Name Fish

I haven't done this project for a couple of years, and with a sub coming in this week Thursday and Friday so I can go to the Wisconsin Art Education Association Fall Conference and again on Tuesday because my district has a fine arts expert coming in to teach us how to write effective SLOs, I decided I needed a tried and true lesson that the kids enjoy. I like to have video intro/demos, especially when I have subs so I feel like I'm there even when I'm not-our counselor jokes that I'm working myself out of a job. I designed this video to be paused after drawing the basic fish and again after adding their names with bubble letters. I'm hoping it will make my subs' lives easier. I also had a student request that I put my videos on YouTube so she can do the projects at home! How convenient that one of the WAEA sessions I am attending is for flipped classrooms! Here's the video I created using PhotoStory3 and Camtasia with music from Soundzabound.

Pop Art, Pointillism, and the iPad

Pop Art & Pointillism Kindergarten Unit

by Wayne Thiebaud

My kindergartners are finishing up their Pop Art Gumball Machine a la Wayne Thiebaud this cycle. They used printmaking to create the gumballs and collaged it all together. I really wanted to use the Percolator app with them but needed to find a way to link our Pop Art work with Percolator. I decided this is the perfect opportunity to introduce the concept of types of art and specifically Pop Art and Pointillism. I found this great gumball machine worksheet on Mandy's Tips 4 Teachers and printed them out so they could get right to painting after my intro. 

Next, I created a video, as I will be having a sub coming in to teach this to two of my classes while I am off at Art Ed Conferences. This video took me for.ev.er to make. So I'm sharing it here so that all of you can enjoy the fruit of my labor without the intensive work! 

When they are done with their Pointillist Gumball Machines, I will be borrowing the school iPads to use Percolator with them. I am already taking photos of all the work for Artsonia, so I will load those in folders according to class in my dropbox account. This will make them available on the iPads. I will have to spend my lunch break loading each iPad to an individual image as I'm sure my kinders aren't ready for that, but Percolator is pretty easy to use, so once the images are on there I'll give a quick demo on the SmartBoard and let them get to work. I'll have to circulate around the room sending the completed images back to my dropbox. I'll be sure to post when we're done and let you know what I learned about using iPads with kindergartners!

Printmaking & Collage

Pointillism

Technology

Artsonia Classroom

Have you tried Artsonia Classroom yet? I have been using it with my third through fifth graders and I love it!

With the coming implementation of Common Core State Standards, I have been integrating more and more writing into my curriculum. Projects, Pre-project work, and assessment can all include writing in some form. Artsonia Classroom makes it easy to not only add writing into the assessment process, but teach about Artist Statements and assess if the kids actually understood what I was trying to teach them. As an added benefit, students can upload their own artwork AND their artist statement will be published with their artwork for all to see their writing! The process requires a lot of steps, but is very easy to use. My students have had very little questions, after watching me go through it on the SmartBoard. I have created a how-to for both the computer and the iPad and posted them here for all of your classrooms as well. I'll post a few screen shots here, so you can see what it's like. On my actual documents, I added arrows to show the students which buttons I am referring to.

Uploading using an iPad  Please note, I access Artsonia Classroom through the free QR Reader app. 

Uploading using a computer: Please note, if the artwork is not already published, you or the artist will need to take a digital photo of the work and have access to it.

I have three laptops and one computer in my classrooms, which I carry from school to school for this purpose. I also have a class set of iPads at each school and try to borrow 3-5 for my third through fifth grade students when they are available. I also have two binders at each school that have printouts of both of the how-to guides above and all the QR codes, sorted by grade level. I have in/out boxes in my classroom and when a student finishes their artwork they are instructed to put it in their grade level IN box and take a rubric from the OUT box. The rubric asks questions about the project and is designed to help the students form complete sentences to then type in as their Artist Statement. For example, my fifth graders just learned about the Principle of Art, Emphasis by creating Zentangles with emphasis and then using the Color Effects App to show emphasis in a landscape image. Their rubric asked 1. What is Emphasis, 2. How did you used Emphasis in your project? (Here's their gallery) The best part? Their writing gets sent to me to review before being posted. I have to approve their editing of their artwork AND their writing before it is posted. This allows me to read what they wrote, grade it, approve it, and add their grade to my grade book all with a few mouse clicks! Simplicity at it's best-while integrating writing AND technology! This seriously makes me feel like an awesome teacher.