Art Room Reveal

Welcome to my Art Room for 2015-2016! Be warned - oodles of pictures in this post! Enjoy!

This is my SMARTBoard, which I couldn't live without anymore!

These are my new clean-up signs. When I say "It's clean up time" - they should follow the Clean Up 5 sign and then the Table Job sign. The less I have to talk during clean up, the better! I think the kids would agree!  :-)  

Does the sign on the left seem to familiar? That's because I totally loved what Alecia at Art of Ed wrote about HERE and I totally stole it!  Above the signs are our school's PBIS rules: be respectful, responsible, safe and then I added "be creative."

Below the clean-up signs, I made a new "I Can" display for our learning targets. We'll see how this goes this year. I've never been very consistent about posting them on a regular basis. And I added the Mona Lisa/Marzano chart on the right.

Next to the clean-up signs is our Artist of the Week board. This year, we're going on a trip around the world visiting 26 different countries and learning about different types of cultures and their art. VERY excited to share this with my students and we'll add a "postcard" from each location as we visit throughout the year. Go check out Art Curator for Kids to see her ebook that inspired this presentation.

My mascot, ART, from Monsters University

This mega-cabinet was donated a few years back and it is A-MAZ-ING!!!! Each drawer holds all of my 2-D samples for each grade. (I think I need some color in this corner now that I saw this picture! Add it to the To-Do List!)

This is inside one of the drawers. I've got all my samples, organized by project name and grade level. I don't know how I stored all of this craziness before this cabinet!

This is a large wall above their Class Crates. I used a stack of scrapbook papers to create the large visual full of sports imagery and then, threw in some Monsters University/teamwork posters for a bit of Disneyness on this side of the room.

Moving around the room, this is my sink area. I love that I have two sinks and I try to keep the chaos to a minimum by having the kids wash palettes at one sink and paintbrushes in the other. Thanks to Pinterest and the Teacher's Palette website, THIS picture has gotten a lot of attention over the years. It's pretty old now because we had a full renovation since this picture was taken, but I still use the footprints. It really helps the kids not to bunch up by the sinks.

This is where I hand out paint over by the sink area. And its all RoyGBiv'd of course!

These are my Point Charts that go with our sports theme and I was a golfer for a long time, so the fabric covering my kiln room door is a golf fabric this year. It's fun tying in my other passions into my Art Room!

Continuing back around the room, this is a cabinet from IKEA that contains so many things! On the top, you'll find my seating charts and my document camera along with a work space for doc camera demos on the SMARTBoard. On the left side, I have an art library full of fun and inspirational books to look at if a student gets finished early. Then, the four black bins are for common every day supplies: tape, staplers, Sharpies of every shape and size, pencil sharpeners, and free drawing paper.

A new addition to my room this year is this desk area, behind my regular desk. I'm lucky enough to have a student teacher this year and wanted her to have her own space. Being a cooperating teacher brings back so many memories of my own student teaching experiences! And it's really an interesting process to not only TEACH art but to explain to someone else WHAT I'm doing it and the WHYs of it all. 

The first project of the year for all grade levels is a celebration of International Dot Day - stay tuned for the next post showing our all-school mural!

~Amy

NGA Book Goes Interactive

Art History Book goes Interactive for the SMARTBoard

 

I love when I can feel totally relaxed in the summer AND super crazy productive! I just finished the final touches on my annual Artist-of-the-Week SMARTboard presentation for the next year! Can I get a "Woo Hoo!"??

It takes a lot of hours to make this type of activity, but I love exposing new artists, cultures and types of art to my students. If you want the background of this idea, you can check out these posts. Or you can go to the SMART Exchange and get them all to download for yourselves! 

This year, I used an awesome book as my jumping off point: An Eye for Art: Focusing on Great Artists and Their Work. It has a simple layout, crisp images and age-appropriate info and questions. A bonus? No naked people! (That's a tricky subject matter with my ittybitties!)

And I'm still pretty old-school, in that I like to plan out my Notebook files on paper first. Its kinda fun to see a simple sketch turn magically into a complete digital file.




To make the book more "interactive" for the SMARTboard, I just adapted 26 of the 45 artists bios, used the National Gallery of Art's website, and added questions, pull tabs, animations and video links. And every page links internally to make navigation a breeze! That makes it sound easy, right?! I'm going to use the file for the entire 2014-2015 school year, so it was worth every minute!

A look at the title page

Seven themes - all linked to multiple pieces of art

Then, each theme explores different artists and their work

Each piece of art is laid out to reveal an image, facts, guiding questions and maybe even a hidden link or 2

Download and enjoy!

~Amy

Art of the Week - Year #6

Does anyone else feel like the last few minutes of Art class are wasted? I pride myself on running an efficient classroom and I remember thinking that playing "I Spy" or "7-Up" seemed like a waste of the precious time I got with my students each week. There had to be a better way...

Enter "Artist of the Week"!!! 

I can't believe I've done this for six years now! What started as a way to sneak a little art history into the last few minutes of class has turned into a tradition that I totally love sharing with my students. 

You can read the story of how this class activity started and how it evolved here. And if you'd like to start WAY back in the beginning, you can check out my website too (TONS of links!)

For this 2013-2014 school year, I am using this awesome book my mom found in the discard pile at the local library. GASP! It's a beautiful picture book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each page has four images that have one thing in common. For example, the first page has details from a Lichtenstein woodcut, a Cezanne still-life, an American watercolor and a Greek vase from 460 B.C. Each image, though they sound completely different, all have an apple in them somewhere. Super cute, right?! The layout of the book reminded me so much of one of my favorite apps - 4 Pictures, 1 Word. 

So after some further research on www.metmuseum.org, I made a SMARTBoard file that links to each book page and then links to one chosen picture to discuss further with my classes. I am so excited to see how this works with my students!

Please feel free to download the file from the SMART Exchange, but don't feel like you need a SMARTBoard to make this kind of activity work for you. You don't have to play "I Spy" anymore!

~ Amy

Free Lesson Plan - Day #4

Today's lesson plan is a great one for 5th graders. They study the different biomes in science class so they already have a lot of prior knowledge regarding deserts and the animals that live there. And I've noticed that when they've learned something in their classroom and we apply that in the Art Room, my students already feel successful before we even begin! Can't ask for more than that, right?

I'm sharing a project that I have found to be a successful addition to my vault of lessons, but I don't claim that these lessons are mine and mine alone, so if you recognize them, send me a message and I'll give credit where credit is due!

And I have a completed SMARTBoard file for this lesson as well. You can find it on the SMART Exchange in a few days: SMART Exchange


Please - read, print, share and enjoy!
~Amy

Free Lesson Plans - Day #1

Our school is (finally) on Spring Break, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite lessons this week! I've been borrowing/stealing/adapting lessons for years because of the online generosity of art teachers around the world. So, I figure it is time to give back a little.
Each day, I'll share a project that I have found to be a successful addition to my vault of lessons. I don't claim that any of these lessons are mine and mine alone, so if you recognize them, send me a message and I'll give credit where credit is due!

And I have a completed SMARTBoard file for this lesson as well. You can find it on the SMART Exchange: Cezanne's Apples

Please - read, print, share and enjoy!
~Amy

Our Legacy Projects

Each year, our sixth graders create a Legacy Project to leave behind for our school. The first year I introduced this, we worked pretty small, framed it without much pomp and circumstance, and hung it quietly in the hallway. It's beautiful, but I underestimated how powerful a project could be if over fifty students worked on it at one time. We used Kandinsky's painting as our inspiration and now this piece rotates between the hallway and the Art Room (depending on the empty spots in our Hallway Gallery.) 

Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Circles - 63 small canvases

The second year, our school was undergoing a large renovation and I stumbled upon the very fitting quote "Without change, there would be no butterflies." Each sixth grader received a butterfly shaped canvas and selection of acrylics in our school's new interior color scheme. Next thing to figure out was where we were going to put all those butterflies! There is a long, empty hallway that every student goes through to get to our music room and gym and it was just aching for some color and pizzazz  I adore these butterflies and am really pleased that the heavy-duty double-sided foam tape has held them up without any problems.

Without change, there would be no butterflies.

Last year, we jumped on the Bottle Cap Mural bandwagon. It was the first time all the kids worked on one piece together. Logistically, it was a little strange having over twenty kids work in one small space, but I saw beautiful teamwork. They had gone to school together for so many years that they knew each other's strengths and knew how to work really well together.

Celebrating the four seasons of Wisconsin weather ( using +2,000 bottle caps)

This year, I wanted to make the final result more random and not so teacher-planned (that's hard to admit for this control freak!) Each student rolled a set of two interactive dice on the SMARTBoard; one to choose a shape (circle, square, heart, sun, star or zigzag) and the other to choose a color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple). The combinations and options seemed endless and so were their imaginations! Each student then painted a 5" square with watercolor paints. They also applied what they knew about composition, emphasis, value and stippling (which they had used within previous projects.) The finished composition of all sixty squares is just stunning! And considering how "random" it was, it sure looks balanced and organized! Now, it will hang in our school's health room for all to enjoy! 

To see each piece up close, check out our Artsonia Gallery.

I've got some more ideas in my head for the next few years - the computer lab is a little lackluster and the hallway into the gym needs some fun, active colors! Hmmmmm……

~Amy

My Favorite Class

R is for Rabbit

J is for Jellyfish

P is for Peacock

In Specially Designed Art, I have the amazing opportunity to work with a great group of kids, once a week, for 30 minutes. We've got ten kiddos from grades 1 through 6 and we've got 5 Instructional Assistants to help out. The students are part of our Early Childhood and Cognitive Disabilities programs. While some of the kids also attend their regular art class, most of them come to my Specially Designed Art class so regardless of their age/grade/skill level, they can experience success in Art.

I'm a big fan of organization (DUH!) so I plan out most of my SDArt projects well ahead of time. While it is my favorite class, it is pretty prep-intensive. It's a lot of prepping, planning, labeling, cutting, template making, supply stacking, etc… because the second I don't have something prepared, there is the possibility that I could lose the attention and focus of any or all of those ten kiddos. Our Instructional Assistants are top-notch so if a student is having a rough day, they'll know what to do, but if I've got everything more organized and ready to go, I feel like I've done my part to help prevent any potential meltdowns.

Each year, I change the projects up a little bit and the last two years have been really successful. During the 2010-2011 school year, we focused on animals (because it went with our all-school theme) and while I wish I could take all the credit for the great projects, I have to give props to a coworker of mine: Marnie Phillips. She does an amazing alphabet book with her kindergartners and I saw tons of potential in using that idea for our S.D.Art class.

HERE is the chart I used to keep track of each project. Each assignment focused on a concept, a process and an animal. Also, I found a technology tie-in to each assignment that we showed on the SMARTBoard at the end of each class. Please use this as a starting point if you're looking for a great way for all of your students to be successful. And you can see all of my students' past projects in our Artsonia Gallery: Animal ABC's - Specially Designed Art

Need more ideas? I'll give you even more next time - stay tuned!

~Amy

BONUS! BONUS! BONUS!

While my Word of the Week is intended for my SMARTBoard, I also love having a consistent visual on display in my Art Room.  Here is a photo of the empty wall and as we learn each Word of the Week, I'll add the word to the colorful display.  
So, in addition to my SMARTBoard file for my Word of the Week presentation, I also would love to give you the signs I'll display each week. They are all yours!

pdf - Word of the Week display
Have a great day!
~Amy

Word of the Week 2012-2013

One of my favorite traditions in my classroom is our "Artist of the Week" presentations. For each class, grades 1-6, after they clean-up, we have a short interactive adventure on our SMARTBoard. This is great for a couple of reasons. One, it gives me an opportunity to share information about artists that I wouldn’t spend an entire unit on, but I still want to expose my students to. And two, it really gets the kids to clean up quickly!

Each week, the presentation is essentially the same format. At the end of class, a student is chosen to “drive” the SMARTBoard and they get to pull all the tabs and tap all the links. The Artist of the Week slides always include the artist’s name, biographical information and lots of visuals of their work.

This presentation has evolved over the years and I’ve loved sharing so much art history with my students. 

The first year, I used artists’ birthdates as a starting point so that when October 8^th came around, we learned about Faith Ringgold and at the end of October, we learned about Hokusai. The second year, we focused on just American artists and we travelled alphabetically through most of the fifty states and talked about the Wyeth family legacy, Matt Groening, Moneta Sleet Jr., and Jackson Pollock. The third year, I used the “Know the Artist” posters as a jumping off point to look at famous artists alphabetically so we moved from Milton Avery to Andy Warhol and beyond. Last year, I focused more on art criticism activities and used the Usbourne Book of Famous Paintings. It is a great resource for any art room, really gave us some great information and images in a child-friendly format and naturally flowed into a SMART Notebook file.

So, that brings us to this year! I’m so excited to be finished with this large file. As you can image, these kinds of technology endeavors take quite a bit of time to create and build, but I guess that’s what summer is for, right? I’ve always wanted to have a Word Wall like the traditional classroom teachers do, but wasn’t sure about the logistics. Now I’ve got one and it’s interactive! Please check out my file and download it from the SMART Exchange or pass it on to other art teachers you know and love: Word of the Week - Notebook File

Also, if you're interested, I've submitted my other Artist of the Week presentations to the SMART Exchange as well. Or you can check out my pbworks website at: Big Bend Art for a full listing of all of our Artists of the Week.

Enjoy!