto laptops to edit their photographs! Students each get an entire class to play with iPhoto, to crop and manipulate color and add vignettes. They are coached by those who last used the same laptop. Peer coaching reinforces skills and helps to consolidate understandings.
What does digital photography teach? First of all, technology skills. Learning to use a digital camera and laptop are life skills, ones students can practice both in school and at home. Digital photography also teaches students about artistic behaviors. By collecting a folder of digital images, students learn that art making does not have to be immediate. Artists pace themselves, knowing what they can do now and what can wait for later. These image collections can be accessed
and added to, providing future opportunities for photo editing. Third, students learn that it’s OK to make mistakes! Photo editing involves decision making, and no decision has to be permanent. By duplicating images, do-overs are possible and encouraged.
Digital photography is one of many art media available to students at Franklin School. For some, it may be the media through which they best express their ideas, beliefs and emotions.
Some students have sketchbooks that travel back and forth to school. They are typically tiny, fit easily in a pocket, and sometimes are hand-made. The sketchbook appears while students are working at studio centers but, quite often, no one but the artist sees the sketchbook. So it is a magical moment when I come across one, as happened the other day. A boy was drawing fish with tremendous focus. He had his tiny sketchbook as reference. He had filled out about 12 pages since New Years, when he started this sketchbook. When asked why he decided to use a sketchbook he replied, “I like having reference material when I draw.” In addition to many fish, labeled with their names, this boy’s sketchbook contains drawings of reptiles.
Now that December has arrived, students are familiar with routines and skills are developing in drawing, painting, printmaking, fibers and 3D design media. Student-directed work has transitioned into more sustained practices, with art making activities that extend over several classes or longer.
Fiber arts, a favorite of third graders, took up much of the fall for those who chose to make a one-sided or two-sided weaving.
A group of fifth grade boys is engaged in making a soccer stadium. After the field was completed, they started working on the stands. Next came the fans, dressed Barcelona-style. When I recommended that they wrap up their work by the end of the month, they were very disappointed. Given the opportunity to argue for more time, the boys adamantly described their ideas, process and interest in extending their work to bring their project to completion. Request granted!
Second grade girls are interested in fashion design. Using a template, they are designing clothing with markers and patterned paper. Their designs are kept in folders. Soon each will have a collection of designs to share.
Some of the fourth graders are painting murals for the new library. They created plans and then drew their ideas with chalk onto large panels. As they work, they have revised their plans to improve their composition. We hope the murals will be on display soon in the library!
Our choice-based art program at Franklin School stems from the philosophy of Teaching for Artistic Behavior. This pedagogy is based on the premise that every child is an artist with unique vision, ideas and interests that can be acted upon during art class. Using available materials and tools students create new objects and, in doing so, recreate the world as they experience it. In the artwork to the left, a third-grader has drawn-to-scale a tiny sculpture that he made from discarded art materials foraged off the floor. What was interesting about this experience is that he was sitting during the instructional portion of art class collecting these objects. An idea was emerging that was far more powerful than the lesson! Had I, as teacher, intervened at that point this artwork would never exist. The fact that the artist further challenged himself to draw his tiny sculpture demonstrates artistic inquiry and initiative typical in choice-based learning environments.
For more about Teaching for Artistic Behavior please visit www.teachingforartisticbehavior.org
Kindergarteners come to art class once a week for 45 minutes where they create artwork in our art studios.
They enter the classroom, sit on the rug and are ready to listen to the day’s lesson.
So far this fall we have discussed line variation, shapes, color, symmetry, two-dimensional and three-dimensional art.
After the lesson, students move to the studio to begin their work. These young artists are eager to apply their learning to their work! They choose to draw, collage, paint or construct. Materials and tools are arranged on the tables for them to access. Students have now experienced drawing, collage, painting with tempera paint and, most recently, construction with cardboard.
At the end of class, artists take responsibility for their studio area. They return materials and tools to the right places and put their artwork away. We all meet on the rug at the end of class to review the day’s activities before lining up.
Kindergarten art class is awesome!!!
First we visited the playground area where photographers discovered many interesting geometric shapes and patterns.
Later we moved to the front of the school. A few flowers were still in bloom and some of the trees were changing color.
Franklin’s classic 20th century architecture (built in 1938!) offered many opportunities for unique digital imagery.
When we returned inside students were excited to report about their collections of photographs. One student remarked, “We see these things every day but don’t really notice them until we look at them through a camera.”
Photography encourages children to slow down and discover subtleties in the world around them.
What do you do with 73 third graders and 24 digital cameras on a rainy afternoon? Set up still lifes and shoot! Though we couldn’t go outside to photograph fall trees, students had fun arranging creatures, shells and flowers into interesting groupings and then learning how to frame and focus their photographs. “You are collecting images,” I explain, “to edit in a laptop later this year.” Many already have experience using their families’ cameras, but few had heard that it is better to take a few carefully arranged photos than many quick shots. All of these images were taken by students stretching and exploring with digital imagery.