#teachingenglishthroughart

Leaves or Thank you, Georgia!

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Teaching English Through Art

The language

If you follow me and read these posts regularly, you already know that every English through Art lesson has three elements and that the most challenging and the most fun part is always combining these three in one short lesson and finding the connection between the English curriculum and the Art.

If you are a thorough reader, you may have also found out that sometimes, when you really (really) want to do something, you may turn the blind eye or the deaf ear to this beautiful equlibrium and just do it. And Georgia’s lesson is a perfect example of that kind of an approach. Why? Because I just wanted an Art lesson.

It doesn’t always have to be that way and if you go back, to my first lesson with leaves (here), you will see that it is a perfect lesson for the beginner learner because what you really need is the colours and it can be beautifully used with just that kind of linguistic input and practice. If your students are in year 1 of pre-primary English.

For my year 3 kids, we used it as an opportunity to bring autumn to class and to close the unit. We worked as usual, revised all of the vocabulary and just had a nice end-of-unit lesson. And then we did Art.

The artist

As you can see in the photographic evidence above, I went to school collecting leaves on the way. I wanted us to have something real to look at and to compare them with the painting. I put the leaves on the big table, before the lesson, and I was not really surprised that as soon as the kids entered, they started to touch them, to look at them and to smell them, just because and despite the fact that they definitely do not belong to the category of a luxurious product, there are literally piles and piles of them absolutely everywhere you look.

But I liked their reaction because it just proved what I knew anyway, that the topic and the task will appeal to them. We looked at some of the leaves, called out their colours and checked if they had only one specific colours or a mix of many.

Then I showed the copy of Georgia O’Keeffe’s leaves on the screen and introduced her briefly and we had a quick voting regarding which leaves kids like more, the real ones or the painting (answer: real or real and painting).

The art

Previously, in my Georgia lesson, we used the old favourite – crayons and watercolours, a perfect combination for that piece and a perfect combination for the first Art lessons. The only problem was that, after the relocation, at the moment, I have absolutely no idea where my collection of kids aprons is and I really didn’t want to just use paints in class without any protection…all these beautiful t-shirts and sweaters that my kids are wearing…

After having spent a whole day with a face of Oscar the Grouch (I call it ‘angry brainstorming’), I finally found a solution! We were to draw the layout of the leaf with the crayon and we were to use the watercolours but to print, with cotton pads! One set of watercolours in the middle of the table, minimal amount of water (and potential spatter) and cotton pads that can be just disposed of. A box of wet tissued to clean the hands. I tried and tested the technique and yet, the cotton pads are perfect for printing and the only problem I encountered (the watercolours get dry pretty quickly and you need to have some supply of water) was solved when I found, in my own bathroom, a tiny bottle sprayer (that never got used for it was meant to be, helping me travel with a tiny amount of tonic or micellar water). Finding it literally made my day.

It was absolutely crucial that we do everything step by step, not only because of this particular activity but because this was our first lesson and I was expecting that the kids might not be ready for a structured approach to art. And I was not disappointed.

As soon as I showed them my picture (‘Look, we have the real leaves, we have the painting and now we are going to make our own…’), I got literally flooded with questions. Imagine, only 4 kids on the day, all of us around the big table, everyone can see everything and then within 1 minute, about a hundred questions like that: Are we going to do it? But can I get the paints? Where are the cotton buds? Will you help me? I don’t know how to draw the leaves? But can I do it the way I want or do we have to draw everything you drew? Can you help me? Where are the paints?

It is at the moments like these that you find out the power and the necessity of the verbs: ‘Stop’, ‘Wait’ and ‘Look’.

Here are the steps:

  • show the finished picture, call out the colours, draw the kids attention that each leaf has its own set of colours, lots of them, just like the real leaves and just like Georgia’s
  • demonstrate the whole process, from start to finish (the resources were ready in the middle of the table but for this stage, I put them away and I was bringing them one by one): step 1: draw the leaf / leaves with a crayon, the wax will help the paint within the lines and it will not seep or get distroyed in contact with water, step 2: put one box of watercolours in the middle of the table, on some scrap paper and spray it with water, step 3: fold a cotton pad, dip it in the paint and stamp, stamp, stamp on the leaf / leaf, step 4: put the used cotton pad into our mini-bin (aka a small bag or box, in the middle of the table), step 5: proceed with another colour
  • give out the paper, an A4 sheet of watercolour paper (or cardboard) and crayons, draw the leaves. With my youngest student we did the piglet follower (хрюшка – повтарюшка) aka I draw a line, you draw a line, I draw a squiggle, you draw a squiggle. Put the crayons away. Wait for everyone.
  • give out the cotton pads, 5 each, sprinkle the paints and start working. Stress that ‘we are working together’ (a gesture here:-)
  • at the end, call out all of the colours everyone has. We can use ‘I’ve got’ so that’s exactly how we did it.

About the lesson

First of all, I was really happy that I decided to introduce Art to my new group. Good decision! They loved it and, after a month of hard work, we really needed ‘something different’.

All of the students completed the task and I loved watching how they were approaching it. My youngest student needed help with the drawing but he did it and his leaves were beautiful. One of my older students, at the very beginning, announced that ‘my leaf is going to be unusual’ and that it was. It reminded me of some tropical flowers, of unusual shapes. The other students made their own artistic decisions and even included ‘The Titanic’. It must have been a very small ship or a very big leaf but they looked amazing.

I am really happy with the adaptation of the teachnique. It was monitorable, with a very little potential for a disaster, easy to execute, easy to clean and generating amazing pictures, too.

So yes, thank you, Georgia!

Happy teaching!

Your very first Kandinsky. Teaching English through Art

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Teacher’s Creation

The truth is…I just wanted to do Art.

This year is different and now, or for now, hopefully, I am not teaching Art. And it was only before I came up with this lesson, with Kandinsky, that I realised how much I miss it and, that, really, at heart, I am the Art teacher. As if to confirm, shortly after that, I got a message from one of my students from last year and it went ‘miss Anka, you’ve been my favourite Art teacher and I miss our classes’.

So this is how I get back – to writing here (after a few months’ break) and to Art in class. I don’t have any full time Art in English classes but I have lots of English classes and I will be trying to bring Art into them. Starting with Vasilyi Kandinsky.

The language

We are at the begining of our journey into English with my student and, so far, what we have at our disposal is some functional language, emotions and colours and that is basically what the lessons have been about. We practice a lot, we find colours around the room, we sing songs, we do some online colouring (in the mode of ‘you say, I click’) and we talk about it. But I really (really) wanted to include something practial and something creative. And this is when I remembered about the video from the 2nd edition of Playway to English (CUP, Puchta, Gerngross) and the storyline there: Max, the creature tries to make a picture but due to some mishaps he almost destroys it and gets very upset. Until he finds out that modern Art is basically non-figurative and that he created a masterpiece. I looked at his picture and I thought: Kandinsky!

The artist

With my student being 6, and with us studying online and still getting adjusted to the format of the lesson, I wanted to keep this part of the lesson short, just to include the bare minimum: introducing him by the name (there was a photo, too) and looking at ‘Composition number 8’ to call out some colours and patterns that we were going to use.

This stage can be extended, of course, it is a great piece for introducing and practising shapes, too and if your students are older, you can also include the music connections (apparently, this one got inspired by Debussy’s music, and there is another lesson that I taught based on that, here). We just went on to create.

Here is the original amazing piece.

The art

Before the lesson, I asked the student’s mum to prepare a piece of paper, a pencil and crayons for us and when the time came, we went through the list to check that everything was there (‘Have you got…?, with me showing my bit to the camera, and waiting for the student to show hers).

For this particular lesson, I chose seven different patterns that we would draw: a circle, a square, a triangle, a rectangle, a line, a zigzac and a wave. I drew them on my presentation and we looked for them in the painting. Then I told my student that we are going to draw three of each, with different colours and we started.

Each element was executed in the following manner:

  • the teacher calls out the pattern and demonstrates drawing to the camere on the demo sheet
  • the teacher chooses three markers / crayons, shows them to the camera and then draws on the actual piece of paper, i.e. a yellow circle, a green circle, a red circle, in the most random manner (seemingly, because, of course, all this time we are working on the composition:-)
  • the teacher asks ‘What about your colours? Show me three colours (pause) and draw three circles’
  • the student completes the task
  • the teacher describes her picture (I’ve got a yellow circile, a green circle, a red circle)
  • the student tries to describe hers in the same way
  • and we move on to the following item on the list.

It might seem that there is a lot of commentating here, on the part of the teacher but it is done on purpose. The aim of this task is to create something that the student will want to talk about and to model the language that we are hoping to produce. Without it, it would be just a lesson of drawing (which is amazing) but since it’s a language lesson, we (I passionately, obsessively and lovingly) strive for more language production. Always.

I prepared seven items to draw (times 3) but I was ready for the option of not including all of them if the student got tired or lost interest, especially that it was our first Art task in an online lesson and I was not quite sure how it might go. And Kandinsky, or any non-figurative painting, was perfect for that. On the other hand, if we had time, we could still add other elements such as stars, hearts, semi-circles, or shading. As it turned out – seven was just a perfect number for us and for that lesson.

I am really very happy with how it went. We managed to include all seven items, we went step by step and we produced a lot of language. She was quite involved in the process so there was no talking while drawing but, after each item was added, she showed the picture to the camera and told me all about it.

I loved the lesson (see: I miss Art in class!) and so did my student which I could see myself in class and which got confirmed after the lesson, in our chat with mum. I can’t show you her work but, as it often happens, it was much, much better than mine. You will just have to take my word for it this time.

So, if you are wondering, what kind of art to include in the beginning of the course for primary or pre-primary kids who speak very, very little English, Kandinsky is your man!

Happy teaching!

Materials May Vol. 2 Clay Portraits

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Last year, the month of May was one crazy ride. We made madalas, we made dreamcatchers, we used salt dough and it very messy and it was lots of fun. Naturally, May 2025 also became the Materials May.

We started with clay. And with portraits.

The language

Actually, the language was not the main priority this time. Just like in our materials lessons last year, the absolute leader in the lesson, the first place, the right of way, all of that was the material, the medium. The language was just something I picked up because we needed it for this particular lesson. This time it was the body parts, especially the parts of the face. We revised them, made up a new chant and played a bit with tell me about your person / monster using a set of pictures.

The artist

The artist of the day was not the most important stage, either, but I am very happy with the idea I had for this lesson and how it worked out. Instead of one particular artist, I prepared a whole collection of portraits for all of us to understand how diferent they can be. We looked at them, one by one, and tried to look at what the focus was: the face, the body, the place, the colours or the technique. I was hoping that it would help the children see many various styles in which they could execute their own portraits.

The art

The main idea for the creative part came from Princess Artypants – a face made of clay. I told the kids that they could choose to create a face, any face they wanted, their face or someone else’s, in a style of their choice.

I showed the kids a face I made before the lesson and I outlined the steps (1. clay (form, roll, shape) 2. draw (with sticks and plasticine knives), 3. paint (acrylic paints).

Before the lesson, I prepared the tables and all the resources and I was handing them out and picking them up as we went through the task. I was also making one more piece of mine to better illustrate the instructions.

In terms of the resources we used: a large sheet of paper, fitted with the scotch as the main workplace, a rolling pin to prepare our circles, clay (self-drying, ochra colour), sticks, chopsticks and small plastic knives, paintbrushes and wet tissues, acrylic paints in tubs (everyone got their personal blob of the chosen colours on their A3 piece of paper aka workplace), pieces of cardboard to transfer the faces onto and as their frames.

As can be seen in the photos, we created lots of different types of clay faces and, as usual, it was a joy to see how quickly everyone started to make their own decisions and to develop their own style. One of my students opted for creating the face of a cat, one made an absolutely beautiful abstract Pinocchio. One focused on the colours and one, completely out of the blue, asked for tinfoil because ‘I’ve got an idea, miss Anka!’

To be honest, the idea (for the dress aka the body made out of tinfoil) was so good that I wanted to make my own and this is how his ‘Mona Miss Anka’ was created and how my ‘Angel / Mermaid’ came to be, too.

I really liked the clay as the material because it is extremely flexible and user-friendly. It did require warming it up in the tub of hot water (I did it before the lesson, warmed it up and broke it up into blobs) but later on it was relatively easy to work with it. And it was easy to fix the mistakes in case they occured. We also did not have to wait for it to dry, we started to paint straight away.

It was definitely one of those lessons that finished with me, cleaning up the tables with a huge smile on my face. I loved it.

The pictures that were especially touching include the very basic Pinocchio. It was created by my youngest student and it was the first time this year that he prepared one piece and immediately asked for another piece of clay, to create more. I also love the coloured faced because it was created during a long process of collecting and combining different colours and shades. The outcome is the result of a lot of work and reflection. And, of course, the title piece here, that was a result of experimentation with tools and their opptions and the lovely print that came out of it.

I have already started to think about the adaptations and creating anything in clay, to use it with any EFL topic, fruit, food or animals. Body parts and faces, too, of course! Since it is so easy to create pictures with a stick, I was also thinking of a picture scene, a house, a Christmas tree or a dress. I am already looking forward to it!

Happy teaching!

Advertising April: Mayakovsky!

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The language

Because of our chosen piece for this day, I wanted to get the kids into the mode of thinking what they really like. For that reason, we revised the question ‘Do you like…?’ and different ways of answering the question (I like, I love, I don’t like, I really don’t like and I am not sure). The kids were interviewing each other using a set of mixed flashcards, with toys, sports, food and activities. We were also justifying our choices.

The artist

Our Artist of the Day in the third week of April was Vladimir Mayakovsky, a poet. We introduced him (powerpoint here) and looked at a few of his works, trying to locate the product advertised. I also showed the kids our main source of inspiration, the poster with Lilia Bryk, Mayakovsky’s muse and we talked a bit about the style and the use of colour and shapes.

The art

Our task was to prepare an advertising poster in the style of Mayakovsky, our own version of it. This time I prepared one model before the lesson, promoting ‘Create’ and I planned to prepare another one with kids during the lesson. Initially, I wanted to use coloured paper and markers, in a collage layered on the photo of Lilia. That is what I did. My students, however, decided that they had a different approach to the task and they opted for a simple drawing. Only then did I realise that, yet, that could have been a great approach, too and a set of good markers and a black and white photo perfectly lend themselves to the task.

We set to work. During the lesson with the older students, I only had two kids. The task was relatively easy, made even easier with the technique that the children suggested (and to be honest, I think that was their main reason – it was a long, very hot day and they wanted to invest as little of their time as possible) and it might be a perfect choice for the older group.

My approach, the collage, was very enjoyable, too and, personally, I had lots of fun preparing my two pictures and now I am happy because I have two cool pictures to put on the walls.

On Monday, I am going to teach this lesson again, this time with the younger group. I am hoping we are going to enjoy it, too!

Happy teaching!

Advertising April: Great Artists at work. Andy Warhol

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The language

This time, I decided to let the topic and the language lead the way in all the lessons this month. On the one hand, it has already proved to be a great way of revising the structures we know (I like, Do you like, adjectives) and, even more importantly, it will help us aling what we know beautifully with our artists and their ideas.

Andy Warhol and the idea for the lesson (that I owe to my friend, just like this whole idea for the series that was born during a conversation) was that instead of focusing on Andy, we focus on food and creating our amazing combinations of it. No suprise then, that the lesson had to include the amazing ‘Broccoli Ice-cream’ from Super Simple Songs and our own version of it, too, which we created with a set of flashcards. The kids were taking turn to pick out two flashcards randomly from the pile and sing a new version of the story (‘Do you like bananas? Do you like sandwiches? Do you like banana sandwiches?’). And the rest of us reacted.

The artist

‘Miss Anka! It’s him!’ It is precisely when the Art teacher smiles, upon hearing a comment like that! The kids were super excited to see Andy again because most of them have already met him, either in our Chebourashka lessons and our Christmas tree lessons or both.

This time, we invited Andy again, to introduce him as an artist and as a copywriter and the art director, too. As usual, I used a presentation (this one here) to show his advertising portfolio and the kids were calling out the products advertised.

We also looked at all the soup cans, read the flavours and chose our favourite one.

The Magic Soup

The art

I showed the children the template of the Campbell soup can (I got mine from Fine Art Coloring Pages Archives · Art Projects for Kids, Thank you!) and explained that everyone can create their own. We made a list of all the decisions to make: flavour, name, logo, colours. This time I did not prepare my own model (I did not have a template available before the lesson, a rookie mistake) but I decided that this time we will have a chance to brainstorm together and that it might also be a source of inspiration for my students. It also so happened that I had my older / smaller group first so I prepared my soup cans with them and when I already ran the second lesson, with my younger / bigger group, I had lots to show to inspire them and it all worked out just fine.

I was really happy because all the kids could accomplish this task and we had a lot of different types of soup posters and our noticeboard looks like a print by Andy.

The Zombie Version of Campbell’s

All the kids worked very well, also the young ones and most of them had a very clear idea of what they wanted to get from the very beginning. The selection of colours took a bit longer but it was also beautiful to see how they were all coming together.

Not to mention that I love all the final products and, again, I could not but keep repeating ‘Oh, that is a lovely idea!’ My students treasured their creations, too! It was one of those lessons when I had to beg to at least get the permission to photograph the posters because so many of my students just snatched their works to take them home as soon as possible. At least I have the photos!

I was planning to ask the kids to make a list of all the ingredients but, somehow, it did not always work out. Next time, I will have to ask the kids to start with the writing, before we get to create properly.

But look at that! We’ve got some magic soup, some tomato soup, some garlic soup, some sun soup, some octopus soup as well as some darkness soup and some zombie soup. I am happy. I hope that Andy would be happy, too! Just look at all these colours!

One of my creations
The Darkness Soup
The Garlic Soup

Happy teaching!

Just a little bit of Art (in your English classroom)…Erik Bulatov once more!

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This time, I did not teach my regular Art lesson. Last Thursday, in the middle of a regular unit but at the end of the term, with all my kids already tired and looking forward to holidays and with the first properly spring days outside of our windows, I decided to let our hair down and engage into some creative activity as part of our regular English lesson. Yay to great ideas!

The language

This time round Erik Bulatov joined us in our regular English lessons. At the moment, we are in a fanstastic unit ‘Going places’ (Global English, CUP) and we have already revised the transport, learnt some less traditional transport, we did our Big Transport Tournament (choosing the best one, in qualifiers, quarter-, semi- and finals which was basically a lot of speaking) and now we are comparing the transport (‘Are they similar or different?’). We have also worked on the verb ‘to get’ and all its meanings (aka ‘The best verb in the world’).

And then I needed something lighter, more fun and more creative for the last lesson of the term.

The artist

I taught this lesson before, twice, in different ways (the previous posts can be found here and here). I reused the presentation I prepared before even though some of the students have taken part in my Art Explorers lessons already and it worked well.

We talked a little bit about the meaning of words and the meaning of pictures and I introduced the Artist of the Day. We looked at his paintings and the meaning and how Bulatov tried to show his ideas through words and through images.

I have also showed the kids again the images in Portuguese I created for the previous lesson (in the posts mentioned before).

The art

I showed the students the template I prepared, just a simple word TRAVEL in block capital letters and together we brainstormed their own associations with the word. Afterwards, I explained that their task will be to illustrate the word in such a way so as to show the word speak: as a word and as a visual. And that all ideas are good ideas. I gave out the pencils and the markers and they got to work. They were working and I was just supervising and helping with the content as we had to do some research to look for images or for information.

Afterwards we had a short presentation for everyone to see all the ideas (‘This is my poster. I’ve got…because…and…’) and when all of them were done, we also had a feedback session. I wanted to praise everyone together, as a group, apart from all of those individual praises I gave while monitoring and I also wanted to highlight that we had lots and lots of different ideas and that they were all precious. One of the students suggested choosing the best poster but I objected. I explained that all of the posters were great and so different that it is impossible to choose one, the best, they are all great.

Apart from that I also wanted to ask the students for their feedback and whether it was easy or difficult to use the words and images in such a way. This was also a precious part of the lesson.

It is also important to mention that this lesson, untraditionally, was longer as it took more than 1 academic hour that we normally spend on Art in our Art Explorers. I could do it because we had a double English on that day and it was absolutely necessary as only a few of my students are the regular creators and I did notice that these did have a different time management mode and ideas generation mode. The others needed more time to make decisions, to generate ideas and to execute them. Which is something to bear in mind. If it hadn’t been the last day before the term break, we would have created in one lesson and carried out the presentation + feedback on the following day.

The teacher watches and ponders…

Oh, this was one wonderful lesson!

I was really really curious how my regular class would react to the Art content as out of all the students only three or four attend the Art Explorers regularly, all the other ones do not have the chance to stay for the afterschool classes and only some of them attend our term break classes when these take place.

But it went well…I mean, it is a good lesson and, for me as a teacher, it has been tried and tested so I was confident and I knew that great things might come out of it. But the kids took well to it. They were curious about the artist and his paintings, especially that they were in Russian and they were interested and invested in answering the questions I asked.

The brainstorming session, something that we rarely do in the Art Explorers, also helped because it helped the (potentially) less creative students generate ideas or, at least, to see that there is a range of interpretations to choose from. To be honest, some of the kids really surprised me with their ideas and their interpretations as they were fresh and spot-on.

The presentation was a great idea, and again, something we rarely do, because only in our classes we have more time and a relatively even levels of English for everyone to produce and to understand but it was also worth it. I need to think of how to smuggle elements of it into our Art Explorers classes.

My favourite part, however, apart from the creation, was the feedback and all of the comments the kids made. The general consensus was that sometimes it was easy and sometimes it was not to come up with the ideas and to deal with their execution. I really loved the fact that there was such a variety of the interpretations and they the kids had a chance to see everyone else’s angle, too, further broadening their horizons. Some of my favourite ones were the following: travel represented by the sights from around the world, travel represented by things that we need to travel, travel represented by the flags of the countries that the artist likes, travel represented by the flags of the countries that start with the letters t, r, a, v, e and l, travel represented by the travel associations that look like the letters of the word or, even, travel represented by the potential problems which you might encounter while travelling…

The most beautiful line and the one that I will finish this post with was a question from one of my students, one of those cool one, the older ones, the ones who do not attend the regular art classes. It went like that:

‘Are we going to do it again?’

Happy teaching!

Movement March! Nature (aka Turner and waves!!!)

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The language

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 and the actions in them. 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).

You can find the presentation we used here.

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 movement
The mountains
The cat under the sky
The sea and the sky
Art at 6
Colours, colours, colours!
A magnificent storm!

Happy teaching!

Movement March. Humans!

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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…

Here you can find the link to my presentation.

The art

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…

Happy teaching!

The Aztecs, fabrics and print! Teaching English through Art!

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The langauge

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.

We also looked at a few printing plaques and outlined what ‘a pattern‘ is.

The art

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…

P.S. My favourite things: the Art Aftermath!

Happy teaching!

Hearts and Jean-Michel Basquiat

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The language

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 only
Only 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…

Same artist, two pieces

Happy teaching!