Grade 6

Transition Program: Multiple Intelligences.

In ArtSEL, we are starting a new unit on My Boundaries and Expectations. This week, the students are learning about their multiple intelligences. We can work towards developing a growth mindset and overcome ways that may limit or sabotage our success.

How to identify your strengths

To unlock your genius you need to work out what you are already good at. Building upon strengths goes a lot further than fixing weaknesses.

You don’t need to be good at everything

The good news about the different areas of intelligence is that you don’t need to be a genius in every area.

To develop intelligence you need to know what you are good at and amplify those strengths. Intelligence is made up of many parts and not just limited to IQ and academic smarts.

Mapping My Pizza Smarts.

The students identified their strengths (i.e., their different smarts) in their pizza ‘smarts’ chart. The pizza was divided into eight different slices, representing eight different types of intelligence. (Just remember, unless you’re an absolute genius, you’re never going to have full sized pizza slices in every section!)

These are all the smarts: Self Smart. People Smart. Music Smart. Body Smart. Picture Smart. Logic Smart. Word Smart. Your intelligence is like a multi-flavoured pizza. Some slices are large and bursting with ingredients while other slices are small and have hardly any bits on them at all. This is true for most of us.

Most people have never mapped their strengths. By outlining the shape of your pizza smarts, you are in a more powerful position to learn your strengths and to build on them.

Whether your pizza map is true or not, it shows you how you view yourself.

Some of you may have been too modest, others perhaps too confident. Now have a look at the pizza smart (on the left) and think about what pizza smarts you have.

Now, we are ready to link emotions to our Art!

Sometimes people do silly things to things to avoid feeling anxious. People argue, fight, escape, avoid important deadlines, put off important task or become controlling to stop feeling anxious.

Albert

To simplify things a bit you have two brains. The first is the smart and creative brain that evolved most recently in humans. Now we could call the clever, creative, brilliant, wonderful, imaginative, fantastic and genius part of your brain the prefrontal cortex but in honour of Albert Einstein let’s call it “Albert”.

Rex

The second part of your brain evolved a long, long time ago and forms the bottom part of your brain. This part of your brain keeps you alive. It keeps your heart beating while you sleep. It keeps you at the right temperature. It does a lot of really important things. Infect this lower part of your brains contains 80% of your brain cells. It knows what frightens and threatens you and it is pretty much the same brain that dinosaurs had. Once this part of your brain detects a threat it acts as if it is a life or death issue, even if it isn’t.”.

Rex is very old, can get quite grumpy and isn’t very bright. Rex doesn’t use language. Rex doesn’t use logic much so he can’t be reasoned with. Also he is incredibly easy to distract.

Now we all like to think that our inner Albert runs the show. We are all reasonable, intelligent people in control of our own destinies, right? Wrong! Rex runs the show. At times Rex will listen to Albert but only if it is something Rex wants to hear.

For example, your inner Albert might decide to start new exercise program but if your inner Rex wants to lie in bed, I’d suggest you might not decide to run a marathon. If your inner Albert says “this issue isn’t worth worrying about” but Rex detects a threat, you’re likely to be up pacing the floorboards at 4am. Rex can save your life. If something were to attack you’ he would have you running away before Albert had even thought about it. Rex thinks the most urgent thing to do is always the most important thing to do.

You can get your inner Albert to take matters into hand but only if you distract Rex with something to keep him comfortable. Food, drink, sleep, rest, distractions all help Rex to settle for a while.

The problem for many of us, is that as soon as inner

Rex is feeling warm and snuggly we think the problem is solved and don’t put our inner Albert to work in sorting out the issue. Instead we take a break. Things are fine, we think, and they are until our disgruntled Rex roars back to life. Then we start feeling anxious again.

Now have a look at this list and put an R for a Rex strategy (what people actually do to lessen anxiety) or an A for an Albert strategy (things people can do to lessen anxiety).

_Give up energy drinks _Sleep less

_Exercise (even a 10 minute walk helps)

_Argue with parents

_Eat well - reduce salt, sugar and saturated fats

_Eat junk food

_Find someone who has the same worry and consider them to be an expert

_Get more sleep

_Avoid doing things

This week’s SEL topic is managing our emotional responses (we can respond as an Albert or a Rex).

At different times in our life we feel like having a meltdown when we get upset. This would be a Rex response!

So this week we are going to draw Salvador Dali’s melting clocks!

Salvador Dali

Let's begin....

1. Watch the video to see who Salvador Dali is.

2. Now you know a bit about Salvador Dali, have a look at the images on the left hand side to see his style. Salvador Dali was part of the Surrealist Movement.

Surrealism is combining multiple strange images together. It combines normal images with strange images that don't make much sense (known as juxtaposing/juxtaposition). Look at Salvador Dali's telephone image with the lobster. This is surrealism.

Salvador Dali is one the most famous modern surrealist collage artist.

3. Now watch the video on surrealism.

What You Need:

1. A3 paper (stick two A4s together).

2. Grey lead and coloured pencils.

3. Rubber.

Watch the video on how to draw a Salvador Dali style melting clock:

https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FLcOmqNnW3Fc&data=02%7C01%7CNikki.Olsen%40education.vic.gov.au%7C75fb7e3997094f098f2608d83bf5dbc4%7Cd96cb3371a8744cfb69b3cec334a4c1f%7C0%7C0%7C637325274431693969&sdata=2Id7Bi%2BtCdnNvbHVkew4ZtyU%2FGKYtUjVvwHlYl%2BKo%2FQ%3D&reserved=0

Now draw a melting clocks.

Can't wait to see you artwork uploaded on Google classroom.

How to Stress Yourself Out

Getting stressed is pretty easy really. Most of us can manage it all by ourselves without any outside assistance. Just in case you need help in increasing your stress levels here are a few sure-fire tactics you can use.

SLEEP LESS

Not getting enough zzzs will make you cranky and wired. You need at least eight hours of sleep to function well. At times of pressure you may even need more.Sleep resets our hormone levels and protects us against stress and depression.

DRINK ENERGY DRINKS

Just one of these drinks elevates your levels of adrenaline (a stress hormone) to five times the normal level for five hours after drinking. These drinks are often high in caffeine, aspartame and sugars all of which increase your stress levels. Add to that eating a lot of junk food that is full of carbohydrates and you’ll have a brain that is not only stressed out, it will also feel sludgy and tired.

BE INACTIVE

Sitting around doing nothing can be great but if you are already a bit stressed, it will help the worries to build and circle like vultures.

ISOLATE YOURSELF

You’re a big powerful person right? You don’t need help from anyone else. Pretend that: no one else on earth has ever felt this way and they have no useful ideas that could help you in any way; and..even if you did ask them they wouldn’t care enough about you to help.When you are really stressed you can’t think straight, so trying to sort things out alone is one of the best ways to make sure your worries continue.

THINKING ABOUT THE OUTCOME NOT THE PROCESS

Focusing and worrying about tests, upcoming performances or future social situations will not only increase your stress, it will fill you with dread as well.

WORK HARDER

The logic here is that if working harder got you into this state, it is going to take even more hard work to get you out of it. This is crazy, but you want to feel stressed, this is a good way of going about it.

ESCAPE INTO COMPUTER GAMES

Playing computer games can be a good distraction.Play them for too long, say more than two hours, and you will end up feeling wired and listless.

TALK ABOUT BEING BUSY

We can talk ourselves into being stressed. Telling everyone how busy and tired you are becomes a way of increasing your own sense of being exhausted.

Now that we have learnt what it means to stress ourselves out, watch the video to practise being mindful and calm ourselves down.

What happens when we are Anxious? Emotions like anxiety can create a number of health related issues due to the impact that stress and anxiety can have on our bodies.

When we are anxious our fight-or-flight reflexes are stimulated because adrenaline pumps through our bodies and our pupils in our eyes dilate allowing more light to get into our eyes enhancing our vision.

In a fight, you need to be able to see a threat coming and in flight we need to see where we are going. In short, all that matters to your body is your immediate survival.

When you experience stress, it can cause the muscles around your eyes to become tense, leading to muscle spasms.

We need to learn to manage troubling emotions such as stress and anxiety. One of the ways is to create time for yourself.

So let's start our art.

You will need:

1. A3 paper (2 sheets of A4 taped together)

2. Pencil

3. Rubber

4. Coloured pencils and pens.

What to do:

You are going to be learning how to draw an eye.

Now watch the video on the left.

Follow the video very carefully and stop it when you need to.

Listen to the different techniques and tips from the artist.

After you have completed your art work upload to Seesaw (under ArtSEL).