Forest/Central
Forest and Central Elementary Schools
My elementary placement was spent with a traveling art teacher at both Forest and Central Elementary Schools in District 62. My cooperating teacher Sarah Gmitro has been teaching and creating art since college and has a gift for working with elementary students. Below you will find the lesson plans, power points, and student work that I created and accumulated throughout this placement. I have learned so much about classroom management, routine, play, and the vital role teachers play in a post pandemic childhood.
1st Grade: Bubble art
For the first grade students, I created a lesson revolving around activity I tried during the pandemic in my online painting class. I adapted the lesson to work for young children and to incorporate the required elements from the district curriculum map. The students practiced stamp printing using found objects like tape rolls and water bowls to create circles on dark paper. They then used white paint sticks and neon pastels to create highlights for their bubbles and silver sharpies to create shiny spot and pops for detail. We talked about how light creates different shapes reflected on objects and how we can use overlap to create an interesting and realistic composition.
1st grade: Cave Painting
After the bubble art lesson, we took our first grade students through a "time portal" to learn about cave art in different cultures around the world. We brought them into the art room for them to find that their desks had been turned into caves. Using sheets overtop of the desks, string lights, and nature ambience music, we created an atmosphere for the students and tasked them with creating cave drawings under their tables. The students crawled into their caves and used crayons and a large piece of brown butcher block to create their collaborative work. We showed them images of different cave art and discussed how for thousands of years people have used art to tell stories about what was happening around them. We then painted each students' hand with red and brown paint so they could sign their work like prehistoric people did and hung the cave art on the ceilings int he classroom.
3rd Grade: Pop Art Pastel Prints
The third grade students are learning about the Pop Art movement by creating oil pastel repeating prints. We talked about famous Pop Artists like Andy Warhol and Elaine Sturtevant and how they incorporated popular culture into their art. I tasked the students with creating sketches of things in popular culture that are important to them. They are also learning about the color wheel, specifically warm and cool colors. By blending oil pastels to create new colors pattens, the third graders end up with colorful background for their prints. We used their pop culture sketches to transfer print their drawings onto the colorful backgrounds to creating beautiful repeating artwork.
4th Grade: Embroidery frames
The fourth grade students began working on an embroidery project when I first started my placement. They talked about different types of fiber art like needlepoint and crochet and the began design their own embroideries using burlap. The students practiced the process by stitching a border around the fabric and the used a marker to draw their pattern. They followed their pattern by stitching with different colors of yarn and carefully tied all securing knots on the back to make sure their artwork stayed intact. This project is very time consuming and instead of transitioning them into something completely new right before the end of my placement, I decided to extend the current project. There are many scraps of cardboard around the classroom and I decided to have the fourth graders create frames for their embroidery. We talked about displaying artwork in museums and how important it is to showcase your finished artwork in a professional way.
5th grade: Jen Stark Mural
The fifth graders are creating a collaborative mural based on the artwork of Jen Stark. The curriculum map specified that they should focus on learning about tints, tones, shades, and color mixing. We started by discussing what makes a tint and what makes a shade and practiced mix by playing a color matching game. Each 5th grader created a color scheme with two tints and two shades of a chosen color. They then designed their abstract squiggles and painted them in using their color scheme and black acrylic. Once each student was finished with their section of the painting, we spoke about public art and the history of murals as forms of social activism and expression. We assembled our collaborative mural in the hallway together, considering the composition and the placement very carefully so that it would be seen by the most people and have them best positive effect.
Hallway Displays
This is a collection of images that depict displays I have put up in the hallways of both schools. When I first entered the schools in my first week, I noticed how much art there was in the hallways and how it brightened up the atmosphere. I was happy to add to this positive environment and showcase the wonderful and creative things my students were making.
Gallery 62
Gallery 62 is a celebration of the arts started in 2008. The district recognizes one student artist from each school in the district and frames their work to be hung in the hallways of their school until their 8th grade graduation. The school board honors these students at a board meeting and displays their work for two years in the administration building before it is returned for display at their home school. The students recorded themselves explaining their artwork and why they love creating and all of their responses were compiled into a video that was shown at the school board presentation.
Power Hour
As a part of an SEL (Social Emotional Learning) initiative, the fifth grade students at central School rotate through three day, small group power hours. Power hours meet in the last time block on Wednesdays and different teachers run different sessions. The current power hour that my cooperating teacher and I are running is creating coil pots using air dry clay. We start by using play dough to practice making coils and then use the real clay and the slip and score technique to create the base. The third day consists of building up the structure with different shapes of coils, and the final day we paint our pieces using a mixture of liquid water color paints and modge-podge. This mixture mimics the shiny look of traditional glaze without having to use a kiln.
Mindful Minutes
At the beginning of each class, students are instructed to sit down at their assigned seats while a designated helper passes out their sketchbooks. The students are then given 5-7 minutes depending on their age to draw or color in the quiet. This bell ringer gets them in the mindset to make art and helps them relax from the other stresses of the day. While they are working, quiet peaceful music is playing and a timer is going to show how much time is left. They are to remain completely silent while the timer counts down so themselves and others can concentrate. The lights are turned down and string lights are turned on to set a warm and calming mood in the classroom.
