Classroom at the Ready!

I love the beginning of school.  Prepping is such fun--I get to make Art just for my kiddos, and show off a bit.  I'm pretty enamored of my door and entry area.

Welcome to Art Class!

I get so stoked about the kids coming and seeing everything--I really feel like they are more excited about Art when it looks inviting.  In the weeks before the kids come, I get my room looking all fun and exciting.  Take a look at my setup this year:

The reading center has seating now!

 Supply shelves are along the back wall and side wall by the door.  Everything lives in the same place every year, so all the students know exactly where to look for what they need.  

Above:  Drying rack and paint area.  The cart has pre-cut paper of various sizes on the top part so I always have the size I need in at least one class amount, so I don't start a lesson without what I need.  Nothing worse than having to cut paper right there as you are talking to the students, because you forgot to do it prior to their coming to class!

 I like to put up what the grades are doing, with standards.  Info posters for line and color theory are here now, as we are going through the rules this week and there's no real Art being made.  I believe rules and procedures are so important!  The colored bins are filled with items we commonly use, so that they can be passed out quickly.  Each table has their own corresponding color bin of glue, scissors, and markers.  Likewise, I have small colored bins with sharpened pencils and separate ones for erasers, for easy distribution.  Plus, I can keep track of the erasers--kids who love to stab them get outed pretty fast, since they're hurting their own stuff!  I can check at the end of class and, well, you know how it goes.  However, if we have true problems with it, I have a checkout system for erasers.  More on that another time.

Above you can see the teacher sink and organizational space.  To the left are the gray drawers for the K, 1, and 2 grades; 3rd grade flat work goes in the shelves right next to the drawers.  I have another set of big drawers for 4th and 5th.  You can see the magazine holders that house the sketchbooks for each class, on the shelves to the right.  I have the students make their own sketchbooks, and they are stored on the shelves for easy access. They get them to take home at the end of the year.  

Below:  I opened up the room a bit by moving the tables off of the angles they've been in for a number of years.  The angles were great for having kids not have their backs to me when I'm at the board; however, there was a real trade off in movement around the room.  It was tight in places, and after a couple of years I got tired of trying to get between tables.  Having them in straight rows gives more room for circulation.  I also placed two of the tables end to end (you can kind of see them in the second picture, and also below), as one of them only gets used with my largest classes.  This opened up the room further.

These are the two tables I put together to open up the room.

Of course we all know I love doing the bulletin boards at the beginning of the year.  I don't have any artwork right off, so I always make a couple of boards that look good while we are waiting for finished work to be posted on them.  Here are 3 of the 5 that are mine to decorate:

I can't take too much credit for this.  I got the idea from a Pinterest pin I saw (I'm sorry I can't remember who did it--I'd love to give them credit).  But the hours spent putting it together were all me!  The one below was logical to be on the opposite side of the doorway...gave me some balance and let me use the neutral paint squares.

The last two are on a corner.

Those first days of school are so precious--seeing students after a whole summer and how much they've grown (what do they eat, vegetables from Chernobyl?).  The  new littles come in--how kindergarten teachers do what they do is amazing.  They are so inquisitive.  Love them!

I've got lots in store for my students this year.  It's always exciting to get things rolling.  We will be working in 2-D and 3-D, in all kinds of ways--can't wait to get it all rolling.  In fact, next week pretty much all classes will be up to their elbows in paint or ink.  Yay!  Let's get this  party started!

5th Grade Reductive Prints, and Drawing Challenges

It's feast or famine with me.  I don't know how some folks manage to blog all the time.  Do they not have life stuff that happens?  Do they sleep?  I'm looking at going to our Thanksgiving break, and I'm determined to post some stuff that we've done this semester.  Gearing up to start Choice- Based Art in the second semester, we are doing all kinds of challenges so that we've used our various art supplies/mediums prior to me letting them loose with the whole Art Room at their disposal. 


The first major challenge after the drawing challenge of our sketchbook covers was to make reductive foam prints.  I showed them a PowerPoint on intaglio printing, and discussed how Styrofoam printmaking is sort of like intaglio, since we scratch our image into our plates.  If you're interested in the PowerPoint, you can email me at paschal@fultonschools.org.


We started out by doing a mind map in our sketchbooks.  Given a choice of 6-7 words, students developed a four-pronged mind map that had four legs/words and led to at least four degrees of separation from the beginning word they chose.  Their choices were:  courage, laughter, honesty, morning, curious, quiet, green.  Here's an example of one student's mind map:


If they wanted to, they could have more than 4 words off from the original word, and they could go more than  4 degrees of separation.  This student chose to make her print about clothes.  

The students all agreed that having the mind map really made a difference in how they chose their subject matter for their prints.  This was a great way to get them to think in new directions and to choose something that had some real meaning to them.  It made for some interesting choices.


Once they got their ideas solidified, they drew a picture of their planned print on a half-sheet of copy paper. The foam plates we were using were 6" x 12," so they it helped them to know what size their picture would be for their print.  I reminded them to keep from making too many little details, as they did not translate well onto the printing plate later on.   They also had to make sure that they made any words backwards, as they would be printed forwards when they pulled the print.  Most of them used tracing paper to make their drawings, if they wanted to put words on their plates.  I tried to discourage it, though, as it's so easy to make the mistake of putting one letter backwards...


Once they got their drawing finished, I gave them a foam plate and a ballpoint pen.  They put their drawing on top of the plate and then traced, with a lot of pressure, onto the plate. Afterward, they went back and retraced their lines on the plate, so that it would be deep enough to keep from getting filled with ink.

Sometimes the ballpoint pen does not leave a mark with the ballpoint ink, but as long as the image is pressed deeply, that doesn't really matter.

They began their printing process.  I like to use phone books and catalogs to put the printing plates on when they are inking; it keeps the table from being a crazy mess.  Once they finish inking, they have to turn the page for the next person.  

I set up two colors on one side of the table, two colors on the other side, and a third color at a different table.  Kids go up to the colors they need, ink their plates at the inking table, and then take the plate back to their own table and bray it on the paper there.  It keeps things from getting wildly messy.  They're responsible for keeping their own area cleaned up, and they get points off for lots of smudges.


When they have inked their plate once, they cut away anything that they want to stay that color, or they cut out things they want to make another color--either way works.  Below is an example of how it works. 


I actually took this off of the internet, but it explains it all quite nicely.  I apologize to whomever it belongs--there was no citation.  If it's yours, please let me know!



Here are some of the works the 5th graders produced. 



The kids did a great job.  They worked so hard to get good, clean prints.  Afterward, we had a gallery walk--the students took their best print, their original drawing, and their mind map and put it neatly on the table top where they sat, and set up a space for their peers to come look at the process they used to make their prints.  They were all impressed with each others' work and we had some great conversation about the process, the difficulties, and the rewards of developing a plan for their artwork before executing it. 

The gallery walk

STEAM is Here and It's Wonderful!

The school year has started off with such excitement as we bring the STEAM model aboard at Roswell North.  I'm lucky to have a 5th grade class of 20 students every day, learning about physics and making all kinds of neat things.  We have launched rockets and collected data about distance, mean, and range, and we've speculated about how to change things like aerodynamics and trajectory to make our rockets go further.

Our latest project has been kite building, and we're investigating how best to get lift to push our kites into the sky.  What is the best design when there is little wind?  When there is a lot of wind?  How can we construct a kite that will not only go high, but survive if it is really windy, or if we crash?  What are the weaknesses of our materials?  What is our point of failure, and how can we improve what we have built?  What does success really mean as we are learning about the qualities of a good kite?

The students have been doing a great job of building and documenting their work.  We've learned about the Engineering Design Process and why it is important for us to approach our projects with this model.  I love hearing the students using their physics vocabulary as they work on their designs and try them out.  This has been such a great process for us all!