This week was simply a repeat of the previous week’s class, with the only variation being some new sentences in our game (‘What are you doing?’) and a new set of pictures for the presentation and this time we used the famous paintings. This stage of the lesson was relatively short but that is because the artist would make a proper entrance.
The same artist. Twice.
The artist
The guest and the Artist of the Day was J.M.W. Turner who visited in the past. I decided to bring him back because he felt perfect as a representation of movement through a very simple medium of the sea and the clouds.
Normally, the stage in which I show the kids my model happens a bit later in the lesson, just before we start creating. In this particular lesson, however, I changed the order and before revealing who the artist was I presented my two paintings: the seascape painted practically with one colour and almost with no lines and the other one with plenty of colours and plenty of lines. This was to demonstrate the difference and to encourage my students to use these two basic tools later on in the lesson. I also asked the kids which one they liked more. (Unsurprisingly, the second one, for the majority of students but there were some who liked the peace and quiet of the first one, too!)
Afterwards, we looked at some of the paintings created by Turner and how he tried to depict the movement in them. It happened almost naturally that they started to express their opinion (‘It is beautiful’, ‘It is scary’, etc).
Here you can find a very interesting article about the movement in art.
Here is a whale jumping out of the water…
The art
Last week we worked with watercolours and the task was ridiculously simple: draw the sun, the sky and the water (just like Turner did!) and try to show the movement using the colours and the lines.
This was a day of surprises in the classroom and here is the list of the things that surprised me most:
how easy it is to create a beautiful seascape, even for the artists who are only five or six or eight
how touching are all the images the children created
how involved all of my students got into the task despite the fact that we are a mix bunch and there are some who love art and creating and those who don’t really do it very frequently
how they approached the task and how they adapted it to their own needs and perspectives, by adding human figures or animals or boats to accentuate the movement, by changing the setting and visualising movement in nature in the mountains or in the fields and how proud they were of their works
how easy it was for them to experiment with the colours, the lines and the settings
how un-coincidental all the decisions were. And I know it because I could hear what they were talking about while they were working.
how they enjoyed the task
how the youngest artist painted a very calm and uneventful sea but then decided to experiment with the materials and his sky was, in fact, created with the wheels of the toy car, resulting in thin black clouds
and how the other young artist, almost as young, but attending our classes since September, has shown a lot more maturity and understanding of the task (though I love both pictures!)
how two of them decided to change the settings and go for the mountains instead
how one of my older students found a new passion for colour and for experimenting with mixing different shades and colours
how one of my most talented just went for a huge, uncontrollable cloud, a hurricane almost
how this most precious picture was created by one of my students, two days after the lesson, just because we have found the van Gogh background in the stack of the recycled paper. How the real artist saw the movement in the clouds and how the transformed the sky into the sea because the idea lingered…
The mountains, just before the movementThe mountainsThe cat under the skyThe sea and the sky
Oh, I was so not sure what to do with March this year…Last year we did ‘Monochrome’ and so repeating and extending the theme was an option, of course, but I wanted something else. I was brainstorming with me, myself and this is how I stumbled on the idea of movement. M is for movement!
The funny thing is that when I get those ideas, the theme for the month, it is never a fully-fledged curriculum. I starts with the word and the alliteration and then I go on brainstorming and coming up with ideas. For instance, right now, half-way through ‘the unit’, we have had two great lessons but I still don’t know what we are doing with the rest of the month. The only thing I know is that the ideas will come to me, for sure.
The language
As regards the language, I decided to continue our theme from the previous month, the verbs and the Present Continuous, because I have a cunning plan of turning it all into picture description and, eventually, into storytelling. We still play our ‘What are you doing game?’ and describing different pictures, in the most simple of ways. And we also sing Pete the Cat’s, Rocking in my school shoes.
The artist
In the first lesson of the month, we did not have one Artist of the Day. Instead, I introduced a few different creators who helped us illustrate how movement can be depicted in art: through humans, shapes and lines, colour, nature, texture, animals and even words. This is, probably, the biggest number of artists that I have ever manged to squeeze in one lesson with Chagall, Bulatov, Hokusai, Kandinsky, van Gogh, Samokish and Riley. Seven. Wow!
It was lovely to see that my kids recognised some of the paintings as we used van Gogh, Bulatov and Chagall before…
We started with looking at my example that I prepared before the lesson and called ‘Walking the snake’ to illustrate the idea and the whole project: choosing one or more of the characters from the photographs and giving them a new life – a new activity, a new environment and a new movement.
Then we outlined the main stages of the whole process (1) choose the photograph(s), 2) choose the new settings, 3) draw and glue or glue and draw, 4) think of the title) and we got down to work.
And I was working with the kids, creating my own pictures, to better illustrate the stages and to help them generate ideas for theirs.
If I were to summarise this lesson and my associations with it, it would be through the smile that appeared on my face every single time I walked past the noticeboard in the hallway where our pictures were displayed for a few weeks. Every single time. And that’s because they are beautiful.
The movement in the pictures is more or less distinct but all of the characters are doing something in their new settings although sometimes we know it only from the title of the picture (‘Doing nothing’). One of my students also tried to make a moving picture in the form of a simple puppet. Some of the pictures were even controversial (if you look closely, ‘Sitting’ is set in the bathroom) but it met all the requirements of the task and I had to accept them. One of my students, one of the more creative ones, took the task to a brand new level and focused not on the humans but on the place and, of course, I allowed that as I was very curious what will come out of it.
I would really like to use this technique and this task in one of our regular lesson, I just need to think what piece of grammar I can combine it with…
This lesson was a part of our winter camp – a series of lessons devoted to ancient civilisations taught over a week, with each day being devoted to a different country and culture. We had a lot more time than in a regular EFL class because we could spend the entire three lessons focusing on the History, the Art and the Culture each day. Not to mention that each day was packed with the L1 activities in the particular theme, further reinforcing the vocabulary, the concepts and the ideas, turning it into a real experience for the kids.
For that reason, we had a lot more time to explore the language and all our History lessons of this programme followed the same plan: listening to the music of the civilisation to experience the culture, learning the key vocabulary, doing some written work and, the most important part, comparing the life of ancient Greeks, Romans, Aztecs and so on to ours, using Present Simple and Past Simple, which helped us practise a few key verbs throughout the whole week and to really learn some interesting things about a particular culture. It was also a great opportunity for the kids to share their questions and, equally, the knowledge which they already had.
‘Tell me you are the Art teacher without telling me…’ (and the kids left with their hands clean!)
The artist
Sadly but not surprisingly, we did not have ‘an artist’, not one with a real name. Instead, just like with many other lessons of this particular week, we invited a whole nation to our classroom. We talked about the beautiful Aztec prints that are still popular today. I showed the kids a few examples and we called out the colours and the types of patterns there. The kids automatically started to share which one was their favourite, too.
My choice of the resources and techniques for this lesson was influenced by a few different factors. I decided to combine the Aztec love of cotton and amazing fabrics and patterns, the Aztec love of printing and the amazing colours. And this is how we ended up with our lesson.
There were so many precautions and instructions that I really ended up giving a step by step lecture and a demo, while at the same time discovering the technique, having never done it in class before. I cannot show you the video but there is a lot of ‘awnnn’ coming from the kids and a lot of ‘I just looove it’ coming from the excited teacher.
This is what we did step by step:
I prepared the fabric (simple cotton, pre-washed, dried and ironed it at home and cut it up at school) and I attached the pieces to the tables. We did not have the frames (which would have been amazing), but I scotched each piece to the table using the thin painter’s scotch, along the four edges, to ensure that it is properly attached but also to make sure that we have the natural frame for each piece. I also put a piece of newspaper or paper underneath to protect our tables and to make sure that the excess paint is soaked up by that, when necessary.
I prepared the tools: plastic forks, knives, spoons, chopsticks, paintbrushes and a few foam stamps I had. Later on we also added a few big shells and some crumpled tinfoil, just because we found it at school.
We also got the aprons ready, the wet tissues and an additional piece of paper per two students.
It is also worth mentioning that we rearranged the tables and put them all together into one big piece in the centre of the room to avoid a situation when the kids need to move around to exchange the colours or tools and spilling the paint all over the room.
I put up another piece on the board, for me to use as a model. Again, I used scotch+fabric+paper underneath and it worked very well.
The next step was a set of my instructions. I had to focus on: not getting up and moving around (the teacher will bring everything), being careful with the paint and wiping it off your hands immediately, wiping off the paint off the tools once you stop using them and sharing the tools and waiting patiently for your turn.
Afterwards, I demonstrated how we work: choose a tool, dip in the paint on the spare piece of paper that we used as a palette (easier to throw out than to wash), print, clean your hands and the tool and repeat.
At the end of the lesson, the kids went to wash their hands and went for a walk, I was cleaning up myself (always the case with the acrylic paints).
We needed the classroom for our lesson #3 so I moved the pictures to dry in peace to another room that was empty at a time.
I don’t really need to tell you that this lesson was a success, you only need to look at the photos that accompany this post. I absolutely loved how it went, how we worked and where we got with it. It was not an easy task, logistically, but it was absolutely and definitely worth it.
I was really impressed with how well my kids worked regarding all the rules, cooperation, sharing and being careful with the materials. True, I have no idea how many times, within those 45 minutes, I said ‘Wash the tools!’, ‘Wash your hands!’, ‘Show me your hands!’ and ‘Who needs blue / a fork / a flower / a heart?’, but they were absolutely amazing. So much more gratifying that these were not my regular Art Explorers kids and, nonetheless, they were great. The hands remained cleaned, the tables were generally clean and no clothes were injured or harmed during all our creative activities. I made sure I told my kids that I was really proud of them.
Now, the printing was one ridiculously enjoyable and one surprisingly innovative process. The children took my model into consideration and they tried to follow in my footsteps in the beginning but every single one of them took their own steps towards experimentation and their own interpretation of the process. And, despite the fact that we were working with the same tools and techniques, we ended up with a set of different pictures.
All the kids were visibly enjoying the process and it was great to see how they were not only sharing resources but also the ideas and the new solutions that they came up. Some of the works were directed by the colours, some by the tools that were used, some just by the silly ideas that we had out of nowhere.
Despite the fact that it all looks random and abstract, the pictures are the outcome of an organised creative process. In one of the cases, one of my students was debating with himself, along the lines of: ‘Something is missing here…Something is missing here…What is it?’ but because he was doing it out loud and a few of us got into a conversation, sharing our suggestions. That was a beautiful moment and the final product is, indeed, fantastic.
The best compliment to the lesson, I think, is one of the comments that my student made. He was peeling off his picture and looking at from all the sides. I asked him what he thought of it and if he liked it. ‘I want to buy a frame for it. Are frames expensive?’, he said and that is just the best thing that I could hear, I guess.
Another quote came from my admin staff. They were very much impressed with what we created and they asked: ‘Miss Anka, can we display them on the wall?’. I didn’t answer, I only started to laugh because all of my students, every single one of them, asked me during the lesson (and sometimes confirmed once or twice): ‘Miss Anka, are we taking it home?’ Too precious to leave behind, even for a day. I didn’t even try to convince them, I just made sure I had photos of all the fabric pictures.
My thoughts were of a slightly different kind. Looking at my students works, I was thinking, again, of a real gallery exhibition…
February is our Fun Cartoon February but language-wise I decided to focus on Present Continuous to work on verbs and to get us ready for storytelling later on in the year. This is also a great TPR-friendly structure that comes in very handy and gives us a chance to move a little bit when we meet at around 4 pm, already a bit tired after a whole long day at school. We have a set of basic activities for that, tried and tested, that include making sentences based on stencils, Pete the Cat and his ‘Rocking in my school shoes’ (video and song) and a miming-guessing game (the calss asking:’Sasha, what are you doing?’, Sasha demonstrating and the kids guessing).
The artist
The day has come! Jean-Michel Basquiat is here! It has taken some time for him to arrive (mea culpa!) but it is finally happening. I was racking my brain in order to find a match for February and my own alliteration challenge because I really (really) wanted to deal with Basquiat (and with Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Harring) as soon as possible.
I introduced him to my students in the usual way (name, photo, country, favourite thing) and we looked at a few of his creations, including one of the self-portraits, cats and his ‘Robot man’. Funnily enough, my kids found some of his pictures a bit scary. That is why we didn’t spend a lot of time on that and we moved on to his technique because that was, really, my main aim for this lesson.
Before the lesson I prepared my own model of the heart because it made it a lot more easier to explain what ‘layering’ is all about. We looked all of the materials I prepared on the table and we tried to count how many I used in my picture and what they were.
My own piece
The art
Apart from the number of layers that my picture helped with, we also made a list of stages that we need to go through and I wrote them on the board: 1. the draft with a pencil, 2. the outline with a marker, 3. and more: all of the other materials, as many as you want and 4. the final one: glitter. The only thing that was obligatory for everyone was the topic, a heart as we had our lesson in the week of St. Valentine’s Day that our school was getting ready for.
This was a great process art lesson, an amazing process art lesson, in fact. I experienced it myself, while creating my own heart. Apart from just having fun, working with all of the materials and resources and experimenting with them brought me a lot of pleasure. Certainly, I was hoping that my students will also be able to experience that. Guess what? They did!
Different children chose their own approach to the resources and the number of different materials and layers to work with. I didn’t want to interfere with that, even though some of them chose only or two resources. I tried to suggest other solutions but I respected their final decisions. This was an interesting balance to those of my students who went over the top and used absolutely every single material that I had prepared. Or more, just because they found some random bits of coloured paper in the glue box.
Two resources onlyOnly markers)
My favourite thing was probably the fact that the kids went into the task with a completely open mind, willing to experiment, to try new resources and the new combinations of resources and to learn from each other, as well. We discovered that tinfoil can be torn and cut, it can be coloured and glued or glued and painted over. I shared with the kids that you can paint with acrylic paints and a wet tissue and I looked at how they liked working with our almost professional acrylic paints and that a piece of string actually makes a difference. I myself added a few more bits to my picture just observing what my students were doing.
One of my students came to our class for the first time ever and it was lovely to see how unexpectedly creative he is and how beautifully he applied the technique to create his heart.
Have a look at the beautiful pieces in our gallery…
The Erik Bulatov jungle-themed lesson is here. The Henri Rousseau – here.
The language
We continued with our January theme and the jungle, and we continued to focus on the animal vocabulary and the phrases with ‘I can’. We revised the animals and we played the animal riddles based on a video, guessing the animals by the sound (I can hear).
The artist
Our Artist of the Day this time came from Australia. We looked at his paintings and I told the kids a story of his travels to Europe and how him being far away from his own country made him realise that this is where the real beauty is. This was ‘the favourite thing’ for John Olsen – Australia. We looked at a few of his paintings to see the unique style; we compared the paintings and the same objects in photographs. This year, this was our first meeting with abstract paintings.
We also looked at different pictures of the jungle, to see what it looks like from the perspective of a bird (or as John Olsen would see it, if he painted jungle) and to see what colour palette we need (green!).
The art
I have prepared my own version of the jungle picture, a la John Olsen, but I quickly realised that my kids were not quite interested in the abstract, non-figurative painting. For that reason, my painting was used only as a curiosity but everyone were allowed to paint the jungle in any way they wanted.
I demonstrated the technique that I have chosen for this lesson (crayons and watercolours, wet on wet or dry on wet) and we started to work. And, as usual, it was a joy to see them choose ideas, make decisions and work.
As could be predicted from their initial reactions, not one of my kids chose the abstract, not in the younger group, not in the older, either. Most kids worked with the technique I chose but I also had one student who asked for acrylic pens and one who only did crayons.
They were all invested in the process and I am really happy that we got so many beautiful and so many different paintings out of this lesson. I cannot even choose one picture that really ‘stole my heart’, although there usually is one. They are all special, each in their own way.
Every week, I have a few opportunities to interact with my students’ creations. First, when they are creating them – I am looking, then when I am editing the photos, then, when I am writing the post and then, usually after a few days, when I am uploading them here and posting. Every week, it is a chance to revisit and to notice something new. Initially, I thought that they did not really take John Olsen in, but now, on the 4th interaction, I can see that in those jungle of ours, the sun does play a very important part and, even when it is not always the centerpiece, it is very much present in their paintings. So, they did look and they did see!
Now, I am just wondering how to get them like the abstract art a tiny little bit more…
January is our jungle month (Jungle January!) and that is why we are talking about everything related. The first lesson can be found is here.
In this lesson we continued working with the verb ‘can’, still only with ‘I can see’ but we changed the focus a little bit. I wanted us to revise and to learn the names of the jungle animals, especially on their distinctive features. That is why we played a guessing game with the wordwall cards. In order to help us guess, I chose not one specific body parts, like in other games we played, but a very distinctive feature for each particular animal.
The tiger
The artist
We invited Henri Rousseu to join us in class again, this time as the main guest. We looked at his paintings (presentation slides 8 – 15), just calling out the names of the things we can see.
I also wanted to show the kids different ways of depicting a tiger, a painting, a drawing, a child’s drawing, a photo, a logo and the Chinese symbol that represents this animal. We looked at how they are different and how they are similar and we tried to outline their distinctive features: black and orange, stripes, four legs and a tail.
I also told the kids that Rousseau never travelled to the jungle or even out of the country and that, still, he decided to paint the jungle because he wanted to do and he did, the best he could. We talked a bit where he could have got his ideas from. I realised that he is a really good role model for us, the budding artists.
The anaconda and the peacock
The art
We started with describing what the task was: to choose one animal and to try to paint it using finger and handprint and our paints, focusing on these distinctive features that we would be able to tell that it is a flamingo, a tiger or whichever animal we choose.
I showed them a few examples of the finished tasks from the internet (see the presentation) as well as my model. Before the lesson, I printed a green hand on a piece of paper (also to check again how much time we will need to wait before drawing on the paint) and I showed it to kids. While they were watching I added the little bits with a marker and ended up with an elephant.
My attempt at an elephant
I also showed them how we would be working, moving from the paints station in one corner of the room, to the tables where I attached the paper for printing, I gave out the tissue paper and the wet tissues to clean our hands, too. I also showed them how we don’t need to smear the paint on the table (covered with paper) but that we can also spread it on the palm of the hand with a paintbrush. I prepared a paintbrush per colour and a few extras for the colours that we would mix.
And then we got down to work. The results, as usual are all over this post…
The tigerThe beaverThe peacock
What I loved about this lesson was:
how the kids were discovering the material and the technique, thinking about and developing ideas as we went along
how they were learning from each other
how they experimented with the colours, mixing them and asking me to try getting new colours for them
how they made their decisions about the distinctive features of the animals they chose
and how sometimes they asked me to google the animals to check that they were doing a good job with certain body parts
how we discovered that even our dirty tissues were pretty and that they could be Art. ‘Miss Anka, can we do some more tissue Art?’
how children were making their own decisions. Some decided to choose very un-jungle animals, some loved the fingerpaint so much they they decided to use it in a more traditional way, with paintbrushes for colouring. And, as Pete the cat says, ‘It’s all good!’
This lesson came as a surprise to me, almost, because, initially, I was not planning on including it in our curriculum. I just wanted a story lesson, around ‘Splat the Cat and the Cat in the Moon’ but as soon as we started to deal with, ideas kept popping up everywhere, sometimes because the kids made their jokes about the characters or because they didn’t understand and asked a question. Or, also, because I noticed something that I could just drag out into the spotlight…
All of that was one amazing experience and this is how, instead of one lesson, we ended up with three: the story lesson, the punctuation lesson and the speaking lesson I am describing here and the intonation lesson I would love to do a bit later.
This lesson here, I owe to my amazing student, Sasha (it is always ‘a Sasha’) who, on leaving the classroom, already in the doorway, stopped, turned around and ask: ‘Why did Splat insist on seeing the cat in the moon? There ARE only craters there!’ And there, in the doorway, we got into a discussion about different points of view and how Plank looked at the moon as a scientist and Splat, he was definitely more of an artist…And at this point, right there, I knew I had to make a lesson out of it.
The activities
This lesson lasted 45 minutes and this is what we filled it up with:
we started with our regular hello routine: saying hello, singing the January song, talking about how we were and revision
I introduced the concept of the point of view with the great images from www.stockadobe.com and the kids got is straight away. From the very beginning I wanted to include the questions that we would be using throughout the lesson (‘Who is right?’ and ‘Who is wrong?’). The images are so poignant that I turned them into a poster to put up on the wall of our classroom, to remind us, for now and for always, that we have different points of view and that we all respect that.
The next stage was devoted to symbolic representation and different ways of looking at the same symbol. We covered a similar topic in our Art Explorers with some of my students in a lesson devoted to Henri Rousseau. There we did it with ‘a tiger’. In our English lesson we talked about the different ways of representing ‘the sun’, to go along the space topic of the storybook. We looked at the images (presentation, slide 4) and talked about their origin and which ones were our favourite.
The aim of the following activity was to practise noticing two of the points of view represented in the story, this of a scientist (Plank) and this of an artist (Splat). The children looked at all of the images and they were to guess or decide which outlook they represent and whether they liked them, too (slides 7 to 13). This was also when we discussed if we are more scientists or artists in the way we see the world.
Finally, we got down to our little creative stage. It was divided two sections, the first one based on the storybook in which the children had to draw the moon as seen by the scientist, the artist and the chef (one more idea that I owe to my students, too). In the second part, the students could choose their own object and represent it in the way that a scientst would see it and an artist would. The third choice was up to them.
In the end, we looked at all the pictures and we put them up on the walls.
The teacher reflects
This was a speaking lesson and students could produce a fair amount of language, especially expressing opinion and justifying them. They have lots of great ideas.
I loved it how some of my kids went directly for one of the ways (‘I am a scientist’, ‘I am an artist’) whereas the others were absolutely decisive about not willing to choose any (‘It depends!’ or ‘Sometimes I like to be a scientist, sometimes I like to be an artist’).
I was really happy that we could do a bit of drawing. We did this lesson on the day of the big Maths test and this was perfect, to balance the serious and hard work.
I loved discovering how they chose to represent their symbols and what other creative choices they made. Some of the pictures are just amazing.
As I have already mentioned the idea of ‘a point of view’ is a very necessary in our group and I am hoping that our new poster will help us deal with different issues in our lessons.
It was our English lesson but I can definitely see how I could easily turn it into an Art lesson or just include it into any ESL / EFL course, for example with jobs, space or food.
Some of my kids needed a bit more time to focus and to make decisions about their drawings so, I think, next time I do it, I will be cutting up all of the handouts into smaller tasks and giving them out, one by one and then glueing them onto a card (or into the notebook) so that everyone does as many as possible. Especially that one of my kids wanted to do more, too and she asked for an additional handout. More flexibility!
If you ever have a chance to use these ideas, please let me know!
Once a teacher, always a teacher. I decided to use this one as an opportunity for all of us to learn some words)
The language
On the spur of the moment, at one point before Christmas, I decided that our January theme will be the jungle. As in: January Jungle! (Or ‘Jungle January!’, we are using both terms interchangeably.
This means only three lessons but it took me about one blink to decide what we are going to be doing and I am not saying it to brag but to share the surprise because, without knowing, I had these three lessons already in my head. They were just waiting for their cue, apparently.
I decied that we are going to practise a lot of ‘I can’ with different verbs to describe sensory experiences and in the classroom that is actually very (very) far away from a real jungle, I hope we can at least manage ‘I can see’ (the easiest one of them), ‘I can hear’ (there are the sounds) and, perhaps, ‘I can smell’, with a fragrance or two, hopefully.
In the first lesson, we focused on the general vocabulary, related to the tropical forest. We learnt and revised the words (those here) and we practised guessing, using ‘I can see’ (using these cards). With the older kids, we also looked at some of the paintings by Henri Rousseau (a preface to the second lesson in the cycle) while describing the pictures and everything we could see in them (presentation from slide 11).
The artist
Our real artist of the day, however, was my beloved (no joke here), Erik Bulatov. I designed a lesson based on his works a few months ago, during the summer camp lessons. You can find it here, it is only of my proudest creations and I really do recommend it, especially that it lends itself to many different topics and age groups.
I knew that Erik Bulatov would be coming back and the jungle month seemed perfect for it.
We looked at only a few of his paintings (presentation, slides 5 and 6) and we talked about the main idea, that is using the words as visuals, or, as I have been putting it, ‘a word is a picture, a picture is a word’. Actually, it is for that reason that I chose those particular pieces by Bulatov, I needed some clear examples.
We also looked at two of my pictures that I created as models, ‘jungle’ in English and in Portuguese. I wanted the children to see that even though we don’t really know the word and ‘selva’ is unsimilar enough, we might be able to guess (or to decode) what it tells us. I also wanted them to see an example of how different letters can be shaped into the jungle animals and plants.
Selva, or ‘jungle’ in Portuguese. But you already knew it, right? Jungle!
The art
Afterwards, we just got to work. In terms of resources, that was an easy-peasy lesson because it required only pencils, markers and paper. I did prepare a template with the word ‘jungle’, to speed up the process a little bit. Since, however, I am dealing with a very creative and independent bunch, as it turned out, some specifically asked for the permission to opt out of the template. And, as was to be expected, some asked for the permission to opt out of the jungle altogether. Permissions were granted and the photographic evidence confirms that.
These are the pictures by two friends, working together. Clearly, one inspired the other but the execution is different and ideas, too, vary.
We also used a bit of brainstorming (‘What fruit do we have in the jungle?’) and the internet research. This is a serious word but research it was for sure. We googled the fruit and some specific animals and items because the kids wanted to see them first before deciding which letter they could be incorporated into. I really loved to see the thinking that went into making these decisions. It was a process and they were really involved.
Balinese jungle (yes, that has been confirmed)
‘Jungle’ has only six letters but, still, it was too many for some of the students and, since we only had 45 minutes, they did not manage to finish their pictures, which, I suppose, can be seen as some kind of a failure, bad time management on the part of the student or bad monitoring on the part of the teacher…I’d rather look at it as an opportunity to see how my students were engaged. Those who didn’t finish either promised to complete the picture the next day, during the break or they came up with a pleading ‘Miss Anka, can I please take the paper home and finish there?’ It was important, it mattered!
I have also learnt that a teacher should research the topic a bit further before the lesson, even if only to refresh and to remember that, for example, there are jungles out there which, apart from toucans and piranhas or other tropical fish, might be recognised due to their volcanoes…I was surprised when one of my students started his ‘J’ as a volcano but then he told me that, ‘You know, miss Anka, in Bali…’ I accepted and ate my humble pie. And took notes))
And here are even some indigenous people!
Not the best quality but that is the only thing I managed to snap before the picture went home…
Welcome to the post about the final Art lesson of the year and, at the same time, the Art lesson that can be (and will be) adapted to different seasons, symbols and styles. I am very happy with it and I am very happy to be sharing it here.
The language
This was our final lesson of the calendar year, done just before we left for the winter break and for that reason our language and content input was heavily focused on Christmas and December. We revised all the Christmas vocabulary using wordwall and riddles and we talked about our favourite symbol of Christmas.
Afterwards, we looked at the presentation (you can find it here) and we talked about the many symbols of the December celebrations and symbols that my students are not really familiar with. I really wanted to broaden their horizons a little bit and to show them that there are different symbols of Christmas in different countries (i.e. mistletoe in the US), different traditions (i.e. Santa bringing presents and leaving them in the Christmas boots in Finalnd), different associations with Christmas (i.e. a barbecue on the beach in New Zealand) or even different holidays that are more visible and associated with December such as Hanukkah and menorah.
As it happened, we also had a chance to extend the topic into our regular English lessons and we had lots of fun with the quiz (‘Santa, where are you from?’) and the bamboozle game about the letters to Santa written by different characters from stories and films.
It’s a reindeer. In case you are wondering)
The artist
We looked together at different artists and how they might have painted a Christmas tree and a menorah. I have chosen Warhol, Kusama, Pollock, Picasso, Mondrian and Dali. Some of these were the artists we have covered since September and some were chosen because they have a style that is easy for children to follow. I have used the images I found online (Christmas tree and menorah).
The real inspiration for the lesson was the set below that I cannot reference. I got it from a friend but there was no real source. Dear author: thank you and I am sorry that I cannot reference you!
The most beautiful picture of them all that actually gave me the idea for the whole lesson
We talked about them a little bit: the most significant details such as colours or shapes and whether we like them or not.
The art
Before the lesson I prepared the materials, pencils and markers and a piece of paper, cardboard divided into 4 sections. I also prepared my own examples of the art: one chosen symbol in four different styles, the regular one and the other ones representing three different artists. For our lessons this time I have decided to include Kusama, Mondrian and Picasso because they are signigifant enough and easy enough for beginners: dots for Kusama, shapes and the colours for Mondrian and asymmetry and colours for Picasso. Each picture was first drawn in pencil and then coloured in as appropriate.
I was really happy with the lesson. The kids were really interested in finding out about all of the traditions and symbols. Now, after we have covered the whole Christmas month, I think that there is enough material to cover all the lessons of the month. There are a lot more ideas for quizes and games. Hopefully, next year we will be able to do all that.
What’s more important, the kids really took to the creative part of the lesson. Most of my students chose to draw exactly the same symbols which they named as their favourite Christmas symbols in the beginning of the lesson although there were some who, on taking everything in stock, went for symbols who were easier to draw. Which is just as well since, this way, they could really focus on conveying the elements of each style.
We were going step by step, with me modelling and highlighting the bits and pieces of each symbol. Kids were working at their own pace, some of them needed more time, some of them were speeding up and taking ahead of the group but they all worked beautifully and they all did their absolute best to incorporate the main features of each style.
I am happy with all the pictures, of course, but it was especially lovely to see the works of my least advanced students. One of them because, although his reindeer is not a perfect rendition, he really did made an effort to represent different styles and he ended up with creating his own style, on a separate piece of paper. The other one, because although she did not attend many of our classes, she took the reins soon after we started painting and right after creating the first picture in the style of the Designated Artist (Kusama), she went on creating in all the other styles, the Smileys Candy Cane, the Harry Potter Candy Cane and, of course, the most touching of all: Miss Anka in four different styles.
The most exciting thing about this lesson is the fact that I will be able to repeat it with an entirely different focus but a similar approach to give the kids an opportunity to experiment with a variety of creative styles. I am considering hearts for St.Valentines, rabbits and flowers for Easter and spring and the summer symbols for the end of the year, as a way of celebrating the whole year of Art.
The linguistic aim for November is the introduction and / or revision of ‘have got’ with the negative and affirmative and questions, with different objects around us: school objects, pets, basic body parts etc. We have been practising talking about the things we have got and things we haven’t got, including some pairwork and questions. We have used songs and wordwall, too. The kids are doing well.
Artists
This has been a funny month because it was a whole month without the Artist of the Day. I had to cut a few corners because of the method and the resources. Everything here, all three methods I describe below are very time-consuming, in every possible way:
they take time to set up before the lesson,
they require resources that might not always live in your art cupboard
they require a detailed presentation by the teacher, from A to Z, while the students are watching (and ideally a finished, dry, product)
since the technique is new for the students, they might also need more time to experiment and to play with the tool and the resources before they move on to create the actual masterpiece
That means less time for other things such as the language that I did not want to give up on. Another thing is that because we have not actually done any proper ‘adult’ printing, there are no ‘real’ artists for us to look at, only the photos from the Internet and the pieces created by the teacher.
It is not a big problem, of course, but I have to admit, I have realised that I miss the presence of Warlhol or Malevich in our lessons. We will be catching up on that, in January (December is devoted to Christmas and there will definitely be more craft in our classes).
Art
Bubble printing
This activity has already featured here on the blog and I decided to do it again, although it belongs in the category only loosely. However, my selling point here was that, indeed, the final result is a page printed with beautiful colours. So, yes, we did it again!
Marker printing
This is a brand new activity that I found online (Meagan Carlos aka helloartteacher) and it is officially called marker transfer.
The activity is fun, clearly divided into stages and there are a few variations. It can also be easily adapted to a chosen theme. We did ours in end of October / beginning of November and hence a lot of Halloween in the photos.
Step 1: drawing a picture on a piece of paper. It is important, however, to use a permanent marker (or any waterproof marker). The easier version, which might be more appropriate for the first round of the activity can be done with a copy of a colouring picture. We had a pile of Halloween-themed colouring pages and kids were chosing their own.
Step 2: each student has a piece of tinfoil, attached to the table (I like to attach it on four sides to keep the water from leaking out) and they colour it fully with regular markers. It is good to check beforehand, the markers used here cannot be waterproof. Actually, the more rubbish they are the better. I used thick markers, too, because it is easier to cover a large piece of tinfoil with colours.
Step 3: sprinkle the tinfoil with water. I use a regular sprinkling bottle I use for my plants.
Step 4: put your picture (from step 1) face down on the tinfoil and smooth it gently and let the water seep in. Pull away gently and leave out to dry.
The process is really gratyfing and a lot of fun. In our lessons, we managed to do a few pictures, colouring pages and our own creations. We cleaned the tinfoil, waited for it to be dry and reused the same page to create new pictures. We absolutely loved it. Just look at the photos!
Nature print
This was a variation of the lesson that we did in the summer but I decided to upgrade it this time and use the resources that are literally lying around, in order to minimise food waste and to encourage the kids to look after the environment. You can sometimes see different projects that involve using flowers, seeds and leaves picked up in the summer, just to be ‘destroyed’ for the art’s sake and, to be perfectly honest, I cannot find any justification for it. It seems that autumn is a much better season for that as there are plenty of leaves and flowers that mother nature abandoned already and these can be supplemented with anything that died anyway, the flowers that dried up in the vase, the fruit and veg that are past their use by date etc. I personally feel more comfortable that way and it is not a difficult thing to implement, basically a question of timing.
This time we used: dried leaves and grasses I picked up in our garden, flowers that I got in September that dried up and had been waiting for their turn and some other flowers I got in October that ended their life in our project, a wrinkled apple, a stone and a half of a broccoli that (sadly) didn’t get to be eaten in time.
