Teaching English through Art

How do you see the world? Teaching the kids about ‘the point of view’

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The bigger picture

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!

Happy teaching!

Erik Bulatov once again. January Jungle!

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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…

Happy teaching!

Christmas in style! (Or a lesson about symbols and style). Teaching English Through Art

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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.

Here are some more pictures from our lessons

Happy teaching!

November printing. Teaching English through Art

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Language

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.

Happy teaching!

A story of one picture. Starry Night

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The lesson aka the context

This is a lesson that I put together for last year’s Shapes in October series. This year I decided to recycle it during our Autumn Camp and the Yellow Day. The basic version of it is super simple and it involves making a collage of the van Gogh Starry Night background and stickers or drawings. You can read about it here. However, my colleague, miss Victoria, decided to upgrade the lesson and instead of the ready-made background, she asked her preschoolers to paint the the background first and then decorate it with stickers and drawings.

I went to their classroom during the break to check how the pictures have turned out and to take photos and I was amazed. Especially with this one. It did stand out because it used mixed media but not the stickers and the sky was like none other.

A little bit later in the day, one of the younger students wandered into my classroom to chat. She saw the collage my group made and shouted: ‘We made those, too!’ I showed her the photos I took and we finally identified hers. I was surprised and I was not surprised at all!

The student aka the artist

Sasha is seven and she is in year 1 of primary. She attended my Art Explorers last year regularly and she comes every week this year, too. She is one of my really creative students. On some days, she is reluctant to get started, on some others she takes her time but then takes off and on some other days, she just dives in at the deep end and creates as crazy. She is also the student who, most frequently, snatches her work as soon as we say ‘Good-bye’ and I am lucky to take a photo. I love it.

Whenever she starts to create, however, it is always of the highest standard, with a fresh look and a new angle.

The work and the creative process

Because it was miss Victoria’s lesson (according to my lesson plan), I did not have a chance to see the artist in action but because it was the autumn camp, we had more time and me and Miss Artist had a very interesting conversation discussing her painting.

First of all, I was surprised with the technique that Sasha decided to use and the results that she arrived at because it was so absolutely different from what all the other children created. This is when Sasha explained that ‘I did what you taught us last year’, namely painting water on water (a technique that we experimented with last October and somehow she remember, mind blown!). This is how she got the beautiful background, the sky and the stars that blend into each other.

Sasha also explained that, looking at what her classmates were doing, she decided to add the drawings, the houses and the umbrellas, all that instead of using the stickers, showing that she has a lot of potential to become an independent artist capable of making her own creative decisions.

The teacher in awe

I guess every teacher is at the risk of getting emotional and touch whenever we can see that our work bears fruit and that our students learn and remember something that we are trying to teach them. I know I do.

That is why this day and this conversation were so important, because, in a way, this painting is the outcome of the time in the classroom. Sasha demonstrated that she remembered how to use a specific technique she learnt from me and she also showed that she picked up on the values that I am trying to promote in class such as keeping your eyes open, allowing yourself to be inspired by your teacher or peers, the curiosity and the open-mindedness that leads to experimentation and new outcomes…

I was a very happy teacher that day.

Happy teaching!

A story of one picture. The next Jackson Pollock, 8 y.o.

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The Hedgehog in the Fog’

I decided to run this mini-series, as a part of my Teaching English Through Art thread, in order to preserve the memories and the creative process in a child as observed in my classes. Just stories from the classroom.

The lesson aka the context

It was one of our colour lessons, a colour-themed days on the autumn camp, White on Black, in which we used a mixed media technique to create ‘what you want’ which means that they could draw whatever and however.

It was one of those lessons that start with my students going ‘Whaaat?!’ looking at me taking out the resources of my bag (black paper, white chalk markers, white pencils, white tissue and glue and toothpaste and cotton buds) to ‘Look, miss Anka, look!’ because they have just discovered something more about the potential of all of these resources.

The kids could use one of these or all of these, in practically any way.

The student aka the artist

My student, Sasha, is eight, very clever, very creative and struggling with staying focused in our regular classes. And yet, in this lesson, Sasha stayed completely involved and on the task for about three hours straight (the lesson time and then the long lunch break). I was sitting there, monitoring and keeping an eye, trying to keep a straight face and my jaw from dropping. This expression, ‘I could not believe my own eyes’, it was created for this very situation.

The work and the creative process

The story started with a blank piece of black paper, A5. I noticed before that this very resource, so different from what we usually use, and so potent in its presence, just lying on the table, basically lots of Malevich’s black squares (well, rectangles) strewn all over the classroom, this very resource is already a statement in itself. It sets the mood for the lesson and it sparks creativity and inspiration instantly. The kids get their sheets and they immediately start interacting with them, turning them over, looking at the texture and turning it over and over again. This one never requires any tricks to get the kids into the task, the piece of paper does it.

As soon as we started, Sasha, without much hesitation, reached out for the chalk marker. I presume, it was all due to the fact that this one particular resource used to be out of bounds, ‘teacher only’, in the old classroom where we used to have a traditional board. Since we moved into the new classroom, with the electronic board and whiteboards, I have no use for them and I decided to use them in that Art lesson. Actually, those chalk markers apart from being a great tool for the teacher, they are also fascinating as a drawing or writing tool. They produce a neat, even line, you don’t need to apply to much pressure and, as my students quickly discovered, if you shake it, you can also produce splashes and spatters. In one word: lots of potential.

Splashes is what Sasha started with. He would shake the marker, look at the smudges that appeared and then he started to move the sheet, turning it upside down, shaking it, turning it around to help the liquid paint move further. To be honest, at this point, I did not think that ‘anything real’ would come out of but he was so engrossed in the process and he was enjoying it so much that I decided to let it be, instead of insisting on creating ‘something’. But, it really did remind me of another aritst, so I decided to show him a few works of Jackson Pollock and a few photographs from his studio and he was impressed. We looked but we also talked about finding your own style. Sasha was asking how you find it and whether I can suggest something to help him with defining his own style and I suggested ‘just working’ because things are defined and discovered in progress and at work.

Perhaps it was in an attempt to find your own style or perhaps only the next step in experimenting with the marker, but, all of a sudden, Sasha became really interested in dots and started to fill in the whole picture with them, all of the missing spaces, methodically, bit by bit. He even said ‘This really calms me down, these dots’. I decided to use it as an opportunity to bring up another concept, namely horror vacui and, again, we looked at some examples in the ancient Egypt paintings. And Sasha kept working.

It was somewhere at this point that I asked him to consider thinking of a name for his painting and at first he declined (‘I don’t know!’) and then he did what my students often do and go for the obvious (‘Crazy mess’). But it was not the end of it.

The painting was already quite something. I really liked the dots and splashes but the artist himself was still not happy and he kept experimenting. He realised that the chalk marker behaves like a proper chalk and leaves smudges on your hands or clothes and he decided to use it in a conscious way and he wiped the whole picture with his hand, not destroying it or rubbing off the lines or dots but covering it with a thin and delicate layer of white, kind of a mist.

This must have been the thing that gave him the idea for the actual name of the painting, namely ‘The Hedgehog in the Fog’, after a famous cartoon (and a book) by Yuri Nornstein, one of the most beautiful things ever made and my personal favourite. It was so fitting that I simply started to laugh.

Sasha continued to tweak the whole picture and then he left for lunch and when he came back, he showed me the finished painting. He also explained that he decided to add ‘the hedgehog’, a red dot, in the centre of the painting, to add one more reference, to Bansky, since that is the aritst and the concept that we did a few days earlier.

The teacher in awe

That is what I was. It is one of the many amazing things that happened in class that day but I love this story and this piece in particular because it beautifully illustrates how one child embarked on a journey of creative discovery and how he arrived at his finished product which, I have no doubt, is a masterpiece. All the hard work, all the focus, all the references and the curiosity that he demonstrated…I am proud of him and what he created and I am beyond happy that I could be a part of it.

Two months later…

…Sasha comes to me during the long break (he is ill and not going out to play outdoors) and asks if I can give him ‘the pen’ and ‘the paper’ so that he could draw another one of those pictures, like ‘The Hedgehog in the Fog’…And he was so happy when we found the last sheet of the black paper! I left him to himself and he kept working.

In the end, he kept blagging to everyone that he bumped into about the painting that he created ‘and that I decided to call ‘The Bear in the Fog because the first one that I have at home is called ‘The Hedgehog in the Fog’ and now I had to choose a different name…’

When it was my time to listen, I praised him, again and asked if he made the little dot pink.

‘NO! I made it red. Just like you told us last time!’, he said.

And he went on with his things and I was left with wondering how magical it is that my amazing permanently distracted Sasha not only heard what I was telling him (and the class) a few months before, about Banksy and about Warhol, but he also remembered it and made it his. Forever?

The Bear in the Fog’

Happy teaching!

Banksy. Red says: ‘Look!’

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The language

This lesson was a part of our autumn camp, with each day dedicated to a colour. For that reason, in the language part of the day, we worked with the things that are red. We revised and learnt new words and we talked about things that we like and we don’t like. We did some literacy work, too.

The artist

I actually have no idea why it has taken so long for me to invite Banksy into our lessons but it was definitely worth the wait because this lesson turned out to be great.

I introduced the artist and showed the kids a few of his works. We also talked about the graffiti that can be art and the graffiti that is just vandalism (as brought up by the kids). Then we looked at the Girl with the Balloon and we talked about its different interpretations, sad or happy, and variations, with the balloon in red and in black.

I decided to present this work from the point of view of the red balloon and how the artist used it for the contrast and to draw our attention to the most important element. We also looked at the same effect that can be achieved in photography. For all of those stages I used a powerpoint. You can access it here.

The art

The task was very simple: white paper, black marker and a drawing of your choice, with one element of it in red. I suggested using a collage for the red but, in the end, most of my students went for the red marker.

I am really in awe with the results. The simplicity of the task and the basic resources gave the kids an opportunity to focus on the theme and the content (because, let’s be honest, sometimes, the resource and the method can be a bit disruptive) and they all chose their own way of dealing with it.

Among all the pictures created on the day, we have one copy of Banksy (with the author’s decision to make it a sad picture), we have a name logo (Halloween-style), a scene from the forest (in two copies because my student finished earlier and wanted to do the same picture on black paper), a map and a cartoon, on red paper.

It was lovely to see how involved my students were and how their creativity was taking flight, with every next step of the process as our lesson proceeded, how they moved from black on white to white on black or from black on white to black on red.

If you are looking for an easy lesson, with minimal resources and lots of opportunities, here is one for you!

Happy teaching!

One colour, many colours. Teaching English through Art

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The language

The language in this lesson was not quite our priority. We did not introduce any new language items and I really wanted to focus on working with the colour and help the students see the variety of colours at their disposal. We sang the song, talked about how we are and we revised the colours, briefly.

We looked at different colours and their shades to understand that each colour is, in fact, a number of colours. My younger students counted the shades and the older ones had a lot of fun reading the names of the different shades of blue, red and pink. You can find my presentation here.

The artist

In this particular lesson we had a group of artists, to introduce a range of different paintings with one leading colour. We looked at van Gogh’s Starry Night (blue) and Sunflowers (yellow), we had Kandinsky’s Mit und Gegen (red), Levitan’s Forest Gave (green) and Sue Williams’ Pink Pentagon (pink). We called out the main colours in every painting and we called out the contrasting colours, too.

The art

I taught this lesson twice, with my younger group and my older group, with some differences.

The younger kids, pre-K and year 1, were working at a much slower pace. They needed more revision, they took longer to get into the task and they were

Everyone got a strip of paper, a mixing palette and a box of watercolours. The task was to create ten different shades of different colours. I showed them what I created for red at home and we also sat around my table for a moment to see in real time what happens if you mix yellow with brown and yellow with white or black.

They were involved in the task and they kept coming up with more and more unusual combination. Even those few kids who entered the room with ‘I will not paint today’ (there is always someone!) eventually got down to work and started to create. They kept calling me over and over again, to come over to check out the new shade. And we actually managed to get lots of language out of it. They were either telling me what they had mixed or I was trying to guess, judging by the final product.

The older students managed to complete two tasks: creating ten different shades of their chosen colour and then also creating a picture in their chosen colour. Looking at how it was going on, I decided not to speed them up and to focus and mixing the colours.

I think that next time I teach this particular lesson to the older students, I am going to focus more on the language and after creating our ten shades of X, we are going to come up with some interesting names for them. That will require preparing a slightly different page, with some room to write but it looks like a fun activity with a lot of potential. Especially that they already really enjoyed finding out about the official shades of different colours.

Afterwards, we went on to painting a picture with our chosen colour as the main theme. My model made at home was a picture of rowan, to showcase red. The one I did in class was a sunflower ready to bloom, to showcase green. We also talked about focusing on the main colour and choosing something of a different colour for contrast. My students decided to paint pumpkins (orange) and the forest (green).

The exercise of 10 Shades can be used as a warm-up activity to many other lessons. We used in our Turner lesson and in our green lesson, too. I am planning to do a lesson on red and still-life and I will include that element, too.

The funny thing is the mismatch between the actual lesson and how good it was and the photos and creations that we have to show. In case of my younger group, we ended up only with a few ‘dirty’ pieces of paper and nobody would even be able to guess that they were the result of experimentation and creative discovery. I wanted to display them on our noticeboard but what happened was that they were taken away from me, as soon as possible. Meaning? They were dear to the budding artists. As was the lesson, hopefully.

Happy teaching!

Georgia O’Keeffe and her leaves

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The language

The language aim for this lesson was autumn and, after we sang our hello song and talked about how we feel, we went on to learn about the different autumn symbols using the cards. With my younger group we also revised the colours and, for the first time ever, we talked about our favourite colours. With my older group we focused more on talking about our favourite autumn symbols.

The artist

Georgia has a very special place in my heart because she was one of the first artists that I brought to my English class, with her beautiful moon in NY. She often makes a cameo apperance in our group lessons but she has never had her own day, until last week.

Her painting ‘Fall Leaves’ is so simple but so beautiful and rich in colour that it simply had to become the headliner, eventually. And it was a perfect choice for our first real autumn lesson, not only because of the season outside of the window but for our art in the first month of the new season, I needed a simple enough shape that would give us an opportunity to focus on and to experiment with the technique, namely: watercolours. Previously, for the same lesson, I chose a heart, this time, I wanted leaves.

The art

Since we are in the first month of the new academic year and I have many new students who are also beginner artists (or beginner artists in English), I decided to devote the month of September to a series of lessons that focus on different aspects of being an artist. We have already talked about what it means to be an artist and in this lesson, I wanted to show the kids that there are many things that we do with our paints. Make sure you also check out the other two lessons in the series: about a colour and the texture (still to come).

Before the lesson, I prepared three A5 pieces for each student (watercolour paper, painters scotch) on the table to signal how we are going to work, three pictures and three techniques. Drawing a leaf was a good choice because I wanted the children to focus on the technique, rather than on the drawing itself.

There are many watercolour techniques (you can find the links in the previous post here) but for this lesson I chose the following ones: wet on wet, salty water as the base and ‘a broken brush’, I prepared my own pictures at home, to show the children a finished product and I sketched a few shapes of different leaves on the board for the students to copy. If they needed it.

I wanted to use the three techqniues also to get the students ready to following my instructions and learning to go step by step as some of them still struggle with it and we will definitely need this skill for more complex projects in the future.

Every stage went in the following way: showing my example on the board, explaining and demonstrating the technique and the kids trying their hand at it. We used crayons to sketch the leaves (as they help to keep the paint ‘in order’) and we continued with the watercolours.

One of the first questions that I heard from two of my students in the older group was ‘But do we have to draw leaves? Can we draw something else, please?’ and, as luck would have it, only a day before I bumped into a post about free choice in the Art Class (like these here The Art of Education and Power Wood) and I just had to say ‘Yes’. I only asked them to stick to the main theme, ‘Autumn’. And they did.

It was a great lesson. The leaves look great as you can see in the photos (at least those that I had time to photograph before they were snatched and carried home by the proud artists) and as for the joy of experimenting and discovering, well, you just have to take my word for it. It was just beautiful.

It also worked well as an activity in learning how to work in the Art classroom. I was happy with the choice. The three techqniues – activities created a framework and they helped with staging. We made one step forward as a group.

I am also very happy that I agreed to my kids making their own choice as regards the topic of the painting. I am happy because it made them more motivated and they created the most amazing pieces. I would have hated it if my being strict would have prevented these from happening. Which is going to be something that I will definitely think about every single time now anyone asks for a slice of freedom in the classroom!

One of my students, painting one of his leaves, said ‘It is a magic leaf!’ And, you know, it looks like one!

Happy teaching!

P.S. Here is a bonus! A new thing that can be done with a leaf. We have not done it in class, only experimented but there is a lot of potential here and it takes only a leaf and some glitter glue!

‘I am an artist!’ The first Art lesson of the year

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Ha! ‘This was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof!‘ as Hamlet would say. Why? Because first I spend time preparing a post about the good first lessons in the Art Explorers world (which, by the way, is here) and then, the start of the academic year comes and my own first lesson, too and what is it that I do? That’s right, I start from scratch and do something else entirely. Because I had an idea, because I found a cool resource and because I really wanted to do it. But it was a good lesson so I am more than happy to share it here!

The language

This was the first lesson of the year and for a variety of reasons, I got both age groups in one lesson, my second graders and the pre-schoolers and year 1 kids, too, all together now, 15 children, 30 hands. Some of them I know very well, some are new to the school and they are of different ages and, naturally, of different level of language skills. Instead of trying to adjust it to any specific level or age, I just went for ‘let’s do what I want and see what happens’.

For that reason, I did not aim for practising any specific language point, not this time anyway.

The artists

The aim of this lesson was to introduce the students to the world of art and to try to understand and to brainstrom ideas of what it is to be an artist. I based this part of the lesson on the powerpoint which you can find here.

  • we looked at what different artists do
  • we tried to define what makes someone an artists, including my ideas and my students’ ideas
  • we looked at what ‘I’ve got an idea’ was for five of the artists: Picasso, Acrimboldo, Malevich, Vlaminck and Klein in the format of ‘everyone says…’ and ‘the artist says…’
  • I also found a funny cartoon based on Marta Alves storybook but we didn’t have to watch it. We will definitely use it in the following week.

The art

The creative activity in this week was based on a very special notebook that I found in my local stationery shop: a sticker paper notebook. I saw it, fell in love with it and decided to use it.

  • I prepared my own stickers berfore the lesson to show the students the finished product
  • I also made one more, simple sticker during the lesson, to walk them through the process: make a decision about the design, draw with a pencil, trace and colour with the markers and cut out, peel it of and stick (this part was optional and the idea was that the kids might also choose to take their stickers home)
  • We brainstormed a few ideas for stickers. ‘You can make what you like. What do you like?’
  • We got down to work.

It went well and, indeed, there was a huge variety of ideas and the kids understood the assignment, they went for expressing themselves. Among the designs there were: stick people, cards, animals, hearts, stars, a rainbow, a sticker bracelet and a beautiful character from one of the favourite cartoons.

Regardless of how big or how intricate the drawings were, they all worked as they can be cut out in many different ways. Even if the picture itself is very small, the sticker can have a form of a square which is easy to handle.

This kind of a task is also perfect for mixed ability groups in terms of motor skills. Some of the students managed to make one sticker, some went on and created more stickers. It also happened that one or two students were picked up by their parents half-way through the lesson and it did not get in the way of the creative process. They simply picked up their sheets and took them home to finish work.

I am really happy with how it all went. The kids liked working on the stickers, as they were both easy and exciting to make. A perfect choice for a new group, too!

Happy teaching!