This week the 5th graders continued their study of personality and started their work on their abstract art personality profile. Our first piece of work was learning about the Elements of Art. Students practiced thinking deeply about artistic form by playing a game. They were challenged to draw, say, a happy and a sad line, and then their table mates were challenged to guess which was which. After guessing, the artist explained their thought process. We tried this with many pairs and most of the elements of art, building the complexity as the game progressed.

Next, the students learned about Wassily Kandinsky and his abstract art style. They learned how Kandinsky attributed meaning to different colors and shapes and even used art to represent musical compositions. The students were then challenged to mimic Kandinsky's artistic style to create a piece that represents either extroversion, introversion, or ambiversion. This artwork filled in the first fourth of their traced profile. 

After lunch, the class learned about the difference between the S and the N in the Myers-Briggs Personality Types. After confirming if their personality is Sensing or iNtuition, they learned about the Dutch abstract art style of neoplasticism, or De Stijl. Beforethe end of the day, they were able to get a head start on the second quadrant of their profile art mimicking De Stijl.

Next week, they will continue their personality profile work by learning about abstract pointillism and Jackson Pollock's action art.