#arteacher

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!

Dilemmas of an Art teacher. Choosing the task

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I was typing of my latest posts, devoted to Katsushika Hokusai and it must have been a real inspiration blast, not only for my kids and not only for me as a teacher but also as a trainer or a blog author because it was exactly when I got an idea for this particular post.

I thought it might be a good idea to share how I make decisions about the artist, the materials, the language and the resources, with the hope that it might be useful for those of my readers and colleagues who are only taking their first steps in the area of Art (or teaching English through Art). This way this particular post will be a kind of a directory for anyone who might need one.

First of all, here are the starter kit posts that I have already posted here:

Starting with a new group

What you need is a simple task with very basic resources and, if possible, a tiny wow effect.Here are the topics that I like to use:

  • Claude Monet and the lillies garden, because of the little magic that the painting with watercolours over crayons without destroying the drawing does. Funnily enough, this lesson has never been described and added here, on the blog, although this is my first favourite lesson. For now you can read about it here but I promise to add it as soon as September comes and we do it again.
  • Hokusai and the wave, because the students draw something easy (a wave) three times and three different but simple techniques are used, too
  • Upgraded Picasso (if the template is used, in the offline classes) and it salty water with watercolour does its magic, too
  • Andy Warhol and Mickey Mouse or learning about the associations we have with different colours and emotions. It is based on a template and basically involves colouring but that is why it is an achievable task for everyone, the younger and the older students.
  • Joan Miro and the elephant collage (with a template) because it is a great opportunity to connect literature (Elmer! by David McKee) and the technique itself is very easy and achievable both for younger and older children

Step by step aka learning to listen

Getting the group to listen and to follow the teacher’s instructions, staying on the ball, pausing when necessary, waiting and managing your time, skills and materials is absolutely crucial for Art classes (although not only) and, of course, with a new group, this is also something that cannot be taken for granted and something that will have to be introduced, practised and worked on. Here are some activities that might be helpful with a new group:

  • Turner and the sky, the sea and the sun: this lesson has three main stages: talking about the paintings, mixing the colours to obtain 10 shades of blue and, finally, painting a landscape and because all three are relatively easy and achievable and require different types of materials, the teacher can give them out step-by-step and this way control the flow of the lesson.
  • Bubble painting because the art is abstract and everyone can accomplish it and it definitely has the wow factor and we had a very specific list of step-by-step instructions for us and it was a perfect example for the process painting.
  • Hokusai and the waves, mentioned above is also an activity that helps the children focus on the particular stages of the lesson
  • Salt dough because it is one more activity with obvious and easy to manage stages: looking at examples, creating, painting, decorating and cleaning up.
  • A heart and one hundred different watercolour techniques is easy and manageable because the number of the techniques can be adapted to the age of the students and the length of the lesson. The whole lesson is built around the teacher demonstrating a technique and the children trying it out themselves.

Bringing up little artists

Teaching Art is also about showing children the new opportunities and the new ways of doing things. Here are five beginner lessons that would help achieve that:

  • Salt dough is easy to make and easy to work with and it opens up the door to a brand new world of 3-D creations.
  • Tiny pictures was one of the real eye-openers of the previous academic year, for me and for the children.
  • White on black is another easy flip and doing something different. The resources might not be those that are always lying around (black paper and white marker) but they are not very hard to find.
  • Yayoi Kusama and the pumpkin because even though the first pumpkin is created exactly like the teacher’s, anything can be sitting inside and after the initial T-focused part, the kids can go on recreating the pumpkin and filling it with whatever they want. ‘You are the artist. You make a decision!’
  • Eric Bulatov and a word that is also a picture, one of my favourite lessons in the previous academic year and the one that I taught to a beginner artists group and that was effective aka it is appropriate.

Happy teaching!

The sun, the sea, the sky. J.M.W. Turner with kids

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J.M.W. Turner is, hands down, one of my favourite painters and, definitely, one of the first ones that I fell in love with and it has taken way too long for me to introduce him to my students. But, finally, this day came. We are now in our summer camp ‘Travelling around the world’ session and we planned an England Day, there could be no other painter to bring to class. ‘It had to be you’, Turner, sir.

The language

On the day, we had to lessons which we could devote to England. The first one was a vocabulary lesson in which we learnt about the different things we can see and do in England, food, sports, symbols and sights. We also talked about the things we like and don’t like and we played a pelmanism game. We filled in another page in our ‘passport’ (every day we do one) we watched a short video about the top attractions in London to compare it with our city.

The artist

Introducing J.M.W. Turner was easy as we could compare him with Claude Monet and it went along the lines of ‘Claude Monet had a garden and there he went to paint and Turner lived in Margate, by the sea, so he went to the beach to paint the sea’. That is, of course, a huge simplification but it worked for my 6-8-year-old audience.

We looked at a few of paintings and talked about the colours and the sea (‘Is it day or night?’, ‘Is the sea calm / quiet or angry?’, ‘What colours can you see?’).

The art

This was the first lesson in which we had two separate creative exercises.

The first one focused on mixing the colours as I wanted the children to experiment with the paints we had in order to achieve a wide variety of blues which, later, would be used to paint the main picture. Everyone got a narrow strip of watercolour paper attached to the table, a box of watercolours, water, and a paintbrush. And the task: mix the colours in any way they want in ten different ways. I asked them to try out the paints on the paper.

Before we started, I showed them what I did for homework, namely about 20 different shades in my sketchbook. While I was monitoring and watching the kids, I realised that it was a great idea and that this could be a separate lesson. I just need to stage it in a slightly different way.

Turner in three short words

When everyone completed the task, ten different shades of blue, we got down to a real Turner. I drew a simple plan of what a Turner painting is (with all the love there is in the world): the sun, the sea, the sky and I asked the children to decide if it is a day or night, if the sea is quiet or angry, what colours they want to use and whether there is going to be a boat or not at all…

And we got down to work.

In methodology you call it ‘teacher monitoring the work of the students‘ and I do a lot of that but the truth is that I adore watching my kids work, take time to think, handle the materials, make decisions and focus on the beauty that they are creating. I cannot post the photos which feature my students, we take them only for the parents, but they are all so involved, so in the process, so concentrated, each in their own way.

What I noticed:

  • the 10 shades of blue was a great idea and it helped them see how many options there are and I could that they were using it later. One of our youngest ones also applied the same technique in the following day, with another teacher. He really learnt something!
  • everyone interpreted the topic in their own invidividual way
  • one of our oldest students was a beginner painter and looking at the way he held and moved the brush, I could tell that there hadn’t been much of painting in his life until our lesson. For him, this kind of an easy task was a good introduction into the world of Art and by the end of the lesson he seemed a bit more relaxed and confident.
  • the simple Turner was introduced to help the kids see the pattern in his paintings and to include all three elements.
  • it was an achievable task for the youngest (5 y.o.) and the oldest of my students (9 y.o.)

Happy teaching!

From the life of an Art teacher…

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The dreamcatchers lesson

This is the first of the three posts that I have promised myself as a reward for this academic year to reflect the three main directions in which my professional life took me in this academic year. With my transition into the bilingual primary school as the year 1 (or year 3 of the British National Curriculum), I have become a full-time Art teacher, a full-time Maths teacher and a full-time English teacher. All of these things I have done before and yet, all of them turned out to have some surprises for me and, as a result, all became new chapters, with new discoveries, new knowledge and new skills. Which only proves that there is ALWAYS some room for improvement.

The still life lesson

Something old!

I am not new to teaching Art and teaching English through Art. Even before I moved to Newton, I had been teaching English through Art for two years, with BKC and with the Fun Art Kids at the Moscow Museum of Multimedia Art, both online and offline. Not to mention all of these years when I pestered my young learners and teens and adults with Art in our EFL lessons.

I have already managed to share ideas and experience in an article published in the MET and a session at the YL IH Conference as well as some workshops at my school and lots (and lots and lots) of posts here on this blog. One of the most popular articles was written in November 2021, almost three years ago, and even then I already knew what I was talking about.

However, and I say it with full responsibilty for every word, it was only in September 2023, with the Art Explorers at Newton, that I really became an Art teacher.

Yves Klein and rollers

Something new!

This has been a year full of artistic adventures.

One of the most important things and one of the biggest changes, in comparison with the previous year, is that I am the one completely in charge of the whole programme. I do not have any external artistic curriculum to follow and I am not bound by any linguistic curriculum either. That is a huge responsibility, of course, but it also a source of power because it gives you all the freedom you want and may need. The only limitation is the time, these 45 minutes of a lesson that I need to fit everything in.

In the beginning of the year we had two lessons a week but it wasn’t working well, with a huge span of the age and the actual numbers of kids in the classroom. It was very difficult to run two the activities on two different levels of motor skills and two different level of linguistic skills and to constantly have to find a way of creating something that both my 5-year-olds and my 10-year-olds could do and benefit from. Plus, for the teacher, two different activities a week…it’s not impossible only extremely exhausting. Luckily, we were able to adapt the timetable. The younger group, pre-school and year 1, started to attend on Mondays, the older group, the years 2 – 4, on Wednesdays.

The raised salt pictures lesson and My Favourite Box

Because of that I could teach the same lesson twice (always an advantage, not only because of the lesson planning time) and I was able to adjust the levels of challenge, artistic, linguistic, cognitive, motor, to both levels. And it was a joy to see it work. The younger kids could focus on the vocabulary and grammar practice, the older could be involved in a real debate, in L2.

It was also interesting for me to teach these two same lessons in a different order. Because of the calendar and random holidays along the way, sometimes I started the new lesson in the younger group and then had to adapt it to the older one and the other way round. That was an interesting experience, from the point of view of methodology.

Not to mention the difference in the reception that different artists and techniques got. All (as in: every single one) of my students are amazing but it was interesting to see that, naturally, my older group were more capable in terms of their motor skills and more critical and willing to challenge ideas, because of their language skills. However, my younger kids were definitely more open to all the new things and all the lessons on contemporary art were a proper blast with them.

It is almost ridiculous how much my students have grown, as artists. They have not only had a chance to interact with different artists and to experiment with a great variety of materials and techniques but also got better at manging time and materials. May is a completely different month in terms of the Mess At the End Of an Art Class. And they have become more sophisticated and skilled at expressing themselves through Art. What started as an exercise in recreating the teacher’s model, led to kids observing, managing the technique and just creating their own masterpieces with whatever was at hand on the day. It was fun to watch them get excited at the announcement that the topic of the day was ‘What You Want’, as it was with at least some of the new technique. It was also fun to have them try to convince me to let them interpret the topic and to see them negotiate that. Apart from that, thanks to one OK lesson in February, I got to see how much they have developed and how much they have progress, way beyond just a regular craft activity. They even figured out how we roll in our Art classes (see the plan below).

A lesson plan, by one of my students. 100% accurate

Thanks to my Art classes I also started to create more. On the one hand, it was because I needed to experiment with all the materials, techniques and styles in order to show the children where we were going with things. I did that before. This year, however, I discovered that I really like painting and that it calms me down. I got myself a sketchbook and I started to paint, keeping kind of a visual diary and checking out how I can express how I feel though images. A new thing for me because I am the human of a word (or I have been so far). I don’t show these to anyone, although, I really like some of them. And painting is my new zen.

I love planning my Art classes, combining the language, the artist and the tools. I love coming up with a theme for the month and research Art to find exactly what I need. Naturally, over this year, I have learnt a lot about the artists that I had never heard before. I love introducing these artists and my favourite artists to my students. This year we have had a visit from the biggest and the lesser known, the world Art creators and the Russian artists, the legends and our contemporaries. Andy Warhol, Kasimir Malevich, Shantell Martin, Natalia Goncharova, Ilya Mashkov, Yves Klein, Pablo Picasso, Marisa Dube. We learnt about the alternative techniques, we have worked with a whole wide range of materials, from watercolours, to seeds and everything in between.

I wish I could try to choose my favourite lesson this year. That is simply impossible. Instead I will attempt a top ten, instead, in no specific order.

One of the coolest moment this year was in March when I got to curate a retrospective of our Art Explorers on the walls in our school. I have some works stashed at school, some pieces stashed at home although, the best ones, were already taken home by the proud artists. Still, showing a great selection of them on the walls of the school made me realise how much we have achieved. The kids were also beyond excited to see their pieces displayed. Am I dreaming now of a proper exhibition in a real hall? Of course I am!

The mandala lesson prep

Something borrowed, something blue!

Something borrowed is easy as all my lessons are based on the amazing creations by artists from around the world, from our contemporaries and from the days of yore. It is something that all the kids in the world should be given the access to, in order to learn about the different ways of looking at things and of expressing your emotions, learning how to do something new and becoming more confident about what you have to say. One of the most important lessons that I got to teach them was the one about the artists independence (‘You are the artist. If you call it a sunset, it is the sunset’) and another about the different ways of perceiving the world (‘You are the artist. If you decide that the apples are purple, they are going to be purple’).

My something blue is going to be the next academic year. I am hoping to continue to run the programme and I am already looking forward to all the new artists and all the new techniques. Some of my current students are going to continue with us so I cannot just repeat the programme. And just as well. ‘There is such a lot of world to see’. As the song goes (‘Moon river’).

Our exhibition

Happy teaching!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

I would like to know a tiny little bit more about my readers. There are so many of you, popping in here, again and again, and the numbers of visitors and visits are going up and make my heart sweel with joy. But I realised I don’t know anything about my readers and I would love to know, a tiny little bit more.

Hence the survey.

Yves Klein. Take two. Printing and roller work.

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The man who can’t see the sun

Somehow, in this academic year, in our Art Explorers adventure, the days are filled with some ‘firsts’. Now and then, and more frequently that I would expect it to happen, we bump into something that we have never done before and something that we are trying for the first time and that we are experimenting with. I love it!

This time round, we experienced a mini-series of the same artist over two consecutive lessons. It is not that Monsieur Yves is such an inspiring artist that we simply had to give him a double Art slot. I mean, he is amazing and I am so happy that I have discovered him for myself and for my students but, surely, there have been many Great Artists that, theoretically, at least, should have been granted with that privilege, Malevich, Goncharova, Warhol or Picasso…A simple coincidence, that’s all it was. I got the amazing set of rollers and stamps but only in time for my older group, the younger kids on Mondays missed their chance. Since we had so much fun with the rollers, I simply decided to let everyone help! Then and only then, did it turn out later that Yves Klein himself loved using different tools…What a coincidence!

The Power of four elements

The language

The language stayed the same and we had a lot of time with the spinner and the verbs (you can read about them here) and, to be perfectly honest, the langauge input was kept short on purpose.

The artist

We just got back to the previous class and looked at some of his paintings again and I told the students that, apart from using the beautiful blue and painting with different body parts, Yves also used a variety of different rollers, stamps and other tools and that it is exactly what we would do.

Colourful frame

The art

The room was set up exactly the way we did last week, with the round table in the centre of the U-set of desks and it was basically our palette (have been covered in paper and painter scotched over before). I showed the students all of the tools and how they can be used. Because it was the last lesson in the series, I was also able to look back at the works created before. My special focus was this one, created by one of my older students because it combines pencil drawing, a variety of prints and a great roller work.

After that, we just got down to work and, in one line, it was just amazing.

Kids really enjoyed working with a new tool and experimenting with everything they had to offer. It was a good idea to cover the palette table with paper because it was the first place to try out rollers and stamps. This is also were they were mixing the colours to get new shades and colours. They were very careful and conscious while choosing the tools and combining them with the paints. We were talking about the process, a little bit in English and mostly in L1 and thanks to that I could see how their ideas were taking shape. That was precious. Or so I thought. Until the artists started to come up with the titles for their work. They did all of that in Russian and I helped them translate but hey, look at them, they are amazing…What is more, they were not created instantly. The kids really did put some work into creating them. Some students made a decision and then, upon more consideration, they changed their mind and came up with even a better, more suitable option. I was speechless and I continue to be. Why? Just look at the photos!

A worrying house

Happy teaching!

Monochrome March: White on black! Teaching English through Art

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I have been carrying this idea with me and in me for a very long time. I am a huge fan of black and white and I knew it would be something that I would love to do. I was just waiting for the appropriate time. Our February was dedicated to Fruit and that is partly why, on approaching the month of March, I thought that, yes, following the good principles of alliteration, we are going to have a Monochrome March.

I am developing as an Art teacher, too (well, hopefully) so for the past three months, I have been doing my montly lesson planning, choosing the artists and materials/ techniques to cover. The teacher trainer in me is happy, nodding with approval. That works. Our monochrome series will have four episodes. This one is actually the second one.

The language

As regards the language, I decided that in the month of March, we are not going to focus on any specific vocabulary topic, but, instead, we are going to develop different ways of expressing opinion. With the younger group, that meant learning and practising the set of basic adjectives to express opinion (It’s a good / very good / bad / very bad / crazy / interesting / boring / fantastic / terrible) idea. I have chosen these particular ones to echo the phrases we used with my year 1 kids in our English lessons. I am hoping that they will benefit from that additional practice opportunity and that my pre-schoolers in the Art group will pick up on some of them. These are also the phrases that we will be able to use during other lessons, of course.

The artists

Yes! This week we were visited by a whole big group of artists including Malevich, Goncharova, Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe and Victor Vassarely or, in other words, some of those who created some paintings in black and white, some of whom we already met before.

This stage was pretty straightforward – we looked at the paintings and shared our opinions. This stage was also relatively short because I wanted to save enough time for the creative part.

The art

This was the most important part of the lesson since we were to interact and to create with a new resource and a new technique.

First of all, I showed the students the resources: black paper for sketching, white pencils, chalk markers and blending stump pencils. I also demonstrated how to use them.

Afterwards, we did something for the first time in our class – I gave out the drawing materials and a small piece of the paper and I asked the kids just to play with them, to see how they work, how they draw, how much pressure you need to apply, how easily it smuges and so on, just to get the feel of the new tool.

Only then did I announce the topic of the drawing and that was: Draw what you want! My students were a little bit surprised and a little bit overwhelmed by that approach so that was something interesting to see and, definitely, something to reflect on. After a while, however, they took to work. I showed them what I created, a heart on the background of different patterns, and I explained that this was my choice just because I wanted to play with the tool and to experiment with how it works. I also demonstrated a slide with some patterns that they might use but I highlighted that they could really do whatever they wanted.

And what did they want? My older students chose to draw their favourite things so we got the white-on-black eddition of the rabbit, the goose, the cats, the still life and they were more creative with the experiments and trying out different options that the chalk pencils and markers offered. They were very excited with the shading options and the glow they managed to create. They chatted (in English) about the outcomes. Some of the pieces were not finished but, I suppose, it is something to take into consideration and to accept, especially with all the new techniques.

My younger were also creative but their creativity went in the direction of creating plot and background for their pictures. Many of them drew a bunch of monochromatic figures, which can be traced to a heart and I am still wondering if they were inspired by the heart that I brought. What is even more important is that they told me of everything that their pictures stood for and these were real stories! Yes, they were told in kids’ L1 as there is not enough language yet but they were such rich plots! Just look at the cowboys attacking the city or the hearts arriving to defend another group of heroes!

Many of the students created more than just one picture and it was lovely to see how their imagination was taking off, with every next picture bouncing ideas off the previous one. I really did think I would run out of paper!

All in all, I am very happy with the lesson. The new resource and the new technique worked well and we will definitely go back to it one day. The experimentation stage worked well and it helped us understand the basics of the resource. It was also interesting to see that the size of the paper also had an impact on the drawing. Some of the A6 pictures are just precious and this inspired me to look into this part of the process more. A lesson on the impact of the space, working with A3 and A6 at the same time? Well, it is a fresh idea, it needs to bubble for some time on the back burner of the brain.

As regards the language, it was not the most productive of our classes but it was a beautiful opportunity for the kids to express themselves artistically. I am just wondering if I can use them to tell stories in the other classes. They are so rich, so beautiful that it would be a shame not to! I am thinking.

Happy teaching!