Recent Art Projects Cont.

I had a minute or two to take some more pictures today, amidst the busyness of getting ready for the Christmas concert coming up this Thursday.  So, here are some more art projects that the kids have recently done.  

Comics - Grade 6

Grade 6 just finished making comics and are now beginning a project on pointillism after learning about Georges Seurat.  Comics was a fun project giving them the chance to be completely creative, using pictures to display a story.  I gave very minimal guidelines for this project.  

Faith Trees - Grade 6

These Faith Trees were made in order for students to have the ability to express their faith. They were to find words in magazines that reflected their faith life.  An easy and quick activity.  Looking through magazines is always a favourite!

Watercolour Landscapes - Grade 4

By far, these were my favourite projects in the last month.  We started with a class on experimenting with watercolours and blending colours and then moved into these landscapes.  Since my Grade 4 class is such a small class, I find it to be one of my favourite classes to paint with.  For many of these students it was one of their first times using watercolours.  I think they did a great job!  

Now, time to relax after a long day of practising, making and putting away costumes, and meetings... oh yeah.. and some teaching in between.  Two or three more days of that and a week left of teaching - I am ready for that break! :)

Recent Art Projects

Just today I changed a bunch of my art bulletin boards for a fresh new look before the holidays.  Before I took them down I made sure to take some pictures.  Here are some examples of some art work I have been doing with my Grade 4 through 8 art classes.

Colour Wheels - Grade 6

These Colour Wheels were an introduction to the element of colour for the Grade 6s.  Colour is their focus for the year.  It was a great lesson for teaching the Grade 6s how to mix colours as we only used red, yellow, and blue paint.  They were able to use these colour wheels afterwards to help them with an opposites picture, which taught them more about complimentary colours.  (If interested just message me!)

Silhouettes - Grade 7/8 

These silhouettes were started off with learning about watercolours and how to blend watercolours.  Students were then to make a silhouette image on top of the dried watercolour with tempera black paint.  I enjoyed this project but didn't see the results that I was hoping for.  I must think of a way to enhance this lesson next time.  

Expressions with Line - Grade 4

Grade 4 is focusing on the element of line this year.  This assignment was taken from the previous art teacher.  Students had to come up with line designs when given an expression or feeling.  They then made one of these line designs into an oil pastel piece.  I loved how these turned out!  Not to mention the amount of creativity that was used when coming up with these!

Hopefully soon I can take pictures of the new projects that we have come up with.  Teaching art is turning out to be such a fun and interesting experience!  I love seeing the creative pieces that the students can come up with!  

Classroom Management with Marbles

Ohh.. classroom management.. I can't count the amount of times I have heard discussions about this in the past year and a half, yet still I am working on that in my classroom.  I have been blessed with mostly well-behaved students for my first year of teaching, yet I still find that this is one area I need to work on.  

Recently, I was able to attend a conference for teachers with a number of different workshops.  There were many things that stuck out to me, some of which I will possibly blog about at a later time.  I attended a workshop for Grade 2 teachers and at this workshop our many focus was on (of course) classroom management.  The one idea that really stuck out to me in this discussion was the idea of having a Marble Jar in the classroom to enforce good behaviour.  The idea is that there is a jar at the front of the classroom with a bag of marbles beside it.  Any time exceptionally good behaviour is noticed from the class as a whole, you can feel free to add marbles to the jar.  Any time the class is not listening or obeying instructions, marbles can be taken away.  Once the jar is filled the whole class will be allowed to have a party. (I personally would have a class game or community building activity we could do for an afternoon.)

I like this idea for two reasons.  One: it includes the class as a whole.  Therefore the class must work together in order to earn marbles.  This promotes community in the classroom and reminds the students that their actions impact others, not only themselves.  Two: it is a visual reminder at the front of the room.  

On Pinterest I also came across this visual printout to remind students how they can fill the jar:  

Adventures in Room 5

I love all of these ways in which the jar can be filled!

I hope to start this new classroom management strategy within the next two weeks.  I will update with the results!