Back 2 School - no fuss first week art centres

source - https://pixabay.com/photos/school-back-to-school-school-starts-4398499/

So how have your first couple of weeks back in your classrooms gone? Did all the prep you had done in your summer break pay off, and have you been able to make essential observations of, and connections with your students during these first weeks, to inform your planning and teaching going forward?

As a General classroom teacher of many years (and more recently a Visual Art specialist), I know how daunting the start of a new year can be.  These days I have as many new starts as I have classes that I teach. However, most specialist teachers have the added advantage that they see all the students, all year, so they can simply roll over their systems and expectations from year to year, with minor modifications and improvements. They already know most of their students needs and abilities through year-on-year observations and interactions.

My timetabling is a little different.

Timetable

I see most students for 1 term a year, and teach between 2-3 year levels in that term. I teach K-6.
The positives of this timetable is that I only teach around 1/3 of the school each term. This means remembering names and families, assessing and writing reports, and manage the work product and resources for 1/3 of the school rather that the whole school, all at once.

The drawback is that students get a solid burst of Visual Art for max. 18 x 45 min lessons in their term and very little for the rest of the year, unless they are independently motivated, join art clubs or attend private tutoring. They also forget the Art Space systems and routines or some may have changed since they last attended. I also need to re-evaluate what progress they have made since I last saw them almost a year ago.

For this reason, I set up exploration stations for the first week with juniors, teacher guided skill sessions for middle and teacher themes for senior primary students.

Year 1-2, Kindy and Year 0:
Depending on the size of the class, I introduce between 2-4 'open-ended' stations for these first lessons. Some of these change over the term based on the class interests and skills / media I want them to explore independently before I take a guided lesson. But most will stay out and available as exploration stations all term. This gives me opportunity from week 2, to start with a whole class skill builder session and students can peel off to familiar stations as they complete the skill. I can also pull out small groups as needed. But most importantly, I can make observations in that first week that will inform my planning going forward and build relationships with students through availability and communication that will support trust going forward.

Hand made, scented playdough

Chenille craft wire and polystyrene recycled from packaging

Stencils

Simple drawing guides

Modelling clay with image prompts

Wooden building blocks

Collage

Large format weaving

Year 3 and 4 are ready for more complex (teacher guided) skill builders that go over several lessons. The stations above will also be available to them, with some slightly levelled up if appropriate. Mostly, these stations are so open-ended that students create and explore at their own level anyway and develop through learning from each other as they explore collaboratively.
I like to focus on 3D skills at middle primary level and introduce papier-mache, clay and cardboard construction. Where possible (due to time constraints) the aim is for a teacher guided skill buildr to be followed by a student choice exploration with that media.
At Y3 the skill builders involved ceramic slab work and papier-mache pets. While the art techniques are teacher guided, there is differentiation built into the content and shapes built by the students. The decoration phase is also completely open to the students. The connecting transdisciplinary theme was Exploration.

Year 4 have a dedicated ceramic focus on complex figure building due to the time constraints in my timetable. Students create a cat through a guided skill builder session and this is followed up with a fully independent clay session where they build a self portrait and demonstrate their learning from the skill builder, while aiming for a unique and personally representational sculpture. They are also introduced to glazes. Due to the time consuming, messy and expensive nature of ceramics, I have strict protocol around using clay which becomes an independent media station in Year 5 and 6.

By Year 5 and 6, students are mostly independent but also more aware of their abilities and that of others in their group. In my experience, the more agency they have and the more unique their work, the less potential for direct comparisons and defeatism rarely rears its head. Exploration Stations are no longer just physical but also virtual, and they independently explore concepts of personal interest as related to Art. Here I start with a research theme: What are the main elements of art, choose 1 that you are interested in and create a piece of work that communicates your understandings to an audience.
We have an art show every 2 years and then this inquiry has the added constraint of forming part of a collaborative piece e.g. feathers on a large wing, flower in a large bouquet, house in a large village etc. Students also select a media of choice for 2D work to explore with this assignment.
Self-directed inquiry is easier at this level as these students all have iPads which they bring to art at every lesson. They are also expected to reflect on their learnings and thinking process is most lessons through the Seesaw app. These reflections inform their grade for the Responding to Art strand in IB PYP. All work product, complete or not, informs their grade for the Creating in Art strand in IB PYP.
Some samples of the assignment are below, on displayed in the art room for the term, then glued into their sketchbooks:

Exploring Colour

Exploring Form

Exploring Line

This assignment also re-establishes the expectations and routines in the art room. Year 5 and 6 then go onto their personal artwork based on their current inquiry unit. They ideate using the Design Thinking Process (DTP) for content, message, originality etc. in their skethcbooks before creating their final artwork.

The Design Thinking Process phases 1-3

The Design Thinking Process phases 4-6

 Their only constraint is the time-frame. They can pick any media from the following menus:

Some time ago, I wrote 2 resources for starting art/creativity/fine-motor exploration stations in your own classroom or art room. These it right in with the play-based philosophy too. These are available on both my TPT  and HML stores for $5 each. I just know that you will find exploration stations as wonderful as I do !

View this product on TPT and HML

View this product on TPT or HML

Thank you for stopping by,
With love, Te Aroha
Timea
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Exploring strategies for teaching creative thinking Part 4

In my previous post I wrote about how I applied the research of  Anderson and Yates (1999), who taught artistic clay work to six-year-old students using social modelling and cognitive learning principles, to my clay lessons with Y3 and 4 students (age 7-9).

In this post I write about how I scaled it up to Year 5-6 students (aged 10-11), and what I observed.

With older students (Y5/6), I no longer modelled physically. Instead I loaded a you tube video for them to watch and follow independently before they cycled through the clay centre. This was in an effort to further develop both independence and collaboration among the small groups, as well as their decision making/problem solving skills. This video can be found here. 

While this was sufficient for approximately half the students, others still needed my hands on support to work through the process of constructing a figurine. Reasons ranged from lack of experince with the medium, to limited short to term memory retention, to students on learning support for processing disorders.
Independent students personalised their directed work, with much less encouragement, some applying the concepts in the video tutorial to a completely different subject (the video is a guided lesson that produces a bear).
This showed that some students were ready to move beyond the exemplar once it had done the job of visually reinforcing clay work skills learnt previously. These students did not need the practical step-by-step learning, while others still benefited from that.
 

Y5-6 students have choice of media for their Wall / Wow Work (for displays/artshows etc), so not all chose to create with clay following the tutorial centre, but those that did, produced impressive work.

Year 5 - based on inquiry unit Sharing the Planet (IB PYP), animals under threat

Year 6 - Independent and self directed work

 

 

What does the research say:
Groenendijk, Janssen, Rijlaarsdam, and van den Bergh (2013) examined ninth-grade students who were taught the same design strategy steps (based on Sapp (1995), involving various divergent (producing ideas and sketches) and convergent (evaluating ideas and making choices) stages. One group also had  observational learning added, where students watched videos of other students completing design tasks which showed work in progress along with 'thinking aloud' through the design steps. Results show that observational learning had a positive impact on creativity, but only for high-aptitude students. For low-aptitude students, creativity improved
equally in both the observational-learning and direct-strategy instruction conditions. (see my noted observations above with the introduction video to clay)

In their study, Yi, Plucker, and Guo (2015) considered how modelling influenced divergent thinking in a sample of Grade 8 students. All groups were asked to complete verbal and figural divergent-thinking tasks, but one group were shown creative models prior to completing theirs. These students produced work product with higher scores on creativity, technical quality, imagination, artistic level, elaboration, and overall impression. Regarding divergent thinking, viewing models positively impacted all three facets of divergent thinking on the verbal tasks (fluency, flexibility, and originality) but not on the figural tasks.

With all this in mind, I started work on a digital resource where I could load videos that can support students in learning centres. These can be videos I make as time permits or ones I link from Youtube. This works mainly for students from Y4 up as they all have personal iPads at school and can easily access on-line resources. For younger students, I would continue to model in small groups, print out exemplar images, show video on the classroom TV monitor and rotate through familiar centres. I include exemplars of work from my own students where possible. As many of the videos have my students in them, I cannot share the link to the site, but I have started linking the public ones to this blog under the Flipped-Learning link at the top.

Once I have used these a bit more, I'll share my observations with you here in a future post :)

Thank you for stopping by,
With love, Te Aroha
Timea
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Exploring strategies for teaching creative thinking Part 3

In my previous post I wrote about how I applied the research of  Anderson and Yates (1999), who taught artistic clay work to six-year-old students using social modelling and cognitive learning principles, to my own clay lessons with Y1 and 2 students (age 5-6).

In this post I write about how I scaled it up to Year 3-4 students (aged 7-9), and what I observed.

Year 3 were given teacher workshops to develop their understanding of slab work, with applied relief and imprinted textures.

We worked on boat-scapes to compliment their unit on explorers and offered some directed choice options for students to personalise their tiles (e.g. orientate your slab portrait or landscape, this is how you can turn this circle into a sun or a moon then place it anywhere in the sky, or add a second boat/wave if you wish, of your own design, or choose from these 4 texture rollers to imprint your water, etc).

These workshops were followed by an independent session where students were required to create a bird sculpture, continuing the theme of exploration and the applied concept of freedom. The initial intention was to base their birds on the slab technique learnt in the workshop. I supplied students with a number of reference photographs of slab bird sculptures to use for inspiration. However, I also included a few 3D bird sculptures just to see who might be ready / enticed to give that a go.

Bone dry and ready for the kiln

I was impressed by how many did. But still just as many weren't ready to go that next step so it was good to have a range for students to refer to. A range of paint options were also available for finishing after the bisque fire. Students could choose from liquid water colour (dye), tempera, metallic acrylics or left uncoloured and dipped in clear glaze for re-firing.

With Year 4 students (aged 8-9), the teacher directed lessons modelled a cat figurine (tying in with the school production of Aristocats).

As with the Y3 students, Y4 were also given directed choice options to personalise their figurine. These included selecting preferred cutters for the base, the shape of the body and tail position.
I noticed during these teacher directed 'workshops', students were keen to personalize their work at every opportunity and my message was to embrace the uniqueness of their shapes and creations. The steps were a learning guide rather that a requirement and students were left to independently add further personal details for the last 5-10 minutes of their workshops. One student completely personalised his cat into a dog :)

This year group painted their cats with underglaze once bone dry, then they were bisque fired before I glazed and refired them.

I did not model how to apply the glaze so originality and creativity was even more evident in this step as students ranged from realistic designs based on pets they knew, to artistic pattern and colour interpretations. There were no rules but some reference images were provided on the board to indicate a range. None of these were copied, but some students did use the reference images as a starting point.




These workshops were then followed by an independent session where students used the skills they had learnt in the workshops to create a self portrait figurine, to show personal traits, interests or talents.



       


Students were given very limited time (only a single period) to create these figurines. Despite this constraint, they produced some remarkable and original work. There was a lot of conversation among the students as they supported each other through the making challenge.
This consolidation time was incredibly valuable for learning as students figured out what they remembered (or had forgotten) from their workshops and how they could apply those learnings to new elements that they wanted to create. For e.g. rolling a coil for a cat's tail worked for rolling thinner coils to make locks of hair. Again, the figurines were left to air-dry before under-glazing so there were mishaps with bits falling off. This learning will stay with them for future lessons about the importance of solid joins.
I created a teaching video for making a figurine, following these sessions, and included the elements that were challenging for the students. This video will be available to them next year to review before they start on their next clay artwork, which will be an independently conceived and created piece.  

My next post will detail the lessons and outcomes observed with Y5-6 students .


Thank you for stopping by,
With love, Te Aroha
Timea
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