Week of March 5th

I think I forgot to post last week's activities.... But here we are this week, working very productively.

2nd grade: Mr Pitt and Ms Drossner's classes completed the shapes weaving project. They make interesting carpets when arranged all together. Although not everyone completely filled in their canvas, it was time to move on.

 It was very interesting to see how different skill levels became evident through this project. There are some big motor-skills differences among the age group, which goes to show that age is not always an ideal grouping factor.

 Ms Spangler's class has gotten farther ahead on the coin value collage. We had a practice day for the kids to match the color shapes to a specific value. For example both images below represent 82 cents, but equivalent coins make for different solutions.

 In 3rd grade we looked at some images and video that represent different "times". For example, Eadward Muybridge's photos show seconds of time. Andy Goldsworthy's ice sculptures only last a few hours. The Bayeux Tapestry represents months and possibly years worth of time and events. The kids were asked to sketch 4 pictures to represent 4 different lengths of time: seconds/minutes, hours, days/weeks,months/years. In Ms DiDonato's class we started the next step of making felt puppet characters for our time stories. Here are some of the amazing creations:

 Check out this horse rider!!!!!

 4th grade: Mr Willis' and Ms McGinley's classes have completed cutting out all their template shapes for the geometric forms project.

 Ms McGinley's class completed adding patterns and textures for each facet. Ms Yancey's class started construction BUT our science/art experiment failed- electrical tape is super colorful but not super sticky. There was a lot of material frustration, so we decided to stop and try it again next week with a new product. I feel badly, except for the fact that all the kids are doing science experiments right now, and it was an excellent opportunity to model scientific thinking and process.

5th grade: Ms Albert's class completed their drawing machine designs this week. Ms Gelfand's class got to make theirs. We worked in the auditorium, and each group constructed their machines and tried them out.

 The adjustable sponge stamping project was a very successful mark-maker, and created a beautiful painting. The kids tried out different colors and built up lots of marks.

The marker compass was a huge success. A dowel was inserted into a hole in a board and markers were attached with rubber bands and paper clips so they could spin around with the dowel.

The ink pendulum had an excellent design, and a surprising result- the thick viscosity of their paint made their marks more like drips than like drizzles.

The paint ball staircase made a wonderful mark- but it was rather messy!! Some adaptations need to be made to make it a more controlled experiment for less mess.

I'm especially excited and invigorated by the 5th grade mark-making experiments. It is a great exploration of the design process and a wonderful parallel to scientific experimentation. There was great opportunity for disaster in the "Build" stage, but the students are engaged and interested and maintaining their focus well. I only wish I could split myself into 8 so that I could work with each group.

Week of February 13th

It was a slightly shortened week due to half day on Wednesday for report card conferences, so I only saw the Monday and Tuesday groups.
2nd grade: All three classes have continued to work on their shape stitcheries on plastic canvas. Many students have completed their shapes and some have begun filling in the background.

 The kids did much better this week at following their sketches to find the vertices. They also did a better job of pulling the pipe cleaners tight to prevent loopiness.

 A few students in Ms Spangler's class totally completed their projects and wrote a short reflection in their journals. When they are finished they really feel like fuzzy carpets.

 3rd: I only saw Ms O'Donnell's class this week. We did the abacus project with a slight supply difference. I cut board down for the frames instead of popsicle sticks for a wider base to tape onto, and we only used 10 yellow "nickel" beads instead of 20 since the other classes used up so many! Again, this project was a real hit- Ms. O'Donnell had the kids continue to do more practice with sliding the beads over to represent money values. Next week all 3 classes will be on the same page for papier mache over the frames.

 4th grade: Ms. McGinley's class got to do their coloring step to represent 1/3 and 2/3 in their circles and 1/2, 1/2 in their rectangles. Ms Yancey's class got to do the final step. We did a compare and contrast between Chuck Close and Sol Lewitt to see how the artists used the grid and squares.

 We did a short group fraction calculation to see how many of each color there was. Then the kids brought their squares back to a large board to arrange into a group mosaic. The kids liked the Chuck Close image better than the Sol Lewitt, so when arranging the blocks we tried to create gradations of color.

 Groups of kids came back to help glue everything down. Depending on how good the gluing was, I might go back through and try to get the blocks lined up a bit better.

 Since the entire class tried to do thirds in circles and halves in rectangles, the entire piece should have that as well- making it one huge equivalent fraction!.

 5th: On Monday, Ms Albert's class completed their geometric soft sculptures. Some kids were able to participate in the stop motion animation (see previous post). I hope to put a display up next week showing the 5th grade geometric forms alongside the 2nd grade geometric shapes.
On Tuesday we gathered both 5th grade classes in the auditorium to kickstart our next project. (Since there's no school on Monday this helped keep the classes at the same pace). We will be exploring the scientific concept of variables in experiments, combined with machines like pendulums and catapults. I showed a series of videos of pendulums and various other drawing machines to show how artists experiment with variables for art. We had some great compare/contrast opportunities and the kids were very engaged in watching the videos in this setting. The music teacher came down to help me set up the projector and microphone, and it was really great to have these videos on a giant screen with cinematic sound instead of on the smaller, quieter smartboards.

Next class we'll try out a few drawing machine experiments. I'm very excited about this project!

week of December 5-9

It has been a very exciting week! 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grades have started new projects and 4th is almost finished the last one.
2nd grade:

 We're learning about weather! Types of weather, clouds, hot and cold, thermometers etc. I brought in a whole bunch of landscape art posters by Renoir, Hicks, and some others. The kids gathered on the carpet for some looking and talking about art together.

 We tried to figure out what kind of weather there was in the picture, what time of year it was, and what clues the artist gave us to show weather. We noticed colors were big clues, foliage or the lack thereof was another big clue, and many of the pictures showed very specific kinds of clouds in the sky. We thought about what we would wear if we were in each picture (bathing suits, sweaters, hats and scarves...) and even what sounds we might hear if we were in the picture (crunch crunch of dry leaves or snow, wind whooshing through trees, birds tweeting, water splashing...)

BRR... asterisk snow falling

 After looking at art we had a chance to sketch our own weather picture. The kids were encouraged to draw any kind of weather they wished, but to give clues about the temperature or time of year with lots of details.


Its a thunderstorm/hurricane over a whirlpool in the sea. The kayak is getting sucked in!

The sketches will help us get ideas for our weather fabric paintings which will become a collaborative windsock later on.

check out the umbrella and wind marks. Still want to play in the park?



a tornado chaser!



a very destructive tornado!

I think these kids could use a lesson on space in landscape pictures before we move on too far. I think they are just about ready for some space in art.

and finally a cheery rainbow after a storm.



3rd grade: Sorry, no pics. Ms. O'Donnell's class started our sound lesson. We noticed our voiceboxes vibrate when we talk. We stopped for a few moments to listen to the school and notice all the sounds going on around us- writing our notes in our sketchbooks. We talked a little about how all those sounds we heard were from things MOVING. To demonstrate sound waves, we circled up and did the wave- very slowly for low sounds and very quickly for high sounds. We then practiced drawing fast and slow wavy lines in our sketchbooks before moving to a large piece of white paper. The kids drew lines to match sounds I played on a recorder (shout out to Ms. Diberardinis the music teacher for letting me have a recorder on the spur of the moment!!!) (and apologies to Ms Didonato in the room next door)

Ms DiDonato's class is catching up on the color families notan project. The kids got to sketch their practice lines and got through the first steps of gluing the colored paper together. We'll finish up next week!

4th grade:

 As I came in on Tuesday morning, Ms McGinley had the kids start a reflection on how our sculpture models were showing erosion. After walking around the room and reading some responses it became obvious that they hadn't really made the connection yet. (Assessment really helps!) So we reviewed again what erosion was and how carving the layers of paper down was kind of like how wind, air, plants, and ice carve the earth away. Then we jumped right back into construction in teams.

 Ms. McGinley's class managed to complete all of their sculptures- next week I'll get them mounted on the blue background to show the river meandering around their mountains. The shapes are really cool. The kids worked together so well on this. Ms. Yancey's class is almost done as well- just need one more week to finish up I think. The working atmosphere has been a little loose for this project, but I thank the teachers for letting this unstructuredness happen and for jumping in to help with the hot-gluing. It's a credit to the 4th grade teachers' classroom management that the kids aren't getting into mischief during this process. Not to worry- we're getting back into some more structured activities Very soon!

5th grade: Again, sorry no pics! Ms Albert's class went through the geometric shapes-forms brainstorm and then worked in teams to look at and analyze sculpture posters. They did a great job working on this little cooperative learning activity. Some kids even read all of the extra info on the back of the posters and were able to give some awesome extra information. With Ms. Gelfand's class we tried to figure out the shapes and numbers of all the facets of the geometric forms we learned about the week before. This proved a bit difficult- pre-winter-break-itis? or bad explanations on my part? I think perhaps this groups needs more concrete applications to make sense of the abstract ideas.So a handout or a manipulative would have been a better approach. I also tried to get them to create a pattern for one of their forms based off of a 3 inch square template. But again- I think my directions were too confusing. It's a big class, so the opportunity for distraction is high and the chance to capture everyone's undivided attention is small. I need to come up with a different approach for this process. Ms Albert's class will benefit from my learning curve next week, and perhaps we'll just start over with the template idea next week.

Tuesday, November 29th with 4th, 5th, and 3rd grades

4th grade- making progress on our erosion group sculptures, but we'll need at least another day to get through attaching all our little pieces together. Sorry no pictures again- we've been so focused on our process.

5th grade- Ms Gelfand's class started our geometric forms lesson this week. We began by brainstorming the shapes-->forms the kids already knew. It was exciting to see them run for their math textbooks to use as a resource for this brainstorm as it shows they're learning to use resources available for problem-solving, an essential study skill the teachers have been encouraging all along. Sometimes it's not WHAT you know but HOW to find out that's important.

 We then talked about SCULPTURE as the art word for forms. I gave each group a poster containing some kind of sculpture from many different time periods, materials, and subject matter. In their notebooks the kids were to figure out the title, artist, material, and then figure out which geometric forms they could identify or envision within the sculptures.

 They did a great job helping each other find information and discuss the forms.

 There were some wonderful discussions going on about the artwork too. Afterward we shared out about each poster, and I offered some extra info about the artists or processes as we went.We also did some time elapse to figure out how old some of the sculptures were- which explained why some of them were by unknown artists. Art images are a great way to spark ideas and discussions in pretty much every subject matter!

 I finally got some color wheel/color fact family pictures! Ms Didonato's 3rd grade is a little bit behind, so we just started this project with them. We talked about primaries, secondaries, and how the colors mix together. Then we made our color fact family equations to remember part+part=whole and the turn around feature of addition and subtraction. They'll get to do the notan step next week, but perhaps a little compressed so we can get it done in 1 session. We'll see how it goes.

Monday the 7th

Monday I met with Ms. O'Donnell's 3rd grade. We stamped out an exact amount on 2 more index cards, noting that there might be different coin combinations to get there. Then we arrange our coin value card deck in order from largest to smallest amount. I like how through the lesson Ms. O'Donnell gave numerous synonyms for the words we were using. Finally we had our art auction! We explained that in an auction one bids an amount one is willing to pay, and the bids should start small. if someone wants it more than you they can bid a higher amount, but the goal is to get it for the cheapest amount.

 I had made about 30 printouts of various Andy Warhol images and mounted them on blue card as our items to bid on. We had viewed Warhol's work at the beginning of the residency, and the kids love his bright pop art. The final picture, for the last kid to bid (no competition since everyone who had gotten a picture couldn't bid again) went for $0.03 whereas most of the other pictures were auctioned of for over a dollar!

 The 5th grade class reviewed stencils and posters, and I demonstrated how we would create our combination paper/mylar stencil for image and text. The kids had a chance to sketch out their words and images together to get their spelling and content approved. They glued their paper stencils onto the mylar and then used sharpie markers to write out the text. To inspire more aesthetic text I brought in handouts with a selection of font styles, which some students were excited to use.

 I think their stencils turned out wonderfully, and have interesting compositions of word and image.Let's just pray for a sunny day on Monday!!!!

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures during the 2nd grade class. However, we started our new project to reinforce number families. We made a color wheel with colored construction paper in our sketchbooks, an noticed that the primary colors make secondary colors for 3 major color families. Then we made color family stories just like the kids usually make number families. For example:

R+Y=O

Y+R=O

O-Y=R

O-R=Y

The kids drew boxes in their books for each color family set and colored in the appropriate boxes. I modeled the first 2 sets on the board, and most kids were able to figure out the 3rd set. Next week we'll start our color family notan project. 

Artwork Displays!

Huge kudos go to Jim from the building staff for hanging our 2nd grade mobiles in the hallway! He told me the learning support class kids love them so much, their teacher would like to do one too, so I'm going to give her my leftover supplies from the lesson to do it with them!

Thanks also go to our art teacher Ms Akif, for letting me put up a display in the case by the office- she even cleared it out for me, so it was ready for the afternoon when I came down to install, and lent me a stapler to be able to hang the kids' work. Here it is:

I'm so lucky to be at a school like Comly with such cooperative and supportive teachers and staff. You're the best!!!

Day 1 Introductions and journals

This week we began our projects in each grade. Overall, each class received their new Artslink journals (a marble composition book), looked at art, and worked on a journal question and/or drawing to help introduce the topics we'll be doing.

 In 2nd grade with Mr Pitt and Ms. Drossner, we're learning about Balance in Science. We looked at Alexander Calder's Circus, wire acrobat figures, and abstract paintings. We experimented with our bodies to see which position of our bodies was easiest to balance- feet apart, feet together, or one foot. We then talked about balance and unbalance in pictures and decided which pictures I drew on the board looked balanced or unbalanced. We noticed that symmetrical pictures definitely were balanced, pictures with similar sized shapes on either side of a picture looked balanced. Pictures with different size shapes on either side felt unbalanced and pictures with lots f shapes on one side and no shapes on the other looked unbalanced.
To practice balance and unbalance in drawings we made 2 pictures in our journals to demonstrate.
Some challenges in 2nd grade are lack of smartboard/digital projector so I can't use powerpoint for my presentations. At least one child speaks no English at all, and so I'll need to think about how I'm giving directions.

 3rd grade is learning about money in Math. Mrs. O'Donnell and Ms. DiDonato's students considered why we put pictures on money. We examined coins and sketched the fronts and backs to see what information is minted on coins. We looked at some artists like Andy Warhol who used images of money in their art and discussed the value of the art (there's $200 printed in this picture, but it was sold for $43 million!) Finally, we planned the symbols we would need for our coin stamps to be made next week.
The biggest challenge in 3rd grade is the class sizes! So many children to keep organized, check in with, and manage supplies. I definitely need to keep things simple and organized with 3rd grade.

 4th grade with Ms. Yancey and Ms. McGinley are learning about rivers and water in Science and concentric shapes in math. We compared and contrasted a Zen garden and a rocky stream image using a Venn diagram to note how water moves around objects. We looked at Art by Edna Andrade and Victor Vasarely, who both used repeating lines in their op art.

 We talked about thin, thick, straight and curved lines, and then created a drawing in our journals. Starting with a selection of simple shapes, we drew concentric lines around them, and then added some meandering lines to fill up the empty spaces.
The classrooms seem bigger in the 4th grade for some reason. Both 4th grades felt very comfortable to me- partially because there are many students who I know very well and it was easy to remember their names. I know many of them like to hop up and come to me for questions- so I need to be strict about raising hands and staying in seats.

 In Ms. Gelfand and Ms Albert's5th grade classes we did much longer journal activities to begin our unit of science study about the sun. We thought about many reasons why the sun and sunlight is important for art- being able to see, having color, enjoying the beauty of the world that grows because of the sun, and working with the sun for art processes like photography. Students were especially amazed by the pinhole photograph below by Tarja Trygg that shows 6 months of the sun crossing the sky.

 We then looked at 4 paintings (a Monet Haystack, a Diebenkorn landscape, a Hopper house, and Rivera's Cactii below) to try to figure out what the time of day was and observe the shadows in each of the pictures. With Ms Albert's class I had everybody do all 4, but in Ms Gelfand's class I had each group do one because of shortened time. They did a great job looking and talking about art.
Some challenges are the large class sizes with wide levels and a few students who have already told me "I can't draw". Well we're going to change that! I'll need to think of some extra ways to differentiate for the various learners in these classes.

Some thoughts I have:
Journals could suck up all our time, so I need to keep it short and sweet.
Journals could help me in sharing directions- have them copy down directions so it's on the board, but also in front of them. 4th and 5th are more facile writers, 2nd and 3rd graders take much longer to write answers, but seem better at drawing answers.

I invite any of the teachers to share their thoughts in comments or in separate posts. I feel very happy right now about how we've begun. The students were very well behaved this week. I feel very comfortable having worked with all the teachers before and knowing so many of the students from before as well. Some of the now-5th graders I know from when they were in 3rd grade, and I know the 4th graders Very well from my extended residency last year.