Traveling without Moving...

To Ghana
with Yianna and Helios

Our most recent 3rd grade adventure has taken us to the vibrant country of Ghana, following the exciting discoveries of Yianna and Helios (two precarious 3rd grade friends who travel the world).

My 3rd grade students enthusiastically await for emails and letters from these two friends in discovering where in the world we land next, in our art adventure.  This time we landed on the continent of Africa and in the country of Ghana.

This art unit focused on the art and culture of Ghana, particularly the folk traditions of Kente Cloth. The art unit was broken down into 3 components in which students explored, created and reflected on the tradition and process of Kente Cloth.

Exploring:  With every travel adventure, we take a day (or so) to explore the specific country by reviewing and understanding the cultural and historical components that make each country unique.  Throughout this unit, we were building our knowledge towards answering the essential question of "How do artists use the cultural context to communicate an idea?"  Knowing the context, students begin to develop a better understanding of purpose and meaning, connecting their knowledge to their artmaking.    Along with the historical and cultural references, we listened to the story of "The Spider Weaver", telling the legend of how and why Kente Cloth is an important component to the people of Ghana.

Creating:  The instructional sequence of this unit focuses on the creation of a "Kente Cloth".  But that did not seem interesting enough;-)
The overarching goal was "By investigating the art and culture of Ghana’s Kente Cloth, students will demonstrate their understanding of color symbolism by creating a personalized “Kente Cloth” using art elements and principles (color, lines, shapes, repetition), and reflecting on their personal characteristics."  Students referenced a list of colors and associated their description with their own unique personalities, choosing four.  This creating process afforded the students to practice their measuring skills and just the challenging feat of holding a ruler straight.  The students created 3 different patterns to use within the larger creation of their Kente Cloth, filling them in with the 4 personal colors.

Reflecting:  The final component asked students to think about their choices and connect their personal understanding to the symbolic representation of color in Ghanaian culture.  Simply, the students completed 4 sentence prompts expressing how they express their chosen colors.  (I am BLUE, because I show LOVE when I HUG MY BABY BROTHER). 

This was a quick art adventure.  The instructional sequence lasted about 3 days with my students working swiftly and often in helping each other.  Check out the few of many snapshots below and follow my students daily activities on Instagram.  If you are interested in the full lesson, with printables and more resources click HERE.

Thanks for dropping by!

xoxo, Smock You.

Showing STEAM with Frank Stella...

Celebrating a lifetime of work
with a little bit of STEAM

Frank Stella, 1964, photo by Ugo Mulas

It is an exciting time to visit the Whitney Museum in New York City.  To begin with, the Whitney opened its doors in a new location and an amazing new building this year, bringing along the lifelong, trans-formative work of Frank Stella.

In my art class, I found this the perfect opportunity to inspire my students with Stella's early work, emphasizing a steady hand and protractors.

Along with my student teacher, we developed a lesson that challenged the students to transform a familiar analytical tool in their artwork, referencing the ideas and work of Stella.

The Venn Diagram

Frank Stella, Firuzabad, 1970 https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2002.9

I use Venn diagrams a lot in art class as tools for my students to organize their thoughts when analyzing artworks throughout our learning process.  These simple interconnected circles became the center of attention but in a different way.  

Along with the Retrospective of Frank Stella, November 19th, 2015 marked an incredible day for Arts Education:

In the midst of the biggest shakeup of federal education law in over a decade, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici 

(D-OR) successfully added an amendment today to the rewrite of the nation’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) legislation that will integrate the arts into STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math).

http://www.artsactionfund.org/news/entry/huge-arts-education-win-in-congress-today

What does this mean:

Art is CORE:)

"Frank Stella's 'Harran II', 1967". Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia 

Art is a CORE subject in developing our young peoples into creative and innovative problem solvers, bringing new perspectives, ideas and solutions to, what used to be, the fundamentals of education.

It is about time.

This art unit, not only studied the work of Frank Stella, but demonstrated to my students that fine artists, like architects, designers and....doctors, all use tools to achieve the best outcome and precision, steady hands and accuracy are important attributes.

The instructional sequence was developed within a three week time frame for 4th grade (seeing the students once a week for one hour).

DAY ONE:  Investigate Frank Stella's "Protractor Series", focusing on the elements, techniques and attributes that made Stella's work special. (Shape, color, line, overlapping, precision, big)  Allow the students a little bit of "play time".  Although the students may be familiar with using a protractor, anticipate their challenges:  moving the protractor, making lines to dark, moving the protractor too little...  This time, also, helps the students evaluate their own skills and what to do to achieve their best outcome.

DAY TWO:  Designate the second day for a quick review of the day before.  My students were given a homework assignment, in which they were to compare and contrast Firuzabad with a work by Kandinsky using a Venn Diagram.  After a group discussion, I demonstrated a process of transforming the Venn Diagram into something extraordinary.  I emphasized the process of overlapping to be simple and visually to appear consistent.  Erasing the overlapping shapes demonstrated to be a consistent challenge, but students found their way to working through the problem.

DAY THREE:  The last day focused on choosing a color scheme and piecing together our drawings with color.  I took the time to demonstrate using our color choices to complete our designs, emphasizing overlapping by deciding whether colors will "go over, or under" each other.  There was sense of hesitation at this stage in the project because the students expressed their confusion amongst all the intersecting lines.  BUT...it, really, all came together for them when they were filling in their colors.

The results were fantastic!  Most importantly, the students felt proud about what they accomplished.

These are just a couple of examples.  More of my students work (and works in progress) can be seen at

https://instagram.com/p/-R0d57O2HR/?taken-by=sanborn_smockroom

The resources and complete lesson is available HERE :)

xoxo, Smock you.

Ordinary to Extraordinary....

The Evolution of a Styrofoam Cup

About a month ago, I came across a Pinterest post (I think) of the DC Sketchers, with the related image of a group of people, gathered around a small table, 

sketching a still life of styrofoam cups.  

I thought, "Oh how fun"!

I then proceeded to think about my students perceptions of common objects and their inherent nature to "know things", just by having some sort of experience with them.  Take the simple styrofoam cup for example.  This simple vessel is used everyday, from the coffee cups at school functions to quenching the thirst of miniature soccer players, to 'pots' that will soon grow beans in our classrooms.  

They are everywhere and by being everywhere, these familiar objects become common and common leads to inattentiveness.

And then I thought, again, "Oh this WILL be fun"!

In preparation for this art unit, I reflected on the numerous art installations I found on Pinterest and Scholastic Art Magazine, created by this very simple object.  With a little 'Googling', I came across Styrogami.  Yes, it's an actual thing and it is AMAZING (Check it out Here)

But my focus was not just to make a really cool sculpture, my focus was to encourage my students to pay attention to details and 'see' how a simple curve can transform something flat into something with volume.  I wanted my students to analyze materials and evaluate their effectiveness when using them.  I wanted my students to see how even simple shapes can be transformed into something bigger and magical.  

I wanted my students to see how something ordinary can become extraordinary, and how something seemingly simple is, in reality, complex.

Throughout this school year, I have been focusing on creating art units that 'test' my students' skills but also demonstrate their growth to them, fostering an understanding for process over product.  After all, how much can we possibly do with a styrofoam cup?  
My overall focus was for students to understand the 'process' of making art, is as important, if not more important than the product.  To illustrate this idea, I referred to the artist Richard Serra.

My speculations were pretty accurate.  To begin the unit, I simply passed out some manilla paper, asked the students to fold it in half, write their name and "Perceptions of Space" on the cover and then draw a styrofoam cup.

With cups already on the table, my confident students took the challenge with full force and began to vigorously draw a styrofoam cup.  I heard, "This is easy" and "I'm done" very often, all the while taking note that the majority of these, very confident, students were not even looking at the cups.  

After stopping them, we took a little gallery walk around the room and evaluated our peers' efforts.  There were a lot of groans.....

My first question was "Does it look like a styrofoam cup?"

The majority offered their responses with a "eeehh...."

Then I asked, "Did you look at the cup?"

The majority offered a "eeeehhhh..."

Then I asked, "Why not?"

"Because it's just a styrofoam cup".

I offered, "Aaaah".

Let's try this again.

The entire instructional sequence spanned 8 weeks (probably more) but you never would have thought it, with all the interest and sheer will to master drawing a cup.  We started with simple line drawings and progressed to larger abstract paintings...to styrofoam cup sculptures...to photography...and back to a simple cup.
All the while building our observational drawings skills, visualization skills, problem solving skills and reflective skills.  
Pretty amazing stuff.




Check out the rest of the snapshots
and the entire Art Unit with "I Can" statements, rubric and discussion sequence!

Follow on our Instagram page:
sanborn_smockroom

xoxo, Smock Room

From the archives.... Yianna and Helios in Russia

Privet!

Back in the winter (?) of last year,  our traveling friends, Yianna and Helios sent us a message from the snowy streets, Russia.  The message was sent at the most perfect time, because the Olympics had just started.  Russia has an incredibly rich history of art, dance, theatre and music, coupled with cultural traditions.  From historical monuments and buildings, to the artists that influenced Russian history, my students, inquisitively, followed Yianna and Helios through art, history and just a little mystery.

Thinking back, as a warm up we looked at the amazing artistry of the hand painted eggs through the experience of children's author Patricia Polacco and her story of Rechenka's Eggs.  Amazingly enough, I found the story on Vimeo through Reading Rainbow!  

Love it.

Although in art class, this portion of the art unit as delivered and executed a bit differently, I created a quick resource for my classroom teachers: Russian Eggs.  This allowed not only my students to learn and connect but all students (hopefully).  

Our exploration of art, artist and art-making lead to Wassily Kandinsky and his abstract expressionist paintings, created from lines, shapes and colors.  Considering, Kandinsky is a very popular artists among elementary art teachers (and in general), there are a lot of resources out there (see below).  For my students' purposes, I wanted my students to independently choose the Kandinsky style that worked best for them.  
We started by comparing two of his paintings, observing, describing and discussing the differences and similarities. 














Before starting our art works, we watched a truly vintage recording from 1926, in which Kandinsky is seen using a brush and ink to sketch an idea or start a drawing.

Well, that sparked our beginning process as we created our own, very unique drawings.

By looking at the photographs, you can probably tell that we used all sorts of materials that suited our needs.  Students made choices, they initiated their explorations and they took ownership of their work.
In the end, from just little "Kandinsky" drawings, they really made self-portraits.  Each students personality and character just came screaming out!

RESOURCES:
http://thebirdfeednyc.com/2012/10/11/kandinsky-coloring-activity-for-kids/

 http://makingartfun.com/htm/f-maf-art-library/wassily-kandinski-biography.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_1z-ZvJjE/

See you back in the 
SMocKroom!

xoxo, SMocK you.