Eric Carle Art Club

Hello friends,
Since I started specialising as a Visual Art teacher at my school, I have had a few interesting material management issues that have surfaced. I teach 2 year levels a term which amounts to a group of 140 students a week. This forces you to look at managing work flow and waste in a new way.

One such dilemma is what to do with the paint laden brushes and remaining paint on palettes as the end of a lesson is approaching and its time to pack up.

This is what I do to save my sinks/drains and minimise our ecological footprint. Once the students are set up and working on their masterpieces, I set out pre-spoilt paper (this could be damaged art paper or miscopied paper from the photocopier room.

As students start their clean up, they are required to go past this table and paint off any remaining paint on their palettes and brushes. Some students even started scrarching lines into the wet paint making interesting textures.
You do need to supervise this task initially as they can enjoy it a bit too much and take too long swirling the paints around. Challenge them to leave individual colours visible rather than mixing all colours into a green, grey or brown soup...although these ones can be useful too.

Put these sheets aside to dry and collect them up in a box. Over time you will build an impressive paper collection that you can use in an Eric Carle focused art unit.

When I ran an art club for Year 2 students (ages 6-7) this year,  the kiddies were required to use a mixture of painted recycled paper and scrapbooking paper that either complimented or harmonised with each other (we were also focusing on colour theory).

Students chose a bird image from some line drawn options that they wanted to work with. These were used as a stencil.

Students laid the stencil out on their paper and drew around it, then cut it out.

Then the stencil was cut into its parts and used again on the papers. The birds were glued together and matched to plain card in a colour that suited their bird, for mounting.

To make the background students drew freehand branches on the brown soup paper (mentioned earlier) and  leaf shapes on the green soup paper. They cut this out and glued onto their mounting card. Then added their birds.

Next week we will add some spring blossoms to our tree branches with tissue paper, so I'll post some photos again after that. Why don't you have a go at recycling unwanted paint and paper into artworks like these. All the creating aspects form great fine motor training and reinforcement for young students.

With love, as always

Thank you for visiting,

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Independent Reading with Purpose

As soon as my students start reading their self selected chapter books for independent reading, It is no longer possible to set book specific comprehension activities . We still want to help them think about what they were reading and to read with purpose. So I made a set of Reader Response Stems based on the same comprehension strategies that I use with them in shared/teacher directed reading sessions.

These Reader Response Stems can be used by the students for any book that they are reading. It can be matched to the strategy you are covering with the class at the time. You could used it for independent practice once you have finished teaching a specific strategy to your class and use it as an assessment tool to see if they are using that strategy fluently or whether they may need some more direct teaching on it.

The 11 strategies covered in the set include:

• making connections
• asking questions
• visualising (making mental pictures)
• inferring (predicting)
• summarising
• synthesising
• author's message
• evaluating
• setting (time and place)
• characters
• language

and suit students from ages 9 and older.
You can get your very own copy which includes both a UK and USA spelling set (simply delete the one you don't need from the PDF)
by clicking here (TPT) or here (TNB).

Thank you for visiting,

http://www.helpmelearn.co.nz/
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/One-Teachers-Journe
http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/tkwillemse
https://twitter.com/TimeaWillemse
http://www.youtube.com/user/HelpMeLearnMaths
http://pinterest.com/tkwillemse/boards/

Dragon Art Lessons for Fantasy Literature Themes

One challenge that we may face when teaching art is to engage boys with this subject, without losing the girls. One particular theme I found quite successful these last couple of years has been that of dragons.

The cool thing about this unit is that it has links to maths through number, measurement, coordinates and enlargement.
You can also link it to a literacy unit on Fantasy.

Here is a link to our class blog where one of my students reviewed one of these novels

Here are some images of my Y4 class (8-9 year olds) getting started on their drawings. One pair of students were so inspired that they continued drawing and researching dragons for the rest of the year.

These sketches were cut out and mounted onto painted backgrounds like this sunset one. 

The following year we created moon-rise backgrounds, like this one:

If you would like to get this popular step-by-step lesson tutorial for How To Grow Your Dragon,  to engage your students, you can find it in my TPT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE

Or visit my website - Help Me Learn - HERE

I would love to see how you get on with it so please link me in any social media posts where you share your amazing results:

You can add the product link from TPT or my Instagram link @timea_oneteachersjourney

So what have other teachers said about this lesson tutorial?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "What a fabulous resource. The creative thought and detailed picture references make this a brilliant resource for my class and is something I can use for years to come. Thank you so much."

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "Excellent resource."

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "I really loved this project idea."

Update:

This lesson tutorial has proven so popular that I have created another lesson tutorial - this one comes with an instructional video guide, that is fully narrated and demonstrates all drawing steps in real time. Stream the video lesson on your large screen and free yourself up to support your students and children.

A perfect companion to a theme study on reptiles, extinct species and literacy units based on the legends genre.

Learning intentions include: Plan your composition, Add details that suit the context, Select colour schemes, Show an understanding for the elements of TEXTURE & FORM, Draw with tutorials, Draw from imagination, Develop technical skills for colouring with pencils, Respond to art created by artists and by my friends, Reflect on my own knowledge, skills, progress and artwork.

If you would like to get this popular step-by-step lesson tutorial for the Dragon Eye art project, you can find it in my

 TPT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE

Or visit my website - Help Me Learn - HERE

Progress Photos ages 7-9

Progress Photos ages 7-9

Thank you for visiting,

Timea 💗

Body Systems #8 - Collaborating on writing

Hello Friends,

In post #7 I said I would write about  how we use our class Google Drive for collaboration and moderation. This is something I started using last term, when our school server "died'. I wanted some way that students could write on-line and access for collaboration and moderation. Enter our class Google account.

 

Now there are probably snazzier ways that people are using the internet for this purpose but as a starting point, this was perfect for me and my Y4 kiddies last year. This Year I am repeating it with my Y6's and so far so good. The only difference of course is that last year we were a digital class (12 iMacs- 1:2) and this year we are 1:3 with variable devices (iMac, windows laptops, iPads).
P.S. I still like to think that we are a digital class because its about mindset really, not the hardware you have.

  (List View)

(thumbnail view)

Anyhow...this is how we did it:
Step 1) Open a Google account for the class. Make it something generic that can move with you if you should change rooms or levels.

Step 2) Make the password something relevant to you and your students.

Step 3) Agree on a set of user etiquette with your students on the appropriate use of this shared drive.

Step 4) Create folders as required and teach your students a few basics, they'll soon figure out the rest.

Home Folders: I created a class 2013 HOME folder first and tasked each student to log in, open the Home folder and create their own Home folder inside this one. They had to name their personal folders as follows:
e.g. name_home2013, and finally assign a colour to it.
This is where they file away completed or personal work.

 

Work Folders: next I created a folder for our current theme - Who we are-Body Systems. Within that there are 3 folders - draft (red), peer review(orange) and teacher chat(green).  As students prepare to type up a paragraph from their research notes, they create a new document each time. Again the naming convention is important: e.g. name_1_intro, name_2_heart. This way its clear to see at a glance whether a student is keeping up with the pace, or needs a little extra support. 

 

Once they are happy with their paragraph, they move it to the peer review folder. They then set up appointments with other kiddies (also in that orange folder) for a peer review. I require them to have 3 collaborative sessions, before posting into the teacher chat folder.

 

As work appears here, I call students for a teacher conference about their paragraph. Following this the final work is filed into the group folder for that body system. Once the work has been used in the presentation, it is filed away in the student's Home folder.

Teacher Chat: I copy and paste the student's work below in the same document. I work with or without the student in the copy only, leaving the original work untouched. Great thing is that I can easily access this drive from anywhere, even my iPhone and edit work if we are backed up.

Notice the Peer Reviewers names below the student's paragraph.

 

 I have a marking code that I use as follows. This document also sits inside our drive for reference. The student then pastes a 3rd copy beneath mine and makes the edits suggested. This way there is a very clear trail of evidence to show progress. They can use this to talk to when sharing their learning at parent evenings

Here are our rules for using the drive:

 And here are the process steps that we had for reference:

Once all the editing is completed, then comes the fun part of creating a presentation, the brain can switch fully into creative mode as it no longer needs to worry about elements of handwriting, accurate copying, spelling, etc.

I'll post about the presentation options next term when we get to that, lots of hard work researching, writing and editing first -  haha :D

Would love to hear about how you use Google Drive with your kiddies.
'Til next time :)