Back to School, Just Like All of Y'all....

Here we are again!  I loved stepping into Choice Based Art last year with my 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders; I'm going to do it again this year, although I'm tweaking some stuff.  In the next week or so I'll put up some results from last year (forgive me for not doing this at the appropriate time--you know how that burnout thing is, right?) so you can know how it turned out. Maybe as a teaser for this year--stay tuned!!

Here are the bulletin boards.  Compare to last year if you like--you'll notice they're once again teaching tools, same themes, but a little bit of new material.  My fave is the Elements of Art board--I dig the picture frames.  I'm sure I'm not the only Art teacher who gets in the zone making all the cool bulletin boards and posters.  While all my colleagues are stressing over room prep and class lists, I'm earbuds in, rocking out (sometimes dancing--don't judge), and making Art for my kids.  I'll post some pix of my room later.

The landscape, still life, and portrait boards are a little too stock for my wild-at-heart artistic self, but I want my kids to see work by Artists we are going to study.  Otherwise, I'd just fill the boards with my own fun work.   But you know how it is, we actually have to do our job and teach about all those folks.  I used some of the same works as last year...I really dig the diversity in the portrait set, though.  All those Artists are faves of mine.  Reppin' the ladies a bit, too.  I wonder if I need to go Guerilla Girls on my school this year.  Hmmm.

Teachable Tools

This year I started out strong on my bulletin boards.  Every year I do a bunch of pretty ones--they are nice to have when you don't have any art to display yet.  But this year I wanted pretty and useful, and so I set up teaching tools on my bulletin boards.  Take a look:



The Elements and Principles boards were really helpful with 3rd-5th grades, as their first projects had to do with Elements and Principles, and discussion was then followed up with a trip to the media center and the beginnings of research.  It was so successful that I am planning on making Elements and Principles boards every year.



The Basics boards were put on backgrounds of  primary colors, just one more basic that gets a rubber stamp on it in a sort of subtle way.  I liked being able to share the artists with my kids, too.

 

I liked the idea of getting the kids into the halls to see the boards, and felt that it would be good to be able to get them out of the classroom. It was an opportunity to share the stuff we are supposed to hit no matter what, and to let them be a catalyst to finding examples of these concepts around the school.  Study the bulletin boards, then go find examples, like a scavenger hunt.