#teachingenglishthroughart

Tiny pictures. Alternative April #4

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‘Anka with fireworks’, my name card by one of my artists

Let’s go alternative in April!

We did! In every possible way.

The size

This was the final lesson in our beautiful and exciting series of the Alternative April series. I really wanted to experiment with the size of the paper. Initially, I wanted us to paint something really big and then something really small in order to really experience the difference first hand. However, based on how the lesson with the older kids was going (in one word: too slow), I changed that for the lesson with the younger kids and opted for the A7 only. We were working well but the creative process, the decisions and the composition, takes time and I didn’t want to rush us and in the second lesson I decided to keep things simple: just the little picture.

The materials

Initially, I had the wild idea of letting the kids choose the medium that they want to work with. It is not a bad idea but, I will be honest, the preparations for its implementation need to be more detailed and organised in a slightly different way to what I did. Next time I will and next time will be better.

In the end, my older students went for the simplest and the most basic, pencils and black markers, and with my younger group I chose for all of us and we worked with watercolours.

The Zebra Heart. Print.

The artist of the day…

didn’t come. The first reason for that was that I did not want to choose one and I felt conflicted about it. On the one hand, I really wanted to stick to the framework that I created for our course and we had always had at least one Master to inspire us. On the other hand, the topic that I chose for the lesson, namely ‘Spring’, is such an open-ended and all-embracing topic, that looking for the one was a task doomed to a failure. Plus, I knew that the format would be enough of a challenge and I wanted to give the children the comfort of working with it. I was worried that I would be limiting them too much, with the artist, the format, the topic and the resource. I decided against it. We sang the song, said hello, brainstormed all the associations with the word ‘spring’ and looked very briefly at a selection of paintings showing spring, without singling anyone out.

And then sat down to work.

How it all went

I know that I sound like a broken record when I say it but I will do it again: This was one of my favourite lessons ever and the reason for that is that, again, we set off on an amazing, 45-minute creative journey.

  • We all had to be very careful with choosing the topic for our work. The A7 format is a very small one and you have to take into account how small certain elements are and how much effort it would take to execute them.
  • All kids had three pieces of the A7 paper, attached to the table with the painter’s scotch (necessary!) so they could experiment with different approaches and they really did. The first pictures were usually the most cautious ones, the easiest ones and the least experimentative. However, since there were more pieces available, I could see how much braver and more confident they became in their following steps. Even today, while looking at the pictures, I can tell the order in which they were painted by particular kids. And it is amazing. For example, the triptych in red by Egorka, who started with a scene from Mars, all in red, then moved on to a superhero’s portrait and finished with what he called ‘a zebra heart’, in black and red that ended up being a print. Why? Because he noticed that the paper towels we had on the tables had an interesting pattern and he decided to experiment. Precious.
  • Three of my students painted only one picture but it is because they decided to make it more detailed and, naturally, these required more time, effort and attention. The other children went for a triptych and, one way or another, these three were connected by a common theme.
  • One of those three is the first in the world case of the Snail Art in which the artist traces the slime trail left on paper by her pet snail. Which, of course, was her own idea. No snails were harm in the production of this piece.
  • It turned out that this kind of art is a perfect exercise for improving focus and concentration. It worked like magic. For that reason it might be an interesting activity to improve in the general English classes, for example. I can easily picture it in our ESL / EFL courses, especially that the topic can be easily adapted to match the curriculum and it does not eat up a large part of your lesson. And if you don’t want to get into the whole watercolour mess, the same can be done with markers or coloured pencils.
  • For the time ever, I had not painted my picture before the lesson to show the kids. I wanted to experience the change of focus myself and I told them about it. This was also something that we did for the first time ever.
  • Having three pieces of paper came in handy with one more thing. As soon as I announced the topic of our lesson, the same question was asked, almost immediately. ‘Can we paint something we want?’ I mean, I always say yes in the end and inside of me there is one happy teacher celebrating the independence and the artistic freedom that my little kids want to exercise. But we did negotiate a tiny little bit, too and, in the end, they agreed that since we have three bits of paper, a lot can be done. Something that the teacher suggests, something that we really, really want to do…

It is beyond fascinating how much impact the A7 format had on our art, composition and work. Five stars, highly recommended. I hope you enjoy visiting our little gallery in this post.

The sun
The sky
The snail letters
The Snail Art

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.

When Picasso came to school. Alternative April #3

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The language

This was to be our final lesson in the topic of body parts and, once more, after singing the hello and going over ‘How do you feel today?’, we went for our spinner game. I was really worried that we would not have enough time for anything else as I wanted not only introduce a new artist but also a new tool.

The artist

This was the second time we invited Pablo Picasso to our lesson. And the kids remembered! They were a little bit surprised because they met him as a one-line artist with the amazing animals (post here) and, at least some of them, a little bit taken aback by the sheer contrast between the two. I showed them a few portraits and we highlighted the main pointers of cubism (which we also talked about before). We also tried to find all the figures (shapes) in the portraits.

The art

This was a day when we would be experimenting with a new took – oil pastels and that is why I decided to demonstrated some of the basic blending techniques. You can find the ideas in the videos here and here.

Afterwards I demonstrated the double portrait that I made while getting ready for the lesson and we talked about its main features (shapes and colours). I also showed them the simplest way for achieving the Picasso effect by drawing one more face: a shape for the face, divided into halves, smile (ideally misshapen, mismatching halves) and shapes for eyes, nose and hair.The next step went according to the plan one of my students wrote on the board once: ‘3. Miss Anka Paint, 4. We paint’. We started to work.

  • The kids chose different ways of working with the oil pastels. Some combined them with pencil, some with markers and for some they were just a crayons replacement. But we also had a few properly experimenting with the new tool.
  • Some of my students refused to see the world through Picasso’s eyes. They really didn’t like his approach and asked if it is possible to draw their friends the way they want. It was more common in the older group, the younger kids just went for it.
  • Some of the students also asked if they can draw ‘something they choose’, not faces and I also said yes. Obviously, Kolya had his own idea for the interpretation of the topic and for cubism and I am happy I did not object. The house of spades, hearts, dimonds and cards is just beautiful. ‘One house in the city’, as he called it.
  • Some of them loved it, though, and the best piece of evidence is that they snatched the paintings as soon as possible, to take them home. I barely managed to take my photographs.
  • We also had one character sitting for a portrait, my new portrait and a few other precious creations.
  • The Star Girl that you can see below is a joint effort between me and one of my youngest student who decided to help me with the colour. I decided to save it here not only because I am happy with my design but mostly because it shows how the kid’s creativity develops as they go through the task. I drew the face and started to colour it, in the most boring of ways but soon I was joined by my student who took over and decisively so. It was fascinating to see how many different ways of colouring, blending, shading and working with oil pastels he came up with during that task. The final product – below.
  • Watching the kids work was a real pleasure. One of my students was working on something hard that, from afar, looked like her trying to create one big, colourful, many-layered blob of pastel that some, less patient, might label as ‘trying to destroy all my pastels in five minutes’ but the final product, the girl with a horse, proved me wrong. Experimentation was just experimentation, and one of the many steps towards beauty.

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.

‘The dot that went for a walk’ and Shantell Martin. Art Explorers

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‘Sleepy House’

The language

We continue the topic of body parts. It might not be the first topic that comes to mind when you think about the alternative art or our artist of the week but I body vocabulary is exactly what we need now. This is why we continue practising body parts in songs and in our favourite game with the body action verbs that I described before here. All in all, the language was not our main focus in this lesson and only one of the sub-plots. But it will come in handy in the following month when we are going to concentrate on the human body in art.

‘Oooooo’ (A confused one)

The artist

I have decided that this month will be our Alternative April. I would like to take the Monochrome March a little bit further and after experimenting with the colour, we are going to play with the formats and approaches and this was our first lesson in the series.

Shantell Martin is the artist that I have found only recently because she popped up on my social media but it feels like I have known her for ages. I might have. After all, her prints and patterns are everywhere and it is quite likely that I saw her on t-shirts or walls. Now I got to put a name and a face to it.

I was very curious how my students would react to her and they did not disappoint. They were curious, they looked at all the works with interest trying to interpret them and to find the words (a bonus task for reading in English!) and they really liked the fact that she is so young and that she is still alive and active. I think it is a signal for me to try to include more contemporary artists that we can connect with on one more level.

We looked at a variety of her works and talked about them a little bit, about these that we liked or really liked. We looked at different formats and modes she creates in and about her many interests that have an impact on the visual art.

However, our lessons last week had one more guest who made a cameo appearance and that was Paul Klee since he was the author of one of my favourite art quotes, namely, ‘A line is a dot that went for a walk’. I brought this up, together with the Bird and the Cat (that we re-created as a stained glass and that still makes our windows prettier). I also put a on display a lot of different types of lines as a source of inspiration.

‘A cat’

The art

Last week we worked on the A4 paper because I wanted to make sure that children have enough time to fill in the entire page. We also got a new tool – a black permanent marker, with two ends, a thick and a thin one for better results. The children were told to choose their own subject, their own types of lines and that they could combine words and lines, too.

As usual, I also showed the children how I experimented with Shantell’s style as I brought three small pieces of mine. Afterwards, we got down to work.

I know that it is easy for my readers to perhaps get an idea that I get excited for no reason or that I make everything look picture perfect for every post. I don’t. I get excited because my kids are so responsive and every lesson is a hit. It is not for everyone in the same way, it is not for everyone to the same extent but I sew and I reap.

The most interesting thing is that the basic materials did not hinder my students’ creativity. We only had the black pen and the white paper but everyone got very creative and some of my students managed to create a few different pieces. We worked on ours, moved around the room a bit to look at what other students created and once something was ready, we would give it a title. You can see the amazing pieces all around the post here. The lesson took place about a while ago but only now could I take photos of everything. I am revisiting this lesson after three weeks, I am looking at their pieces and, again, I am amazed and I am proud.

Shantell’s lesson was one of those days when I ‘lose’ most of the artwork. Not because I am forgetful or clumsy but because my students behave like real artists and they find it hard to part with their precious creations. It is easy to spot when it is about to happen because they carry them around everywhere and then, when I ask ‘Can I put it on display?’, the answer is short and simple: ‘No!’. On a good day I get to photograph what they have created and I am head over heels that I can do that, at least.

What I like about this particular artist and activity is that it could be easily adapted to any of the topics in a regular EFL kids lessons and now I have a lot of evidence to prove that from my students since they created their pieces on the topic of emotions, places in the city, fairy tales, animals and transport. And the materials are very easy to get)))

Here are some pieces created by my students:

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!

Yves Klein and we don’t want one colour!

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The language

Bearing in mind the artist and his approach to painting, I decided to choose the body as the focus for this lesson (and probably for the few lessons to come, too, although this still needs to be confirmed). For that reason, we have introduced and revised the body parts using the wordwall cards and then we played one of my favourite movement games: Shake your nose! It can be played with a dice and a list of six verbs or with an online spinner. The teacher needs to introduce and demonstrate the verbs. Afterwards, they spin the wheel, read the verb and choose the body part to perform the action. Naturally, the kids take over as soon as they are ready and ask the whole class to perform the silly actions: shake your nose, clap your feet, move your mouth and what not. Of course, everyone’s favourite is ‘freeze’:-)

‘Rabbit’

The artist

I have found Yves Klein only recently, while looking for something else entirely, and when I did, I was surprised, taken aback and mesmerized, all at the same time. Mesmerized – because he is just amazing, surprised – because I had never heard of him and taken aback – because Yves could be (or could have been) the inspiration for one of my favourite sci-fi characters from Alistair Reynolds’ Zima Blue. And I did NOT know that…

Anyway, Yves was introduced with this one photograph because it encapsulate everything we need to know about him, his favourite method and his favourite colour, all at once. We looked at a few examples of what Yves Klein created and we also talked about anthropometry but, because of the age of my students, we limited that to ‘painting with different body parts’ and ‘painting with things’. We did not look at any of the performances. That was enough to spark an interest and they kept asking questions, trying to imagine what the process would look like.

The kids got really interested in the blue rectangle and started to compare it with Malevich’s black square (I taught them well). Sasha, who wildly fights the idea of copying (which I am trying to convince her to think of as ‘inspiration’) asked: ‘Who was first, this Klein or Malevich?’. ‘Malevich’, I said. She rolled her eyes and commented ‘Plagiarism!’…

10 Things to Know about Yves Klein – Artsper Magazine
10 Things to Know about Yves Klein – Artsper Magazine

The art

Initially, the task looked very simple: try to become Yves, for one lesson and to prepare a monochrome picture, using only hands and fingers but all that started to change in the classroom, because I decided to read the room and adjust.

The classroom set-up needed a small adjustment in order to faciliate work. Our tables stand in one big U, with a lot of room in the centre. I brought an IKEA kids table, covered it with paper and decided that that would be our pallete, with four sections for the colours and for more room for mixing the colours. The kids were told to move withing the U, going from the round table to their work stations. This worked very well. We could use one set of paints, everyone was on the move and since the table was in the centre, the kids pretty much avoided bumping into each other and invading each other’s space. We had tissues on the ready but they were also allowed to go out to the nearby bathroom to wash the hands when necessary. We used the aprons to protect the clothes.

‘Different colours’

The younger kids were working only with their hands because it was only later that I bought a set of kiddies sponge rollers and stamps. I brought them to my Wednesday lesson, for the older students and these had a much wider scope of an opportunity to become Yves for a day, who also used a variety of rollers in his work.

One thing that I did not take into consideration (silly teacher!) was the fact that a new material in the classroom will have its own implications. First of all, my students really got excited about trying out what can be done with finger paints and with rollers and stamps. It is perfectly natural, you get a new toy, you want to play with it and see what it can do. Showing a new tool and setting boundaries in the way it is used is just unreasonable! That’s what I learnt last week.

‘Fox’

The other, related, thing is that I found sets of finger paints of only four colours, they had amazing shades. Blue was the most beautiful baby blue, green was more emerald than just simple green and the red one was something between ruby and light brick and they all looked very tempting. When I took the colours, a few students asked the same question, both in the younger and the older group: ‘Do we have to use only one colour?’ and they were so sad about it, that I really did not have the guts in me to go monochrome. I said that monochrome was recommended but that they could use whatever they wanted. The funny thing is that the kids did like the shade of the Klein’s blue and the whole approach to painting but, when it came to their own creations, they still wanted to be able to use all of them.

The lesson was a success (unless you want to consider the abandoning of the monochrome as a distaster, which I don’t). The kids got really involved into their interaction with the new tool and the new technique and it was great to see how they were experimenting and making their decisions as regards the task interpretation.

‘Without a title’

In the younger group, the students decided to ‘simply’ paint using fingers and hands, some used prints trying to compose a painting out of them. Many of my kids focused on experimenting with mixing the colours and interpreting the outcomes. The older students were more decisive regarding the topic of their paintings, once again depicting their favourite theme, a goose, a rabbit and a fox, in a new way. In both groups, many students created more than one picture because once we started, the ideas came flowing (here you will find another post, when we played with the younger group with all the stamps).

I used the finger paints but in a more limited capacity, only to write letters or to use dots, this was the first, fully-fledged lesson and I have to say – I loved the material. Not only does it wash easily, it is is very liquidy and flowing so it can be used in many ways. It is also perfect for printing as it dries very quickly and it can be combined with drawings or stickers and collage within the same lesson. Lots of potential there and we will definitely be coming back.

‘Goose’

There is a little post scriptum to this post here! Don’t forget to check it out!

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!

Apples times 2. Cubism and pop-art. Teaching English through Art

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The language

The language input was very simple and limited to singing a few vegetable and fruit songs and guessing the fruit and vegetables from stencils. I wanted to use this activity as an introduction and preparation for recognising fruit and vegetables in paintings by Picasso and Warhol.

The artists

These lessons happened together, in a way. We were in our holiday week and we were on a slightly different schedule so Picasso and his still-lifes in the styles of cubism as well as Andy Warhol’s strawberries were introduced on two different days but in a combination with each other. The other thing that joined them was the special focus that was given specifically to the style and the technique because we would aim at creating something similar, or, using a similar approach. We looked at a few examples of the paintings and tried to recognise fruit and vegetables and different objects in them.

The art

The directions for the cubist paintings were pretty simple. I asked the kids to prepare a composition of three fruit or vegetables and to draw them in pencil and then in crayons. Afterwards, according to the manual I found on wiki how, we used a ruler to add the lines. The next step was colouring in with the use of watercolours.

The pop-art task was even simpler – all the kids received an A4 piece of paper, divided into 4 with the painters scotch and our task was to choose one fruit to draw four times and to think of a colour composition, for each of the quarters and for the set as a whole.

In both cases I had students who opted for markers, instead of watercolours and the results are still interesting and in both cases we started with showing my students the little homework paintings that I did to test them and to demonstrate something to my kids.

These were two precious lessons and I will definitely use the these ideas again, as a part of other lessons. The cubism lesson gave us a chance to work on the colour, its shades and variations and how they can work together to make a picture. The pop-art lesson was amazing as regards the colour composition as the kids were working on combining two pieces together, the fruit and the background AND, at the same time, combining the four elements of our panel. I was watching the kids closely (and talking to some of them, too) and it was a fascinating experience to see how they were making their decisions, sometimes changing the direction a few times, especially with the final element of the panel.

Happy teaching!

Teaching Out of the Box. Teaching English through Art

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Natalia Goncharova-inspired peacock

This article was published in the Modern English Teacher in the March / April issue of 2023 and it is one of my favourite pieces ever committed which summarises my (almost) two years in the classroom as a teacher of English and Art. I have included there all the main considerations and as many as ten different ideas for the classroom. (Although it has taken me a whole year to add it to the blog (rolling the eyes).

I am very proud of it and if you are not a MET member and have no access to the article, I can only recommend all the other lesson ideas that I have shared here, on the blog. You can find them here.

Happy teaching!

Ilya Mashkov and our first still-life. Teaching English through Art

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Still life ingredients

The language

February is our month of food and fruit and this is what we focus on in the language part of the lesson. With my younger group we listened to a great song from the Singing Walrus and we used a set of wordwall cards to guess the fruit and vegetables from the stencils. We did some drilling, too and we talked about whether we like them or not.

The older students needed a more advanced activity and for that I used my magic bag which, indeed, on the day was full of fruit and veg that I brought for the still-life installation. Kids put their hands into the bag and tried to describe the object they were holding using basic adjectives (big / small, hard / soft, smooth / rough, light / heavy). Despite the fact that some of the kids were as old as ten, they all did enjoy it. We also talked about the fruit and vegetables we like and don’t like.

Ilya Mashkov, Pumpkin (1914)

The artist

Our artist of the day was my still-life here, Ilya Mashkov. I have used his painting in my Art classes before and it was only natural that this time I would want to take it up to another level. I did and I am quite happy how it went.

First of all, we introduced the artist himself and his famous (in my opinion) painting ‘Pumpkin’. We defined what a still life is (‘a painting of things’) and we looked at a few chosen paintings by Mashkov. I put together a set of questions, inspired and adapted from the material online Essential Questions to ask about each still life photographs. My final, go-to set for this topic includes: What colour is it? What objects can you see? What shapes can you see? What is the biggest shape? What is the smallest shape? Is it light? Is it dark? Is it smooth? Is it light?, although in the lessons this week we have gone through only a few of them.

In order to prepare for our creative activity I prepared a special slide for ‘Pumpkin’ made entirely of shapes, one to represent every fruit and every vegetable. I was revealing them one by one and the task for the kids was to call out the object that they represent. In the end, I showed them the real painting and we checked our answers. I was a fun activity and it helped them the kids the basics of the composition of the painting and to prepare them for drawing.

The art

We started with putting together our installations and while I was the one responsible for arranging the items for the younger kids, my older group just took over the bag, the table and all the elements. And, it has to be said, not all the fruit made it to the table. Avocado and aubergine were not deemed worthy of our set. I accepted.

We outline the main stages of the lesson: 1. sketching with a pencil, 2. tracing the lines with crayons (one colour or a set of colours) and 3. colouring in with watercolours. I also showed my students the homework that I did before the lesson: a small still-life I painted at home and a photo of it, for comparison.

Since it was our first lesson with a still-life I did not want to invade too much and to direct the kids for example by guiding them in which order to draw the fruit. I wanted to let them try to face the task on their own and, also, to see what they can do. I was preparing my own copy and moving around, handing in the resources for each step (which also help with staging) and admiring what I was looking at. The only thing that I said to encourage them was something along the lines of ‘Don’t be scared, trust your hand. This is our first still-life. Let’s see how it goes’.

And guess what? It was beyond amazing. Some of my students are already very confident as regards drawing and they have a good eye for detail so I expected some good work but still they managed to surprise me, especially the little ones. They approached the task with curiosity, without fear and they were just working diligently on their paintings.

The only question left to answer is: What are we painting next?

Happy teaching!

Apples and an average Art lesson that sent me directly cloud number 9.

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The apples? The apples!

‘What sometimes happens is that an artist, a real and creative person, gets what we call ‘a comission’: someone orders a special piece to be created and the artist agrees although, maybe, they did not really have that in mind. That is exactly what we are going to do today.’

This is how the lesson started. I delivered this little speech and my students were looking at me, puzzled. Apples (thanks to Isaac Newton) are some kind of a symbol of my school and I was asked to prepare some school decorations apple-related. To be perfectly honest, that had nothing to do with anything that I had in mind for February but since that was comissioned I decided to accept the challenge, to look for something and to change the idea for the month to food in art, moving ‘flowers’ to March. Which, actually, might not be such a bad idea altogether, for when we are a bit closer to the real spring. Fine.

Much to my surprise, it turned out that apples are very much present in Art and it is possible to find enough pieces from different centuries, including such gems as Magritte, Cezanne or Raphael and more contemporary pieces from Kusama or the random literal apple carvings. Apple is a symbol and it is a brand, too and we had fun looking at them and talking about them, both with my younger and older group.

The craft

What was comissioned was some kind of a set of apples to put around the school, made of clay or paper mache or plasticine, but I have given myself a permission to interpret it my way, to create a 2D apple garland inspired by these two finds here and here. We used cardboard for the basis and coloured paper for the front and glue, scissors and crayons. The craft is easy and the base of the apple can be a square or a circle, even if it is not very expertly cut out by the students. The little strips can be glued in a few different ways and they are little hands-friendly, too. Kids can use the strips of one colour or they mix them and everyone can make as many as possible, maybe only one, maybe a few, giving us an even longer garland. And, unlike in the case of the Pollock’s lessons, there is a lot less preparation and cleaning. The teacher is relieved to be taking this kind of a time out.

The lesson went smoothly and now we have two garlands hanging over the arches in the main hall of the school, for everyone to admire. It is an easy task and if you need apples or oranges or any other fruit – here is an idea for you.

The lesson was ‘meh’ but I loved it

It was just an OK lesson. ‘Meh’, I’d say if you asked me if I liked it. I’d shrug my shoulders.

Yes, we prepared the garlands, more or less according to the creative brief, we now have something to put up on the wall and, really, it is a pretty garland, it looks good, especially with the multi-colour apples. My kids worked well, everyone made 4 or 5 apples, getting better as they went along and some students even chose to make one for themselves to take home (always a good sign!).

But we were not impressed. I was not and nor were my students. It really did feel like working on a commission that you just cannot say no to. Everyone was involved but the Muses did not enter the room last week. No one was inspired, no one got excited about their task, no one was calling ‘Miss Anka, miss Anka! Look! What do you think?’ from all corners of the classroom…’Meh’.

And yet I loved it. Even though my kids went ‘Meh’, both the younger ones and the older ones.

Why?

This lesson was a fantastic piece of evidence to prove how much we have developed and how much progress we have made since September. Whatever we were five months ago, we are not that anymore. We are artists now.

We have had a chance to work with a variety of techniques (spatter, print, ironed crayons, watercolours, stained glass paints, acrylic paints, guache, markers, crayons, collage, books and surprises) and we have imagined being in the Shoes of the Great (Warhol, Goncharova, Kandinsky, Picasso, Kusama, van Gogh, Malevich, Levitan and Pollock). Could a simple paper apple be of any challenge or interest to us? Debatable.

There was no challenge in the technique itself (because it was easy), there was no suprise of creation (because it is an apple) and there was no inspiration from the Artist of the Day (because there were too many and because we could not really interact with them).

My kids politely did what I asked them to do but there was no spark. They are already much older and more advanced. They need something else now. The teacher has had an OK lesson but the teacher is OVER THE MOON!

Happy teaching!