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Week Three

9/23/2017

ArtPrize 2017

I am going to start out by showcasing our final event of the week first: ArtPrize9! We had a chance to spend a day downtown on Friday and make our way to venues that included the place where our work is being displayed. Our piece, "Painting Under Paper Cuts," is in the running for the Youth Collaboration Award of a $5000 grant. You can help us win with a vote. Voting for the YCA ends on September 30th. None of this would have been possible without the help of parent and teacher chaperones.

It was a very warm day outside on Friday, but students stayed hydrated and in good spirits throughout the trip. One student reminded me how important experiences like these are when she explained this was her first time ever going downtown in Grand Rapids. I am happy I was able to be a part of that memory and introduce her to the awesome sights and sounds of ArtPrize9! I am also thankful to the ArtPrize Education team for offering this opportunity of both showing our work in the Youth Collaboration category and for having grants available for traveling downtown.

Check out the video below for more highlights from our trip:

Names to Know

Students worked on a project I use to help me put names to faces this week. I am a visual learner and I explain this to my students as I go through this challenge. Students start out by creating interest lists (what are five things that are essential to you, what are your favorite colors/objects/shapes) and then use those lists to generate ideas for transforming the letters of their names into their interests on their portfolios.

We also use this challenge as a way to explain how we will be using sketchbooks this semester. It is a great way to get students used to the idea of sketching out ideas and working through solutions on a smaller scale before tackling it larger.

Students also learned a variety of colored pencil and marker techniques to apply to their names. We will be finishing these up on Monday and posting the results to Artsonia.

This week had a lot of action in it. We started it with presentations of their Spinning Tops in the STEAM challenge and ended with a trip to ArtPrize9. It was super fun to see students begin to stretch their creative minds through projects that ask them to rethink and reconsider things we see or use everyday in new and interesting ways.

I am looking forward to seeing how students finish out their names on Monday and work on our first major challenge that starts next week. I am also excited to meet with students about The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards next week and to find out the results of the Youth Collaboration Awards when voting ends on the 30th!

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Week Two

9/16/2017

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Spinning with STEAM

We kicked off our first full week of school with a STEAM collaboration. For those of you who are new to this blog, the STEM teacher and I combine our classes once a marking period to create a STEAM experience for students. In these sessions, students use Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math to create and collaborate on solving a variety of problems.

This year, we decided we wanted to jump on the spinning craze that we all experienced with fidget spinners last spring and have students create spinning tops. After doing some research, we found an awesome resource at TryEngineering.org. We also found this video about the Physics of a Spinning Top that was posted by high school students on YouTube to share with our kids (they especially liked the background music):

Through this challenge, we wanted students to implement Design Thinking using the DICE model (Discover, Ideate, Create, Evaluate) and to work collaboratively to meet performance standards for the top they were going to make. Students were given the following items to use in their bag of materials to work with and many used the materials to create more than one top:

CD
2 hot glue sticks
2 toothpicks
1 black plastic cup lid
2 small clear cup lids
2 marbles
2 washers
1 nail
1 screw
1 plastic bottle cap
1 string
2 craft sticks

Before building, students created a variety of sketches showing how they could use the materials to create their top. They also had a series of performance standards to consider in their design that outlined both the criteria and constraints of what was expected in their work. For example, the top could not be more than 20g, had to spin for at least 10 seconds, and they could not use extra materials outside of what they were given in their bag of goods. We also asked for them to consider aesthetics in their design and gave them an option to earn extra points for designing additional spinning tops.

After their tops were created, they had to test them on two surfaces and record the results in a data table. To complete the project, students worked in teams to create a presentation that included images of their sketch, top, results of tests in the form of line graphs, and overall findings from the project.

We like to combine our Art and STEM classes for this STEAM collaboration because it gets students to see the connections between our classes and how we are going to use common language and expectations during their time with us. This is the third year we have been doing these types of activities and students will be presenting their finished work for this first STEAM collaboration of the year on Monday.

ArtPrize 9 Preview

Here is our work on display at our venue. Thanks to Steve Fridsma for sharing this image on Facebook!

ArtPrize 9 opens this week! That means starting on September 20th, people can vote for our work at Monroe Community Church and help our classroom win $5000 Youth Collaboration Award! I am so thankful to Jamie Dennett, our STEM teacher, for helping our work make it to our venue and to Steve Fridsma, our Venue Coordinator, for connecting with us and hosting our piece. There was an awesome team of volunteers at Monroe Community Church on Saturday who worked for hours on installation. In addition to that, I would also like to thank The Byron Center Fine Arts Boosters for covering our costs and our greater Byron Center Public School Community for their support in this endeavor. It has been a humbling experience and I look forward to celebrating at the opening reception on Tuesday, September 19th from 6-8:30 p.m. (here are the details if you would like to join). We would love to see you there!

Here are some details sent from the ArtPrize Education Team about how to vote:

Voting for the Youth Collaboration Award is just like ArtPrize voting. Before you vote, you will need to download the ArtPrize app to your phone, or vote online. You will also need to visit ArtPrize in person. Visit this link to learn more about how to vote.
Eligible voters must be age 13 years or older to sign up for an artprize.org account and register to vote at ArtPrize.
You have to attend the ArtPrize in person in order to vote. You can verify attendance by downloading the ArtPrize mobile app and having your location services turned on while inside the ArtPrize district; or stop by an ArtPrize HUB.
For the Youth Collaboration Award, voting begins on September 20th at 12pm and ends on September 30th at 11:59pm. This is also the end of Round 1 voting for general ArtPrize. You will not be able to vote for these entries during Round 2.
The winner of the Youth Collaboration Award will be announced at the ArtPrize Awards Ceremony on October 6th at 7:30pm and can be viewed at the Rosa Parks Circle viewing party or on TV!

One of the best parts of this experience is getting to see other artists' work on display and talk to them about their process and work. The images above include works from artists who traveled from Toronto, Oklahoma, Montana, North Carolina, and of course, Michigan. It is such an honor to have our work with such skill and talent and it will be so fun to see our students react to the exhibition.

The next two weeks are going to be a whirlwind of an experience! Even if we don't win the $5000 grant, it has been worth the effort. We are already talking about what might be possible for ArtPrize 10...

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Week One

9/10/2017

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Start with Clay

As I have been doing for years now, students were introduced to my classroom by getting started with clay. I remember the first time we did this - I was terrified. I had visions of clay being thrown across the room with unruly students not following directions. I really could not have been more wrong in what actually happens when you engage students with meaningful materials to make an impact right from the start.

Each year at our school we have an Empty Bowls event to benefit our local food bank. At the event, student-made ceramic bowls decorate our school cafeteria as the music students perform and ice cream is served. Patrons donate food and funds to our local food bank to get into the event and celebrate the students who are showcased.

This year I purchased some additional resources like the doily below for 7th grade students to use to add texture to their clay before placing them into paper bowls as molds for the shape of the bowl. We were able to complete these pieces in only a couple of days and I am excited to see these fired and have them glazed and ready for our Empty Bowls event later this school year.

8th grade students used leaves and terra-cotta clay this year for the first day activity. Instead of making bowls for Empty Bowls, they created leaves that will be for sale to benefit our program at Parent/Teacher Conferences in October and the Byron Center Fine Arts Boosters Annual Craft Fair at the High School in November.

Robots Arrive

I am very excited that our Ozobots have arrived! This new resource was funded thanks to generous donors through DonorsChoose over the summer. It was something I had been thinking about incorporating into the STEAM curriculum and was able to do so thanks to the support of others who gave to our project. I am excited to get working with these little guys in the coming months and I look forward to also sharing the results!

The Dot and ArtPrize

This is Sue Ferrell's work from ArtPrize this year. Her work will be shown at our venue and we used her as inspiration for our Dot collaboration project.

We have been celebrating Peter H. Reynolds' story "The Dot" annually for years in my classroom. Each year, we start the school year with some kind of collaborative permanent or semi-permanent work that will engage students with hands-on creating while overcoming the fear that can accompany creativity.

This year, I discovered an artist from ArtPrize that will share our venue at Monroe Community Church to be our inspiration. Sue Ferrell is a local artist who has been participating in ArtPrize for years. This year she is using her skills as a painter and rocks as a canvas to create a large piece from over 100 smaller parts.

I first showed students the video below of the story of "The Dot" and we talked about why I would take the time out to show them this. We had a good discussion about fear and creativity and believing in yourself. Several students used the story to discuss ideas about practice and thinking about art in new and different ways. So many middle school students get caught up in realistic drawing as being the premiere way of knowing whether or not they have talent. This story showed them that art is what you make it and can be whatever you want it to be.

Once we looked at Sue's work, students selected their colors and how they wanted to approach the rock they were painting. These will be used in landscaping outside of our school (an exact location is yet to be determined). I am excited to share with Sue when ArtPrize starts so she can see what an impact her work had on my students. As usual, I will also make sure to share with Peter H. Reynolds who has always been very kind to me and my students when we showcase how we use his work in our classroom.

What is so great about getting students started with hands-on creating the first week of school is that we already get some work on our Artsonia page! Using Schoology, students are able to access their Artsonia uploads through classroom mode and use the standards-based rubrics to complete their work (including their artist statements).

Mary: The artists who painted the rocks inspired me because she did this cool floral pattern and i wanted to try something like it. I also wanted to try making the small dots into a bigger picture. I made it very colorful and creative.

Marie: The story of "The Dot" is about a girl who doesn't believe in her abilities to create good artwork. But by just creating a mark, a simple dot, her teacher considers it as very good art. She realizes that anyone can be good at making art, or anything in general, you just have to try. "The Dot" story relates to these painted rocks because the stones are painted with small marks like dashes and dots. When combined together create good art.

Tess: The story of The Dot is about a little girl who believed she couldn't draw. Her art teacher told her to make her mark, so she did, putting a small dot on her paper with a marker. The next day when Vashti walked into class, her dot was hanging above her teachers desk in a beautiful frame. This inspired her to make more dots, each one more beautiful than the next, and even inspire a young boy to do the same. My painted rock connects to this story because I made a ¨dot¨ on my rock.

Paige: This artwork was created from “The Dot” project. It is about a young girl who doesn't think she has any talent but shows us that any art can be made without needing to be a great artist. This connects with my work because I took a rock and used lots of different dots which is simple but by using different designs and colors it turned out to be a very cool, unique piece.

What a Week!

This week was a great one. I am always amazed at how ready students are to learn and engage with media in new ways. It is so fun to see their reactions when I ask them to get involved with these materials and to brace themselves for what is planned.

I hope everyone else had as great of a first week as we did and I look forward to sharing more next week!

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Week Three

ArtPrize 2017

Names to Know

Week Two

Spinning with STEAM

ArtPrize 9 Preview

Week One

Start with Clay

Robots Arrive

The Dot and ArtPrize

What a Week!

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Janine Campbell

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