Creating A Positive Classroom Culture

At the beginning of each school year I love getting my classes involved with planning for and creating a personalized positive classroom culture for the rest of the year ahead. I currently teach ten grade 1-5 classes made up of 2 classes per grade level meaning I see roughly 200 students per week. That is a lot of student input on how to make our art room a welcoming, happy, and meaningful place for everyone!

All classes are involved with deciding on essential art room agreements. We do this through think, pair, share sessions and keep track of everyone's ideas on large pieces of paper. These ideas are then grouped into categories so we can choose 4-5 simple "art room promises" for everyone to remember.  After we have decided on which promises we will go ahead with, each grade is responsible for designing something to personalize our special art room for the year. 

Grade 1: Essential Agreements
After taking part in brainstorming and discussing important art promises, grade 1 students jump right in to art room routines in order to practice and remember our agreements while getting used to a new classroom and starting our first unit of the year.

Grade 2: Art Action Wall 
Grade 2 students also begin with their unit right away, participating in a variety of fun activities. One of the activities that fits in well with our abstract art unit is a focus on Kandinsky. The students listen to a variety of music and paint with colors, lines, and shapes based on how the music makes them feel. They do this in small groups on large pieces of paper and this used for our art action wall where we celebrate students taking their knowledge outside of the art room!

Grade 2's finished action wall is a true work of art! I can't wait to see what type of student led action happens outside the art room this year. 

Grade 3: Essential Agreement Display
Once our essential agreements have been narrowed down, Grade 3 students are in charge of designing the art room promise display. They all vote on a theme after we do a group brainstorm. Every year it has been something different but I have to say this year is my favorite! Across both of my Grade 3 classes the theme with the most votes was a Galaxy Theme. After the theme was voted on, the students worked in small groups and decided what should be included within the display. After another vote between both classes, they decided on including a rocket, astronaut, planets, stars, comet, and of course a UFO with an alien.

This takes quite a lot of planning on the student's part but the process they go through sets them up well for art lessons the rest of the year! They thoughtfully plan out materials and color choices, they create a design,  they work together, and we have a blast doing it! Isn't their final work incredible?

Grade 4: Learner Profile Posters
Grade 4 students work in small groups and have the challenge of creating a poster that reflects how they will utilize a specific learner profile within the art room. To make things even more fun we take photos with the iPad and use the WordFoto app. Here are some examples of this year's Learner Profile Posters in the art room!

Grade 5: Inquiry Cycle Design 

This is new for me and the students this year, and is very much at the moment still a work in progress! Between working on our first unit, small groups of students are in the process of designing a simple inquiry cycle for each table in the classroom. Some students are drawing and others plan to take photos of each stage within the inquiry cycle.

My students and myself love our art room that we have planned for and created together. It's going to be a great year of art ahead!   

Contemporary Art

Grade 4 students inquired into Contemporary Art this year and we had a blast learning together while exploring new and exciting art forms like Photography, Video Art, and Land Art.

Here was the layout of the unit:
Transdisciplinary Theme: Where We Are In Place And Time
Central Idea: Technology creates new possibilities.
Lines of Inquiry & Key Concepts: Contemporary art includes many different art forms. (Change) Experimenting with new ideas and technologies. (Perspective)

To begin, we watched a short video from SmartTalk comparing the differences between Modern and Contemporary Art. This lead to a great discussion on how technology has influenced art over time and has changed how artists create. 

To begin this unit, students focused on photography while learning about the rule of thirds in order to create a balanced composition. They also experimented with a variety of iPad apps like MegaPhoto to create an interesting image.

Grade 4 students also experimented with video art and how to create a non-narrative art film with a specific mood or theme using iMovie.

Grade 4 students were also inspired by land artists like Andy Goldsworthy and practiced creating patterns with natural materials and capturing their work with photography and stop motion animation.

Large Scale Collaborative Backdrop

I am so proud of these students for tackling such an enormous project! We had a blast working on this (giant!) backdrop for the annual whole school music performance as part of our after school art club. 

The theme for this year's music performance was based on the book The Kapok Tree by Abigail Thomas. The students used the book for inspiration in order to start their design. They each chose which animals, plants, and rain forest flowers they would like to draw and set to work drawing and planning out their ideas. 

Each drawing was individually scanned and uploaded to PhotoShop so we could piece together the final image as a whole. (This was a very similar process to how another group of students took part in the Library Mural from a previous post) The students decided on the final scene below after copying, pasting, and rearranging their drawings on PhotoShop.  

Once the final scene was complete the image was projected onto large rolled canvas that I had previously cut and hung in the gym. The students then traced their original drawings on a larger scale. When the tracing was complete we laid out the canvas and started by painting the tree and background first. Details in the plants and animals were added last. 

This small group of students worked so hard, they even dedicated their lunch recess to come in to paint! Their enthusiasm, creativity, and effort was appreciated by all! 

Stop Motion Animation with iPads

I have been wanting to try out stop motion animation with my students for some time now, but I have always been a bit intimidated to do so. I was not very familiar with the different apps available, I did not have access to iPads at school, and I just wasn't quite sure how to put it all together successfully into a lesson. However, I knew my students would be absolutely thrilled to try something new so I started researching and downloading different apps and experimenting with them at home. I also came across this amazing guide to stop motion animation in the art room: A Complete Guide to Stop Motion Animation . This was such a huge help to planning out my lesson!

I ended up having students bring iPads from home since we did not have them available at school. Students who did not have iPads borrowed mine or shared with a partner. To introduce the lesson we looked at a variety of stop motion animation videos and discussed them as a group. I also showed the students this great tutorial for Stop Motion Studio (the app we used in class) by Watchwaddle on YouTube:

The students were then ready to write out their stories, plan characters and materials, and design their sets. Each student chose something different to work with and all of their stories were unique! I had a student use legos, another brought in stuffed animals from home, some worked with clay, while others wanted to draw and color their own characters.

We had so much fun with this! I am looking forward to incorporating iPads in the art room more frequently in the future with a variety of fun apps for students to experiment with. I am excited to share about what we are up to next!