Art and Creativity

As a school we have been lucky enough to have a local artist - Nicola Bennet - come to work with us during staff meetings and provide us with professional development around Art in the classroom.  As a PRT I have found her wealth of knowledge and experience extremely helpful and in my own way am playing around with some of the ideas that she suggested.

Attached below are the two powerpoint slides that she has shared with us in order to inspire us.  During each of these session we were able to experiment with and explore different aspects of her presentations.

Nicola Bennet - Art in the classroom

Anthropomorphic Images

At the moment in class we are doing an art portfolio unit where the children are being encouraged to explore a range of different types of art styles.  The pieces that we are working on include sketching with charcoal, watercolour sketching, collage, paint, dye and pastel.  The children are loving exploring their creativity through this unit and it is a wonderful opportunity to hidden talents emerging from a range of students.

One of the things that Nicola talked about was the way that Art is one of the things that people decide at a very young age that they either can, or cannot, do.  I find it quite special that in my classroom a culture has developed where students are so encouraging of each other and of themselves - one wee young boy came up to me today telling me "Miss M - isn't my art great.  I am so proud of it and I did my best - it doesn't look exactly like J's one - but I don't mind because it looks how I want it to look."
Another student came up to me whilst he was on independent writing today to discuss his work - he was thrilled with the creativity that he was involved in and shared with me how he was transferring his learning about gesture drawing in sketching into his writing.  It was an exciting moment for both of us.  My hope is that my students continue to feel this way about their creativity in art and across the curriculum for many years to come.

Feedback - Why do we take it how we do?

We have a plaque in my house that says 'Write your hurts in the sand, carve your blessings in stone'.  The only problem with this plaque is that this is a lot easier said than done, especially in regards to my career.  

Over the past couple of weeks I have had two parents come in to see me about issues in the playground, however I initially took both of these parental visits as attacks on my teaching.  After thinking these through I could see them for what they were - simply parents concerned about their child and their social interactions, and nothing to do with my classroom, let alone how I teach.

In contrast to this, I have also had some very positive feedback from my tutor teacher and my assistant principal.  Both of these people have provided feedback that is extremely encouraging about my practice - messages that I initially brushed off as positive feedback for feedbacks sake but have since come to take as a true commendation about the hard work that I put in each and every day.  

I find it interesting how, as humans, we are so critical of ourselves - especially where we would not be of others.  Words of praise are often brushed aside and words of criticism (not in a constructive way) are often taken to heart.  It is especially important for us as educators to consider this - as not only do we react this way but our students do also.

My challenge for myself for the next fortnight is to indeed carve my blessings in stone - and to believe in myself as I would believe in a friend.  This is a challenge that I am setting for my students also.  Tomorrow, during cross country block, we are doing art based on the idea of what makes each of us a superstar? I will post this art once students have completed it.  

Student self esteem is huge - and greatly impacts the way that students work.  I am hoping that by encouraging my students to see themselves in a positive light they will in turn be encouraged to believe that they can indeed achieve anything they set their mind to.  

In response to my question of why we take feedback the way we do - who knows? Not me... but I do know that my students will leave my class with a backbone of self belief that cannot be crushed by the words or actions of others - and I know that I help the students contribute to this each and every day - whether it is through small comments and gestures or whether it is through an activity such as the one above.   Each student in my class is a shooting star with huge potential, and I will do everything I can to make sure they believe it!

Connections, Connections, Connections

As it is the start of a new school year I have only had my students for two days, however I have already been able to see connections that they have been making between their learning last year and this year.  What has been the most interesting thing to watch is that it is often a group of students making connections and building off each other's connections.

At the moment in Art we are creating self portraits.  For the students to make these they have to follow a four step process.

1. Trace/Sketch a photo of themselves onto A3 paper
2. Practice using finger painting to create bold lines and light shadows using a mixture of the techniques of dabbing and flicking
3. Choose appropriate colours and experiment with mixing these to create colours that they believe represent them
4. Apply this learning to their paintings in order to create a finger painted self portrait

One of the Art topics that all of the students in my class did last year was creating a still life finger painting that represented either a single flower or a group of flowers.  They have all previously done work on complimentary colours and learnt the techniques of dabbing and flicking. 

When I mentioned to a student today that I could see the effort that he was putting into flicking with the right amount of pressure to create the effect of shadow, the learning conversations that took off around what they learnt last year and how they could apply it to their new style of art were incredible. The quality of their artwork instantly improved also as they all wanted to make improvements on their work from last year. 

I guess that the learning that I have from this at the start of a new school year is the importance of providing the students the opportunities to connect their new learning with previous learning in order to develop their understanding of a topic.  This is something that is always on any teacher's mind but the importance of it was definitely highlighted today for me.  A beautiful reminder at the start of what is promising to be a wonderful year!

Below are a couple of photos of my students at the first two stages of this process.

Employed and Excited!!

I am very excited to say that I have joined a team of one of what I believe to be Rotorua's best primary schools! I am teaching in a Year Six classroom and can't wait to work with children who are at such an exciting age and stage of their life!

I had my very first teacher only day today and did lots of planning for next year. One of the units we are covering at the start of the year is self portraits of the children and I have decided to do them through the Chuck Close style of art. For more information on this and how to do this simply follow the link below and it will take you to the blog that I got this brilliant idea from! http://artiswhatiteach.blogspot.co.nz/2011/03/6th-grade-chuck-close-self-portraits.html

I cannot wait to see how these turn out and will have to post photos of them once the children have done them!