Writing about Art

A couple of people have recently asked me about my use of artist statements in my classroom. This post is for you!

We all know that art classes aren't only about making art. As teachers, we want to help our students grow into thoughtful adults. I think using a little writing at the end of a project is a great way to have students practice their writing skills and also inject some self reflection into the lesson. 

Let me tell you how I feel about assessment. Meh. There. I said it. I'm not a big fan of it, although I understand why we use it. I originally started using a little self assessment form that students attached to the back of their artwork. They would circle different areas depending on how they thought they did. I would then circle what I thought. I didn't like that system because too many kids circled only the highest or lowest grades even if they didn't really apply to their work. 

I have slowly developed artist statements that are different for each project. The format is pretty similar across all projects, but the content is different on each artist statement form. I include a combination of fill-in vocab as well as open ended questions for students to answer. It makes assessing vocab-based and reflection standards much easier and efficient. Here is an example from a recent 5th grade personal logo project.--->

Simply including a space for a name and teacher save me from so much nameless artwork. (I have no idea how some students manage not to have their name on their work after 3-4 classes of a project.) The artist statements are taped to the back of the finished artwork. In this particular case, it's taped on the back in such a way that it hangs down below the artwork allowing viewers to read what the students have written. I'll make these 2-3 per page so I can quickly photocopy them and not use too much paper. 

The big question is this. What do you do to include student writing or reflection in your classroom? I'd love to hear all about what you do. I'm sure there are a ton of you doing something way better and far more rad than this. 

2nd Grade Fairy Tale Puppets

This is another new lesson from this year. I'll say right off the bat that I had mixed results for this lesson. I liked the vast majority of the project, but there are some things that I'll change if I use it again next year.

I loved how this project allowed the kids to be creative in different ways. The 2nd graders had just finished a fairy tale lesson in their regular classroom. I built off of that and had small groups within each class write their own alternative fairy tale. You can find some good examples in "The Stinky Cheese Man." Students took a basic idea from one fairy tale and changed details or characters or plot details in order to make their own original story. Students then chose one character from their story to make a puppet of. 

The puppets were simple paper bag puppets covered with construction paper. The puppets turned out great. You can see all kinds of cool examples at the top of the post. I had dreams of kids acting out their original stories with their original puppets and it being super cool. It wasn't exactly that. Most of the actual performances were a little disjointed, even with extra practice. I'll have to rethink that part for the future. 

Download my lesson plan here!

4th Grade Comic Strips

Detail from the comic above. This guy
has such a cool, dry sense of humor. 

Let me start by saying that this project took forever. Since I took a couple weeks of paternity leave a while back, I thought that comics would be a good project for my students to work on while the sub was here. I had visions of being able to finish it in a week or two after I got back. Those visions were apparently more like hallucinations!

My students were so into this project that some wanted to spend months on it! I ended up calling it last week. The projects that are still unfinished will go into student folders to be worked on whenever they have free time. I had so many kids that really got into the writing and drawing for this project that they weren't even able to have time to add color even though we spent six 45 minute classes on the project. So many of the comics are extremely clever and quite funny.  

I'm not going to post a full lesson plan here because this is pretty basic. I had kids brainstorm story and character ideas before doing some sketches of their character. They then drew out their comic, using the first panel for the title. They then went over their drawing with a small sharpie before adding color with colored pencils. Pretty simple and a lot of fun!