Everyday Art Room: Keeping them in the Classroom

The theme for my school this year is Keeping Them in the Classroom. This is a HUGE topic when we are talking about students with high behaviors and needs. In the Everyday Art Room today I'm in no way saying I have the answers... or just do what I do... My goal in sharing this topic today is to start a conversation of ideas to put into our toolbox to help 'Keep them in the room'.

I talk a little about Aces in the podcast.  AGAIN, NOT AN EXPERT... but I know who is... learn more about Aces on ACE Interface. The speaker I most recently heard from is Tom Gonzalez from ACE Interface. He had many heart-touching stories and gave me a bigger picture of Trauma-Informed Care. 

 

In the podcast, I also talked about giving students a note before coming into class. This was an idea planted in my mind many years ago in a book called Classroom Management for Art, Music, and PE Teachers. Excellent book... I would highly recommend it. 

Doing a Curriculum Flip or Relationship Flip comes from training I am continuing to take at my school called ENVoY. I WILL be having experts from ENVoY on the podcast soon. They are amazing, but if you want to learn more about it now, please look at their website (click here)

This was a deep conversation and would love to hear your stories. First, listen to the podcast, and be sure to share your stories in the comments of the podcast. Click here for Everyday Art Room.

Kindergarten Pumpkin Patch

Kindergarten is focusing on identifying and making shapes in the first trimester. Skills we are working on is proper use of different media, cutting, and gluing. This project has it all. We started out by using different mediums... 

Then we went over how to make a circle in the air. Please see this post of how I get the littles to join me in a little pretend. (Click Here) The magic tool is the BEST!! The following video is given to the kids in pieces. They work on one section at a time. 

There is always a variety of skill levels from the young artist. 

Then, week two we work on turning our circles into a patch. Here's how... 

Cutting is the hardest part for my kindergarteners at the start of the year.  We just keep working and working on it!! 

Glueing can be quite a challenge as well! 

Again, the results are varied! It's fun to see the variety in this lesson... most kids feel successful! 

Kindergarten Animals with Marshmallow Background

My Kindergarten Art To Remember Project for this year was a lot of fun and I think they turned out adorable! Here is how we did it!

I saw this post from @Raising.Kinley and thought, yes!! I want to do that with my Kindergarten! So... I did. The video below is how it worked for my class. The kids did a great job. They did not eat them (that I know of)... I brought the kids back in small groups so I could watch them closely. It went well. The only change I would make next time is I would leave the marshmallows out for a while to let them harden. They got a little slimy with the paint.

I was inspired by Pin Koro video of How to Draw 30 Animals. I chose only three to simplify it for my Kindergarten students. I also wanted to show how large to make the animal and how to break it down a bit.  Here is my video...

I had students draw all three animals. They used sharpies right away. I have found that Kindergarten isn't afraid of making mistakes like older grades are, so just get right to it by cutting out the pencil and tracing over the lines and go straight to black outline. Then I had them choose their favorite drawing and that was the one they handed to me. The other two they colored and were able to bring home with them right away.

This year I have 50 kindergarten students, so my lesson plans look different. There wasn't enough room in my schedule to have all 5 sections of Kindergarten.  It breaks my heart but it does allow me to make different choices with their lesson plans. For example... I could do this lesson and be able to make time to cut around the animals and glue them to the background without being overwhelmed.  

Most of the time, I do have the students cut and outline, but since these are beginning of the year kindergarten students and they did make the background and they did draw the animal... I cut and mounted them for our Art To Remember project. When I'm working on Art To Remember the idea of a 'pretty' picture does have to be part of the plan. Parents want to purchase a lovely image for their keepsake and I can appreciate that. So... for one project only, I do the cutting and mounting for them.

Here is the good news... because I had these videos and materials, the three kindergarten teachers whose students do not come to my classroom did this lesson with their students too. They brought in volunteers and each classroom made the project as well so all students will have the opportunity to have an Art To Remember project. Here are some of their examples!! 

Everyday Art Room: Digital Portfolio Using Seesaw

For the episode of Everyday Art Room, I interviewed 3 experts on creating a meaningful digital portfolio. These are experts on using an app called Seesaw for digital portfolios but this is not the only way to create digital portfolios. The Art of Education University has a ton of articles on using many different platforms to create digital portfolios. Check out their website to do your research (click here).

The experts that I interviewed in this episode are as follows:

Angela Gadke is a Seesaw representative to start out the conversation talking about what tools Seesaw has to offer. You can connect with her on Twitter directly. Or also on social media is Seesaw it's self. Here is a link to their Twitter and one to their Instagram.

Vicki Wilson is a long time 'social media friend' that has inspired me in more ways than just digital portfolios. You need to follow her in some way... either her Twitter or Instagram. I promise you will be inspired in many ways.

A new person in my world is Anais Hernandez. I started following her on Instagram and found her post to be very inspiring when it comes to using Seesaw in the classroom. This is one of those places where this podcast broadens the lens a bit from strickly an Elementary Education Podcast to an 'All of Art Education Podcast'.  Anaise is a High School teacher using Seesaw in her classroom in powerful ways.

I have many past posts as well about the ways I train in my students to use Seesaw and the reasons I use it. Check out some of my past posts about Seesaw here.

3-D Heart Lesson

My theme this year is 'Use What I have' so for my Art to Remember project this year I decided to use some oil pastel, bright and bold scrapbook paper, and some fun techniques I was reminded of this summer after spending time with Lauralee Chambers or you might know her as @2art.chambers. 

Mrs. Chambers is a genius.  I went to her website to be inspired and sure enough, I ran across this post.  It was perfect. While at the Tennessee Arts Academy this summer Lauralee showed her 'students' how to do a tissue paper bleed. That is what you see in the background of these works of art. I did that for my 3rd grade, but then for my 2nd grade we did another technique inspired by Lauralee as well in her guest blogging lesson 'Alphabet Soup'. I used here marker bleeds for the background with my 2nd grade.

Examples of the Marker Bleed

Examples of the Tissue Paper Bleed

For my 3rd-grade I asked them to do a practice in their sketchbook. The video below is the lesson they did with me. 

The next time they came into class they had the following sketchnote on the smartboard to help guide them through the process. They also are just learning how to keep a sketchbook, so if they completed their final project, they then drew these process steps into their own sketchbook. 

I was trying to give the 3rd-grade students more independence in the Art Studio. I'm still asking them to create a prescribed work in a prescribed way, but they have to go through the process, know where to find resources, and find supplies within the classroom with little help from me.

For the 2nd grade there was a little more step by step and easy completion. This was the video that we used for the 2nd grade.