I was in Texas at the National Art Education Association Convention!
That's a great big event where about 5000 art teachers attend workshops and presentations to help them continuously improve themselves and their teaching. Teachers and leaders in the Art Education field share ideas, lessons, art materials, and most importantly - their creative passion to teach the love of Art to all their students. I attended many sessions where I learned some new things, was reminded of things I've forgotten, and was generally inspired.
One of the best parts of going to this National Conference was the chance to meet in person people who help me be a better teacher every day. These people are members of my PLN. A PLN is a Professional Learning Network. We call our PLN the #Arted PLN. The hashtag (#) is a symbol that is placed before a word on Twitter that allows people to find others talking about that word. Twitter is the main place my PLN communicates with each other, but not the only place. We also connect on Facebook, Google +, and websites like ArtEd.2.0.ning.com. In all these places we help each other with lesson ideas, questions, teaching strategies, and technology. We collaborate on projects. We share cool things we come across, and best of all brag about what awesome things are students are doing. The power of a PLN is great. Together we make a Super impact on our students. The goofy picture above is part of my #Arted PLN posing like our Lego selves. You see...along with being art teachers...we are creative artists who like to have fun with Art. One teacher in our group spent part of her snow day making us out of Legos. So when we all got together we had a chance to recreate that in real life. Silly huh? The shirts we are wearing are another way we showed our silly creative sides. We believe that all teachers are Super Heros - so we have Super shirts with our Twitter names on them.
If I've looked a bit tired this week, it's because I was very busy at this conference. Every day from 8 in the morning until 6 at night there were workshops and presentations to go to. I was rushing from one to another so I wouldn't miss out on any great ideas. I enjoyed almost all of the sessions I went to. A couple made me want to take a little nap. After those I would try and take in some of the warm Texas weather to wake myself up a bit so I could head to the next session. I'm a life-long learner and am always looking for new ideas and better ways of teaching my students or making my own artwork better. I will share a bit about some of the things I learned in another post.
The Coolest part was getting to present a session with another teacher on using iPads in the Art Room. I loved sharing the some of the creative ways we have used our iPads.
Here's a sneak peek at the presentation Mrs. Fuglestad and I did on Saturday. I will blog more about what I shared in this presentation in another post.
Another Awesome thing about this Conference is the Vendor Exhibit Hall. This is a huge room with all kinds of Art supplies, videos, books, lesson ideas, and artwork being displayed for everyone to see. The companies that we get our supplies from are there to show us new and old things, to let us see things up close, to talk about their products, to let us try the art materials out, and best of all - To Give Us Samples!!! The picture on the right shows all the goodies I came home with. Not all free, but most! There is a couple things in there that I purchased to try out or to support a good cause.
Of course we're on task - it's clay!!!
5th Grade students learned the coil method of clay hand building. They just finished constructing some very awesome coil vases.
Now we wait for the coil pots to dry out completely so that I can fire them. Then we get to have more fun applying glaze to them!
1st grade students just finished up on three different penguin projects in the Art Room. We first learned about geometric and organic (freeform) shapes and then used those shapes to draw penguins. The art medium we used for our penguin drawings was oil pastels. Students seemed to enjoy these soft crayon-like drawing tools.
When our oil pastel penguins were finished the students were able to take these works of art to a new level using our iPads. I showed the students how to use the Percolator app. I helped them take a photo of their penguin and then they were able to change many settings in the app to transform their penguin picture into a new digital creation. They had fun seeing the different ways it could look. When they had it just the way they wanted, I showed them how to email the image to me so that I could save it and put it in their Artsonia gallery. Many students were able to help the next student by teaching them how to use the app and email the image.
| |  Percolated Penguin by Abby |
We moved on to 3D penguins when we created the little guys in clay. We talked a little bit about the difference between 2-Dimensional and 3-Dimensional art -we'll learn more about that next year.
We made our clay penguins by putting them on our thumbs. The students thought that was funny. This was an easy way for us to create a form that was hollow inside so it would dry out faster.
The picture below shows all the Roosevelt Penguins waiting in line to have their photo taken for Artsonia.
Our 5th Grade students are super proud of this project! We were excited to see the finished work by the students in Thailand.
We used paint daubers and a heart stencil to create some beautiful paintings. Watch this short video to see how much fun we had. Sounds like a thunderstorm or a bunch of horses! I still have to photograph our finished works...coming soon!
Students in Veto's and Masias's classes learned about American artist Grant Wood. We looked at the shapes in his landscape paintings as well as how he created the illusion of depth using size, placement, and overlapping. We were also working on the Art Element of Color. Students were introduced to Intermediate colors and had lots of practice mixing them. This was a project that contained a great deal of learning, experimenting, and Fun!
We started by pairing up and working together to create Intermediate colored painted papers. Students chose a primary and secondary color that mixed to create an intermediate color. The students in the photo to the right is mixing the color yellow-green. Once the paint was mixed, each student painted a paper and then used a painting comb or craft stick to scratch a texture or design into the paint before it dried. This made our papers even more interesting.
Our goal was for everyone to create a painted paper in all six intermediate colors. We used two class periods to do this. The time was well worth it. We had fun and all learned how to make the intermediate colors.
Then the collage fun began! Students shared papers and began constructing beautiful, colorful landscapes!
SEE THE FINISHED PRODUCTS ON OUR ARTSONIA GALLERY -> Grant Wood Inspired Collages
Kindergarten -
Kindergarten students created monsters using a variety of lines and learned about how Primary Colors mixed together to make Secondary Colors.
1st Grade -
1st Grade students practiced lines and the crayon-resist method to lend a "hand" to our 1st and 2nd grade group display. They also were introduced to Author/Illustrator Eric Carle as they created a ladybug collage. They learned how Primary colors mix to make a Secondary color as they painted papers for these ladybugs.
2nd Grade -
2nd grade students also reviewed and practiced using a variety of lines in the group "Hands Up" project.
Mrs. Larvenz's 2nd grade students looked at the lines and textures in birch trees as they drew with oil pastels. They reviewed the Primary colors and used these to paint the background of their trees. The mixture of the Primary colors created a beautiful background for the trees!
3rd Grade -
3rd grade students practiced lines doing Zentangles. Zentangles are like doodles. They are a great way to use a variety of lines, patterns, and designs to create a work of art.
Mr. Veto's 3rd grade students, as well as the 2nd/3rd grade students in Masias's class, reviewed the element of color. They discussed warm and cool colors as they painted two background watercolors for some fun ink-blown trees.
4th Grade -
4th grade and 5th grade students also started the year with Zentangles. The students seemed to really enjoy this relaxing form of art.
Mrs. Petersen's and Mrs. Watt's classes reviewed Color as an element of Art. Mrs. Petersen's class created trees using warm and cool papers and paint. These 4 panel paintings came out beautifully.
Mrs. Watt's class just finished doing a cool project that combined Art, Science, and Math for the last few weeks of the first quarter. It's called Color Wheel Eyes. Students learned about different parts of the human eye and painted a color wheel in place of the iris.
5th Grade -
5th Grade students have been very involved in a project combining Art and Technology. They are working on a claymation project using the iPads. Students working in groups created a backdrop for filming the movement of color balls as they change or interact with the environment. The project is just about complete. Stay tuned for our completed movie. For now...here's a sneak peek at two of our scenes.
See more of our finished projects on our Artsonia Gallery
5th Grade students are working on a clay animation project. There are 10 groups - each with a different scene that a colored clay ball, or balls, rolls into and interacts before rolling back out. We are using an iPad app called iMotion HD.
Here's one of our first scenes filmed.
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