Art Class: Where are you from? (Part II)

Phew! The children ended their term one task with a gallery walk (in circles). Many opportunities for making decisions are provided to allow them to build their confidence. For example, I will usually go through a set of instructions before their independent work and that requires active listening. So, in the event that they'd forgotten after I've given my instructions, they could ask a trainee teacher. The children made choices on their line drawings, selection of art supplies, their seating area or who they would like to sit with on that day. Classroom management includes scissors safety and their movement in the art room. These are seemingly simple tasks to an adult but they require a substantial amount of time to complete. Especially so when the students were writing their artist statements and needed spelling words.

Art Class: Emotions

When people say that you have to know your students as a teacher, it's really not just about understanding their ability and skills in executing the artwork. Often, it's also about understanding the emotional aspect. Dr Tim Elmore, author of Generation iY: Our last chance to save their future, wrote that "most young people are advanced biologically and emotionally backward". In other words, their emotional maturity is not as advanced as their biological, cognitive and social aspects. In 2003, MOE introduced social and emotional learning (SEL) into schools to improve the current status of students' social skills. I've met many children who are so advance in their academics but they struggle to self-regulate their behaviour. On the other end of the spectrum, I have children who are so uncertain of themselves that they tried to seek my approval at every stage of their artmaking process. Thus, I like to incorporate discussions about human's emotional responses such as anger and fear of failures. 

In this unit, we discussed human emotions through Pablo Piccaso's The Weeping Woman (1937) and Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893). Conversations revolved the artist's chosen palette and non-verbal language of humans and animals. We started with blind contour drawing and the children worked in pairs to observe each other. The drawer poked their pencil through a paper plate to prevent them from looking at their drawings. They were encouraged to do drawings of their friend's front view, side profile and a freestyle. Next, they do individual drawings of a self-portrait by looking in the mirror each. 

Art Class: Self Portraits

The children read a story It's Ok To Be Different by Todd Parr. It's a book packed with wit and delivered with sensitivity. We discussed artists' self-portrait from Georgette Chen, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Piccaso and Frida Kahlo. These paintings offer varying styles, composition and personal stories. I usually choose other artwork from another class when doing class critique for the first time so that the children will not be self-conscious. Then I would explain that if their work was chosen for class critique in the future, they should listen to everyone but not necessarily follow their friends' suggestions. I numbered the artworks on the whiteboard to allow pupils to participate in the class critiques.  

Art Class: Possibilities With Papers [Part II]

The children read a poem, Larry the Line, written by Cassie Stephens and we look at art vocabulary related to lines such as horizontal, vertical, diagonal, curves and straight. They were encouraged to manipulate the given pipe cleaners named Larry and incorporate it into their artwork. 

At this point, I would have enough time to assess the children's readiness of using scissors in their next project. The children took a break from cutting and pasting and we learnt simple colour theory by making their own colour wheel and blending the oil pastels. We also revisited the book Mouse Paint that they have read last year.

Colour Wheel

Cleaning their oil pastels

Their final project started with a class discussion of Sculpture. We looked at artist, Han Sai Por's Tetrahedron-tetrahedron Interprenetration (1993) fiberglass sculpture and compare the resemblance of her artwork to origami. Sometimes, the choice of medium is a great consideration depending on the intent or placement of the artwork. So, the children proceeded to make their own self-portraits using coloured papers. Assuming their scissors skills is fine, they can decide on the colour scheme and think in layers and do overlapping. 

This cracks me up a lot!