My world got flipped, turned upside down..

On Monday I headed into my elementary school to stat setting up for the year. This was the first year I was able to go in the week before PD to do so, and I was looking forward to an easy setup. After all, I'd left my room in a very tidy state in June. I started moving tables around...

 And then came the news... our Middle School Art teacher had resigned, and did I want to take on a full-time position? Of course I want to be full time... but that means moving up to Middle School!!

The perks: full time pay, only 14 classes and 350 students instead of 22 classes and 500 kids, a kiln, and a HUGE at room YES!!!!!!!

The drawbacks: It's middle school, I have to do a day of sub duty, it's middle school.... and I had 3 days to organize a huge room jam-packed with the former art teacher's years of squirreling away things wherever they fit.

I started off by pulling everything out of the closets and shelves, piling them up on the tables. I wanted to get an idea of what supplies and tools already were available. Some awesome finds included 5 sewing machines, 2 digital cameras, tons of easy-cut lino blocks, an 18inch square paper cutter, and 5 boxes of these dense foam geometric forms:

 Some weird finds included a billion rulers, countless rolls of architectural blueprints, and pieces of needlepoint canvas EVERYWHERE, and another billion plastic milk-jug bottoms for water cups and marker-holders.

Weirdest thing was that one unit of drying racks was mounted so high, no normal-sized human would ever be able to use it. I got the custodian to unscrew it and remount it under the window where it could actually be used.

 So now I've got the room arranged how I like it, with supplies stored in a logical manner. 4 giant bags of trash and 3 recycling bins filled with paper and plastic have gone out the door. This picture is from the doorway:

At left is a Promethean board and a long rolling table I  intend to use as a demo table and/or supply distribution space. In the left corner cabinets I'm storing paper, drawing media, and printmaking supplies. The counter top holds my paper cutter, and the drawers below have additional paper storage. I've got a mess of cardboard stuck in the corner ready for sculptural use. Drying rack is between the windows. A set of shelves is a supply station with rulers, compasses, whiteboards, crayons, oil pastel, magazines, and table supply caddies. A rolling cart is filled with tubs of colored pencils, fine and thick markers. Above the sink is all the painting storage with watercolor, tempera, water cups, brushes, india ink, etc. Another set of shelves holds clay tools, glazes, and acrylics. My still-messy desk is in the corner (haven't tackled that yet!!). There's a bookshelf stocked with text books I can threaten my students with. A stack of large bins hold fabric and felt, and there are 5... yes, FIVE sewing machines (happy dance). Three tall shelves are now empty and awaiting student art. Each class will be assigned a shelf. A rolling cart holds yarn and fiber supplies, a rolling shelf is holding art poster and large-size paper and boards. An expanding display unit awaits use as critique board, and 2 huge whiteboards stretch along the 4th wall. Small shelves under the boards are empty  and waiting for student sketchbooks. I have 5 long tables arranged in the center with a group of 2, a solo table, and another group of 2, so I can have a group of 10, a group of 5, and a group of 10. above the tables I hung 3 different-colored beach balls to identify table groups.

There is soooooo much more I'd like to do to decorate, and I haven't even touched the kiln area yet. However, at least I have a better idea of what supplies need to be ordered, and everything is placed where I want it. It is not cutesy, and I have no bulletin boards, but this is middle school.
I think I'm ready.........

Exemplars and thinking back

Wow! So.. um.. where did that year go? I have been on summer vacation for one week after completing my second year of (almost) full time art teaching. It's a good time for reflection.
As I tidied and packed up my room that last week I pulled out all the exemplars that had been piling up in a drawer over the year, sorted them out by grade level and took a pic (with my blurry cell phone camera sadly). These show only the 2D work we did- all 3D work went home with kids and I don't have room for saving my 3D exemplars... Most of these are unfinished, as I rarely display a completed exemplar- usually only works in progress because I like to use them as prompts to see if the kids remember what the objectives are. Like, "Mine's not done yet is it? What should I do to it?" And I think the kids are more creative when they see something a little open-ended or see multiple possibilities.

Kinder

 I cannot believe how many projects we did in Kinder this year!! Almost twice as many as any other grade level. I like to keep things short and sweet with the little ones because they have such a short attention span. The kids' favorite ones were painting rainbows, drawing fireworks, and making "wild things". The teachers' faves were their self-portraits in the snow and their cherry blossom trees and origami butterflies. My favorite was pattern Elmer elephants and Wild things. I never want to do bleeding tissue paper watercolor effects ever again.

First

 My first graders were also prolific (despite their constant chatter and my doubts that they ever listened to directions....). The kids' favorites were the scarab beetle sculpture and puppet theatres. The schoolwide favorites were the family portraits and Australian animals. My favorites were the "Dot" paintings and the bug jars (although they seriously freaked out our receptionist who had to stare at a display of them across from her desk for a few weeks- and I had numerous requests to switch out to something else!!). The city collage was a flop, because their scissor and glue skills were not yet developed enough for it.

2nd

 My second graders are another chatty group, and we did not get quite as much done as I'd like, but there were some good things. The kids LOVE the Oaxacan wood carvings(not shown) and predator/prey drawings, and so did I. We started and ended the year well, but the middle part was sluggish. The value landscape was a total flop and the self-portrait reading a book was just too long. Part of the problem was all our snow days.... but I'll be revamping a lot of things in my second grade for next year.

Third grade

 I loved, loved, loved my third grade classes this year. I always see them first thing in the morning, when they are fresh and eager to start their day. I had a very creative bunch who worked very hard to do well. I think all our projects were pretty good, but the kids absolutely loved sewing and making clay coil pots(not shown). Although I loved their food oil pastels with mosaic border, the mosaics took too long. The school loved seeing their Gyotaku fish prints.

4th

 Oh 4th and 5th graders. What a disappointment.. I have a lot of work to do to figure out how to get you all more productive. Maybe we should just have silent art.... The 4th graders seemed most engaged with their impressionist landscapes and US maps/states project. I really liked their figure motion drawings and metal toolings. I did not like rotating 4 classes through papier mache projects over 3 months. I have so little space for storing sculpture. I think that papier mache gargoyle project has to go!

5th

And 5th grade. Is it me? Is it you? We never even got to make ANY sculpture this year. Definitely revamping the 4th and 5th grade curriculum. Maybe you all need to work smaller too. This might not be a fair representation though, there's at least 2 projects missing from the above photo, but still. I've got my work cut out for me.
 I'll do another reflection post with kids' art later on. But laying out exemplars was a great way to get the big picture of what each grade accomplished. Having these pictures will also help me as I plan next year and decide what to keep or toss or modify to make sure my kids are getting a quality art experience. Year 3 will be even better, I'm sure.
Is reflection part of your end-of-the-year ritual?

Welcome Back!

I'm a bit belated with back-to-school room setup pictures, but better late than never. I headed back to my room around August 20th to start setting up. Then we had a whole week of professional development at the end of August. Kids started back to school on the Tuesday after labor day, but we only had 2 half days and then 2 off for Jewish holidays. I didn't get to see students on those first half days. So FINALLY this week my blue art room was filled with little creative bodies and minds.

 Our class sizes went up slightly this year. Instead of 21-23 per class there's now 22-25. It doesn't seem like much except that my room is so small, it's hard to fit any more. Last year my tables were arranged to fit a maximum of 23. Now I have a regular set up for 24, and have to pull a table out to fit one more kid on an end to fit 25. All my tool set ups are sorted for 23, so I had to get additional white boards, scissors, etc. Above you can see a sampling of Kindergarten self-portraits. I offered no exemplar, and just instructions that their picture had to have their name and a drawing of yourself. We also sang "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" as a reminder to draw ALL of our body parts. The pictures at left reveal more advanced Kinders who already know to use shapes and realistic color as well as a ground plane in a drawing. The two center ones show stick figures and the start of shape figures, but with little color choice. The majority of the Kinders are at this stage. The two at right are my low level Kinders who are still in the tadpole figure stage with arms and legs coming out of the head, and another who did not make a figure at all, but is still in scribble and bangdot stage. It's so revealing! I have a girl who just turned 6 today and many who I'm sure just turned 5 in August.

The rest of my kids are doing a letter design collaborative project that will spell out an "ART IS.." quote. I gathered tons of them and printed them out as posters for my bulletin board. Each kid will make a block or bubble letter with contrasting warm and cool colors, and I will assemble them when they are done to hang in the hallways. After this each class 1st-5th will move onto another text-based design. It's a great way to ease them into making art. They know their letters- they don't realize they are drawing when they design letter artworks. And they have a chance to get used to various materials before they have to make something remotely representational.

 Not too much has changed in my room- except for a few classroom management and instructional aids. I bought a coqui scraper instrument to use as an attention-getter when kids are getting noisy. I told them not to "Wake up the frog!" or they'd lose their stars:

 Lost stars result in silent time. But if they keep their stars they earn a sticker on the chart for the day:

When they reach a color bar their class gets a prize- to be negotiated. I'm exhausted from the first full week on my feet, and from repeating the rules 22 times. I've only had 3 kids whose behavior was truly difficult. Out of 500, that's not too shabby. The distribution of students among the classes feels really good- splitting up some problem relationships. And since I know the kids better this year, I can start the year off so much more easily. Like I know not to put THAT KID next to that OTHER KID, and I know most kids names already.


I'm hoping and praying to have a good year. If the first week is any sign, it will be.

percolating

It's drawing near! Back to school! I've had a lovely vacation full of art and workshop teaching and traveling, and I am soooooooooo ready to get back to school. This past week my imagination has been sparking ideas about how to plan out the curriculum for next year so that it is more sequential and flowing from skill to skill. My computer screen has been flipping between Pinterest and my Word document:

 I do not troll through Pinterest aimlessly gathering project ideas- I have project ideas and themes in mind and seek out visuals to go with them. I find it much easier to remember ideas if I have a picture to go with them, so Pinterest has been a godsend to this visual thinker. I've also started putting together boards of artist portraits, video resources,and art quotes  like the following one:

I'm so excited for the adventure of art in school this coming year. I have kept only a handful of last year's projects, and adapted or added new projects to better teach concepts. Taking on new things is a bit risky, but I have a much better idea of what my students are capable of now than last year. It also keeps me more engaged in teaching, as I'm exploring right alongside my students.

I head back to school next week to set up the room, supplies, and bulletin boards. Then we have a week of PD and greet kids on September 3rd!! Hooray!

Butterflies and Sunshine

While from the look of my blog, it doesn't look like I've been doing much, behind the scenes in the classroom we've been crazy busy. My younger grades have been doing spring and nature themed projects, which have been taking a long time! Kindergarten explored butterflies and gardens in a printmaking project. We made caterpillar bodies with beads and pipe cleaners, which doubled as bubble wands!! Then we made marker monoprint butterfly wings so that they would be perfectly symmetrical. Kids folded their paper, drew an M and colored it in. Then I came around with a spray bottle to mist their papers and they transfer printed their drawing to the other side by pressing and rubbing. Depending on how much water and how much marker, some came out great, while others barely printed- so some kids opted to draw over the print again to make it bolder. To make our gardens we did bubble prints-which to me looked like hydrangea. Kids blew with straws into a cup of watercolor/bubble concentrate to make bubbles rise up above the cup edge, then laid their paper on top. It took some experimenting beforehand to find the right combo of container and technique to make it foolproof and flower-like! After printing, students added leaves, dirt, and bugs to their flowers with marker, and I came around to staple their layers of garden/wings/caterpillar into a 3-D picture. I'm not totally happy with the results- there's something about markers I find dissatisfying. Maybe they're too common, and don't seem art-class worthy?

 My 2nd graders have been toiling over their Huichol-inspired yarn paintings. Most did suns and moons like seen in the original examples I showed them, but many chose other nature images like butterflies and trees.

 This project was extremely challenging because of the fine-motor skills required to cut and glue the yarn carefully, but it's definitely something they can accomplish. Some turned out amazingly!

 I have to buy more yarn next year, though, as I had 3rd and 2nd doing yarn projects at the same time, and we ran out of many colors by the end of it. If you need a stash-busting project, this is it- even through each child only worked a 6 inch square! To distribute the yarn I rolled 5 balls of each color so that each table had a box of colors to work with. They had to throw out scraps at the end of class to keep the boxes tidy. It's possible a lot of my yarn got thrown out as scrap, though!

The end of the school year draws near, and I'll only have about 3 more class sessions with each group. It's going by so fast!!

A peek inside the table folders

 I thought I'd try out using table folders for collecting and passing back artwork. I've got 5 tables labeled with 5 colors to help students identify where they sit. Even though I took great pains all week to check that ALL artwork had names, I know a few sneaked by me. With all students' artwork tucked inside the folders, I won't waste any time trying to figure out whose work is whose next class. One unanticipated problem with folders..... if the helper table kids don't carry the work carefully, all the work spills out.... We'll be doing some demonstration on how to pass back and collect supplies next week.
While most of our time was spent on going over all the rules this week, we also managed to squeeze in some artmaking time. I'm having the whole school K-5 do small cartoonish self-portraits to fit together in a mural of all our young artists. I sorted some crayons, markers, and colored pencils into baskets for each table. Some kids were upset that they couldn't have another color, but they adapted. Here are some of the Kindergartners' efforts:


from the "orange" table

 I'm really astonished with how well this project serves as an artistic development assessment. Can students follow directions (like draw with the paper in a vertical orientation, and fill in the entire paper with color)? What stage of people-drawing are they at (sun heads, shape bodies, stick arms and legs, or contour lines)?

from the "blue" table

With every class I encouraged students to persevere and fix any "mistakes". Part of my rules explanation included the statement, "We turn mistakes into Opportunities" and "Try your BEST". I explained how crumpled up artwork makes me very sad, and shows me that you're not really trying. It was a tough concept for some kids when markers hit paper, but we're all learning.

from the "green" table

It was fun to watch some kids brighten up when they realized how open the assignment was. I love those questions like, "Is it okay if I use black?" or "Can I draw myself in a dress?" Of course you can! As a result, I have some VERY interesting and creative "self-portraits".

from the "red" table


 I had originally planned on letting kids use pencils to sketch their picture out first. BIG mistake! My first class got way more stressed out about messing up, and got nowhere. From then on I said NO PENCILS! It drove home my "fix the mistakes" idea and worked out a lot better.

from the "yellow" table

 It will be exciting to see these all finished and put up together. Next week we've still got to do fire drill practice, and then we'll have a little more time to add some extra details. Hopefully we'll also be able to start combining the classes' efforts.
It's been an exciting first week!