Monsterous Book Binding

Monsterous Book Binding

This week we were finishing up our Monsterous Comics and the local comic book artist, Jared Rosello that we introduced for this lesson, came in as a surprise guest! The kids were really excited to talk with Jared about their comics and had a few interesting conversations with him. The kids were eager to hear about how Jared makes his comics and if there is a sequel to his comic that they read. Jared also brought all the students copies of his comic!


Although this was another work period for our students this week, they were very composed and hard at work. I did a demonstration on what a title page should look like, what a copyright page should include, and what they should include on their author's page. The kids were really excited and before I knew it they were also making a dedication page!

We had to negotiate a little with one of our students since he had worked so hard in class this week. Miss. Erica diligently was working side by side with Max to help him advance his story and to finish his comic this week.

Once the students were came closer to finishing their outlining, I directed the student's attention to the middle of the table where I was going to show them step by step how to bind their comics. It was a process we did together as a class, and it was very successful. Some students had a hard time getting started but then got the hang of it. Bram was actually very skilled with the book binding technique and was eager to move onto the next step before everyone else was ready!

Next week's lesson we are still waiting on the Styrofoam heads, but are actively brainstorming for a back up lesson plan.

An Introduction to Performance Art

This week Matt introduced the class to the art of performance. We discussed the elements of performance such as characters, props, and background and then we took a look at some shadow puppet performances. The students were very excited to learn that they would be making their own shadow puppets and creating a performance based on the stories that they created for their last project. We divided the students into two groups where they read their stories to one another and then voted on which story they wanted to portray for their performance. It was a little bit difficult to get the students to decide on one story since they all wanted to do their own. Eleanor came up with a great solution to the problem. "Why don't we all take a vote on which story is the best, but you can't vote for your own story." The other students all agreed and it made deciding on a story much easier. Next week we will have the students finalize who is playing which character, write lines for their story, and start creating their characters and backgrounds for their performance.

Something Found, Something New. PART 2!

This Saturdsay was the second week of our Appropriation Art project: "Something Found, Something New." At the end of last weeks class, students were asked to find an object from their community (home, school, favorite park, street, etc) to bring to class this week. Although several students missed last weeks class, we were pleased to see that those students who did not miss class, came with objects in hand.

For the beginning of class, we split into two groups. Those who had missed last week's lesson, went with Adam to "catch up." The remaining students began brainstorming ideas for their objects. After everybody was on the same page, students were alotted the rest of class to work on their projects.

In our lesson plan, we had planned for two segments in the class period where students stopped working and joined for discussion. This was a time planned for questions, problem solving and informal critiquing. We quickly learned that this idea plan would not happen. Class time seemed to occur quicker than we planned, and before we knew it, our two hours were over.

Although group discussion would have been ideal, it would have been difficult and problematic to pull students away from their work when we were so limited with time. Instead, we found that walking around, and questioning/prompting stududents as they worked, seemed to be the best strategy.

In scripting our lesson this week, we learned that students needed more time to experiment with their media. Riley, for example, discided to melt styrofoam using a heat gun, this desicion required testing smaller styrofoam pieces before she transfered to her actual project. These kinds of experiments need to be taken into consideration when timing a lesson plan. Overall, students really seemed to enjoy this project. Due to time constraints, we suggested students bring home their pieces to work on during the week. We also scheduled half the class next week for finishing their projects. The notion of time is of huge importance, and I think that the skill of timing can only be mastered with experience. I am wondering how everybody else has been handling this issue?

Below are images of the progression of Julia's ballet slippers

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If It's Not Hollow, It Will explode!!!!

This week's lesson focused around transformation of animals in nature, which built upon the students' exploration of transformation in nature that took place last week. We asked the students to think about what transforms in nature, specifically types of things in nature that change, and we accompanied the discussion with time lapse videos of things changing, such as caterpillars, tomatoes, flowers, stars, and blowfish. The kids were very engaged and enjoyed the videos, and I think that it was a great way to start off the lesson. Abby gave a brief example of what we are looking for in this project, and then the students were asked to think up their own animal transformations. Many of the students did a very good job, and imagined creatures such as a rabbit with big paws so it could run faster and an elephant with a curly, long trunk so it could scoop up water and food easier. Abby and Christy combined forces to give a tutorial on clay techniques, and the students had a blast wedging their clay balls on the back table. They then had over 45 minutes to work on their animals, and this is where the class separated into two categories. One group excelled and easily manipulated the clay to create their visions, while others had a very difficult time getting things to work for them. For example, one student was confident that her project would be easy because her animal was a snake. However, by the end of the class, all she had finished was the head. This variant of skill levels was difficult to anticipate and frustrating to try to deal with, since there are only two of us to help everyone. It was also frustrating to not be able to give everyone the same amount of attention and help, and I think it's going to be a challenge to proceed with next week's lesson. How can we get every student tofinish their projects on time if they struggled so much during the first week?

How did you document your students’ work?

How did you document your students' work? Have you thought of that students are able to revisit their artwork through teachers' documentations? Perhaps, it is about time for you to think of the ways and the contents of your Sat Art Class Exhibition. Would you consider posting not only your students' final work but also their process of making it?

This week, Abby and Christy did a good job on documenting and displaying their students' artwork as well as the process of making it.

The Predictable and Not So Predictable Things About Students

This week we focused on the five senses and how these senses help us shape who we are as well as help us understand the world around us. We looked at the artist Vic Muniz and his one series of paintings where he utilizes chocolate instead of paint. I found it interesting and a little surprising that while showing Vic Muniz's piece "Paparazzi", one student, who likes to read the titles of the pieces, exclaimed, "Hey! That's a song!" It's interesting that such young children (6 and 7 year olds) know of Lady gaga and her songs. I am a fan of Lady gaga myself and it is just intriguing how we can have some of the same interests in pop culture even though there is a noticeable age gap. Finding these common interests helps build relationships and shows the students that we are people too- not just teachers.

The kids enjoyed using their fingers and chocolate syrup to create self-portraits. While it was tempting for them to lick their fingers, they knew that it was against the rules for they were going on a field trip to get ice cream later. It was interesting and a little predictable with how the kids reacted with using their fingers to paint. Many thought it was super cool and would watch the syrup drip off of their fingers. Other students found it sticky and wanted to wash their hands shortly after doing their painting. Then there was Christina who used her pinky to try and maintain the fine details that she noticeably makes in her art. After a little while, as predicted, Christina asked for a paint brush to finish our her painting. I was just grateful that she was willing and tried to paint with her fingers (her smallest one nonetheless) frist before asking for a brush. One student, after seeing Christina receive a paint brush, wanted one too in order to fill in her background. We allowed this and were prepared for other students to ask for paint brushes as well, but one one else asked. Overall it was a fun tasty day of art.

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Martian Mania: A whole new experience

This week, the students further explored aliens by focusing on the different creatures in 'Monsters vs. aliens.' The class made alien puppets out of neon cardstock and scrapbook paper cut into crazy shapes as well as 3D aliens out of model magic and abstract objects.

We changed a lot this week in response to last weeks lesson. We added more centers which gave the students room to explore various concepts and materials that we have been working with. The classroom was much less structured and gave the students free reign for much of the class to make discoveries in each of 5 centers. Also, by including examples from the student's own popular culture, the students became much more enthusiastic about the projects and could bring their own knowledge into the conversation and learning environment.

We also tried to give up some control and just let learning happen instead of forcing it. I think all of us learned a great deal from teaching this lesson. We realized one of the hard things to learn is that working with young children we, as adults, tend to overshadow them and try to direct them in the ways we want them to go. We all learned that by letting the students discover on their own without forcing our own ideas upon them, that they had amazing ideas of their own to share and explore with each other. While some of the student's work might not have fit our original conceptions of what they should be doing (from an adults point of view), it does not mean that learning isn't going on. As teachers, we instead observed that the learning was much more meaningful when the students were able to explore and experiment with their ideas and the materials on their own terms. By stepping back and 'playing' with them, we were able to realize that.

[Who Did it]

This week students moved on with their investigations, to discover [who did it]. The detectives were briefed with a board meeting in which they reviewed the [cases closed] while they were out of the office. The [monsters] that had been caught served as inspiration for their own monsters. The detectives focused on the shape of their monsters and the additional attributes that related to their unique cases. After students sketched their monsters, they began documentation on their preliminary concepts of [who did it]. The detectives made patterns, cut the various components of their monsters, and learned a few stitches in which they incorporated into their designs. Upon completing the details of their monsters, the young detectives were able to take their pinned forms to a visiting expert, [Detective CooksALot] to have their designs completed in a more professional manner. You can see [Detective Lego] in the background of ^ this photo working with the expert to complete his project. Many of the detectives were able to complete their preliminary representations of [Who did it] with great enthusiasm. 

[Official Evidence of the BiFocal Detective Agency] 

Bookmaking:Final Phase

This week was a great week for us. All of the kids finished their illustrations of the book and some were even able to bind them. Next week we are going to give them the first fifteen minutes of class to finish their books and hopefully have a nice final piece. There were a few things that I think we struggled with this week. The big thing was that a few of the students finished really early and were at a loss of things to do. I guess that would be poor planning on our part but it was hard to anticipate how fast they would go because the previous week was rather slow. We were fortunate enough to have a few bag of model magic in the cabinet and were able to give it to a select few of the kids to share. They would like to use in the following weeks but we are not sure how to fit it in during the second part of our lesson which is performance. Overall though, we were very pleased with all of the illustrations that all off the student did. The bookmaking process seemed to be a very strong project. Next week we are going to introduce them to the different ways of putting on a performance.

A variety of ways of revisiting

In the class of [Monstrous Identity] exquisite corpses drawing was one of the activities for the first day. However, the drawings have been transformed into one of the sub-activities in the classroom.









One of the students in the class is making a story with his own characters, both sock monster and life-size monster--created in previous lessons--as a draft of a comic book for this week.










A student is writing a short narrative about her sock monster.












Q. What strategies could we use to provide our students with opportunities to revisit what they have done in each of the activities?

The day before we teach

Ashley and Natalia are cutting book boards, threading needles, and folding accordion- shaped frames for the third lesson of bookmaking, [The Scene of the Crime]. Mallory is applying base coat with paper towels for the activity of creating [Martian minds] in the lesson, [Martian Mania].

For catching two rabbits—providing students with a meaningful art experience as well as managing time well in a lesson—at once, it is unavoidable to consider to how much extent art teachers should prepare on the day before the lesson. What could be done for saving time beforehand? What should not be done in advance for keeping students' meaningful experience?

Mask Making Time

This was the first time for me to teach a lesson to the exciting group of six and seven year olds. We transitioned from learning about relations
hips with others into learning about relationships with ourselves. The lesson was on masks and how different cultures utilize mask as well as how masks can represent an individual. The students were actively participating in a discussion about what masks are used for and who the different cultures that use them. I was glad that I showed several different cultures and a range of photos because that seemed to translate into the kids having a wide range of masks that represented themselves. Some kids picked their favorite color to paint the mask while others were more into the overall idea of creating a character such as the nittany lion, an Indian, a monster, and a ninja. It was fun to see the students share their masks with each other at the end of class.

There were two main things I noticed during the class time that I wanted to pick out. One is that I have observed one student mimicking another student’s work. I’m thinking that this might be a result of the student seeing the individual she mimics receiving praise and attention with her work. It also might be correlated to the fact that she sat at the same table as this other student. To resolve this mimicking perhaps it would be best to separate these two individuals next time and make sure all of the students are receiving compliments and attention. Another thing I realized during class was that we should have saved the hot gluing of the feathers for the mask for more towards the end of class. Students wanted to get their feathers glue pretty quickly after receiving materials to decorate their masks. However, at the same time I wonder if that would have caused the students to have to wait even longer and would have caused a backup with saving the gluing for last.

Something Found. Something New

This week narrowed our focus of identity to the notion of community. Who are we in our community? How has our community shaped who we are? And how can we give back to our community as artists with a voice?

When the students arrived to class, they were greeted by a table decorated with an array of found objects from three floors of the Visual Arts Building (a Styrofoam block, Santa Claus cup, keyboard, teddy bear, bone, basketball, faux flower bouquet, and rock, to name a few). These objects signified our culture as artists. Students were asked to make a list of 20 ways that this object can be used (and we quickly learned that a list of 10 was a much more realistic number). Students shared their lists and it was interesting to hear what the students came up with; who know that a that a keyboard can be used as a murder weapon, and a teddy bear can be made into ear muffs? After our beginning activity, I introduced appropriation art. We looked at images from Marcel Duchamp, Barbara Kruger, and Christian Boltanski. We also talked about ways to choose an object. Do you choose an object because you like the way it looks? Or do you choose an object because you find some kind of connection with it within? Our underlying question was how can we alter the community's understanding of what this object means?

I think what really helped the students to understand the concept of appropriation was Graeme Sullivan's talk. Graeme Sullivan was kind enough to come in and discuss his artwork with the class. His work directly relates to the idea of community, how to create artwork from objects found in the community, and how to give back/ share his art with the community. For most of the students, this was the first "artist talk" they experienced, and I think it was very helpful for students to see and here examples of appropriation art from a practicing artist.


For the last hour, students were given paint and asked appropriate their objects. We decided that limiting the medium to paint, eased the students into the idea of how to alter an object by using just paint. (Next week we plan to offer more medium). Nicole chose a bone as her object, and she decided to paint her bone with a giraffe animal print. Brynna painted an old keyboard using the colors of the old Macintosh symbol. She placed the computer in the Patterson computer lab on top of one of the newer keyboards. Julia ripped, unstuffed, restuffed, painted and re-sealed her stuffed animal teddy bear. Julia decided to place her teddy bear back where it was found: pinned to the wall of the BFA painting studios.
Next week, students are asked to go home and bring in something from their communities (home, school, a favorite park, street..). I look forward to seeing what students bring in for next week.

How do you document your students’ work?

This week, we were grateful to have Moni’s help! She observed the eldest’s class in the Visual Art Building and she’s got some insights. She realizes that the process of making art is also part of the art work. So, there are some more questions for you to think of. How do you document your students’ work? Did you only document their final art work? Do you take pictures or videos of their process? Do you think that your students will be able to document their process? Do you have any other thoughts of documenting students’ work to share?

Thanks again, Moni!!!

“2D” and “3D” type students?

If you have two kinds of students: “2D type” and “3D type,” what would you plan in your art class according to your lesson plan?

What are the connections between each activity in the class?

When I was following the students traveling to outdoor and collecting whatever materials that they found interesting from the nature, many questions popped up on my mind that I had not thought of. The first one was: What were the connections between each activity in the class?

1. The warmup exercise was great that the students were told to choose only one material to put on the big piece of foam board. One of them chose tooth-sticks and the other student chose feathers.

2. The students were divided into groups and discussed Andy Goldsworthy’s art work. They had three questions: What is it made out of? Where was it made? How was it made? I thought they were great questions because all of them pinpointed the art concept of Goldsworthy’s.

3. Then, the students went outside to collect materials for creating their art work. I wondered if each of the students was asked to pick only one material, what would have their work turned out. If the teachers asked each student to find a specific location, such as in the bush, on the lawn, on a tree, on side walk, would it be related to the environment much more? Would it let the students to think deeper on the creation of their own art work?

Do we, as teachers, give enough chances for students to talk?

Having a group appreciation at the end of the lesson is a great thing to end and conclude the class. It gives a chance for the student-artists to show and explain their work to their peers as well as to let the other students to learn how to appreciate other people’s work.

Please look at the video clip below and listen carefully.

Teacher: It looks like a ___ mask. Do you want to explain it to us, Casey? It’s an Indian?

Casey nods.

Teacher: ... Are the feathers because of Indian?

Casey nods.

Teacher: Why did you choose purple and white? You think they are the girly ones?

Casey: For Penn State.

Teacher: For Penn State! It’s a good idea. I like it. Good job.

Do you think Casey had enough chances to express herself? Do you think if the teacher asked more “open ended” questions, such as “where does your mask come from?” “What do the colors of the feathers stand for?”, the student would have talked more? Do you have any other suggestions? Try to think of how to get the other students involve in this appreciation. For example, “What do you see on Casey’s mask?” “Which country do you think Casey’s mask comes from?”

Goldsworthy Globetrotting

This week, Christy and Abby focused the lesson on artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose nature-based artworks decorate the natural world. We started off with having the students get into groups and discuss a specific Goldsworthy piece. Each group had a specific list of questions to answer about the piece, such as "What's it made out of?" "Where is it made?" "How did he make it?" These prompting questions on top of discussion really got the students involved in assessing the photos and making educated guesses about the art. Afterward, the groups presented their ideas to the entire class, and they were all able to compare and contrast their thoughts, which strengthened the benefits of the exercise. After the students thought about Andy Goldsworthy and his pieces, we traveled outside to collect some of our own materials to create unique pieces of art. The kids loved getting to wander around outside, and they were aware of what types of things they wanted to gather based on color, size, and material. After walking to the Architecture building, the students found work areas and started to create. Some chose to be in groups, while others worked by themselves, but they were all incredibly productive and applied many of Goldsworthy techniques that we had taught about. It was somewhat windy outside, and many of the students complained about it blowing their art away. We encouraged them by asking them to think about what Goldsworthy might have done, and the students had to creatively problem solve in order to preserve their works. Some used the soft ground to stick their items into, while others created make-shift wind shields to block the gusts. After about 20 minutes of work, the students asked to go back inside, so we packed up and let them finish the class period recreating their artworks. Students paired up differently and created new pieces without the natural environment. Again, they had to problem solve and adapt to their new surroundings, but they all created incredible pieces. It was a very successful lesson, and the students really enjoyed getting to go outside and create natural works with a different and challenging type of material.

Catching Up & Comic Books

CATCHING UP:

This week our students finished their sock monsters rather than having sketchbook time. All of the students worked really well in finishing the sewing, decorating, and writing of their description of the monsters. The turned out really well. We did however, have a little bit of a time issue at this point. This is something we've encountered more than once. How can we tell a student that they need to finish the project they're working on because we need to move on to the next lesson or next part of the lesson? I don't want to rush a student, but at the same time we can't spend unlimited amounts of time on one project.

While some students were taking a little extra time on their sock monsters we had 2 different learning centers set up for the students. After our Model Magic fiasco I was a little bit hesitant about allowing the students freedom to explore while Stephanie and I helped with sewing and gluing. One of our learning centers utilized the plastic toys provided by Tina. I was really shocked and relieved when I looked over and saw the students working so well.

COMIC BOOKS:

To begin our lesson on comic books we took some advice from Matt and Genevieve and took some extra steps in talking about the parts of a story. I started out with asking the students what they know about the parts of a story and then filled in the blanks that they left out. During this little lecture I also had the students help me to create a hypothetical story by filling in the Beginning, Middle, End, Problem, and Solution together. This was my way of making sure the students fully understood the parts of a story. During this lecture we also talked about the what makes a comic book different than a story book. We showed the students examples of comic books and they flipped through and pointed out things they noticed. I think allowing them to look at the examples of comic books helped us in having a richer discussion about stories and comic books. They really got into it.

After the class discussion the students were given large papers with the parts of the story we just talked about. This served as their rough drafts of their comic books. While the students worked independently I did manage to over hear some great conversations between students sharing what their comic books are going to be about.