Category: Math

Weeks Seventeen and Eighteen

5/31/2018

Arts a la Mode

For ten years our school has hosted an Empty Bowls event. It has gone through a few changes since we began to participate in this program that was started nearly 30 years ago by a group of artists who wanted to use art as a call to action to raise food and funds to combat food insecurity in their communities.

I am very thankful for those who have come out over the years to support families in our community by donating to this cause. This year's even was particularly special because of our band director's retirement. He has been an awesome partner in this project and I am excited for him and his family as he begins a new chapter in his life.

2018 Arts ala Mode - Mr. Klein Recognition (Byron Center West Middle School) from Steve Harryman on Vimeo.

We also got to use a lot of our DonorsChoose.org funded projects during this event. It was great fun to see the button maker we received in action during this community event. It was a HUGE hit! Many students, siblings, and parents made buttons (some more than one) and sported them for the evening.

We also got a chance to showcase our ArtPrize piece, of which I have an exciting update to share!

It was an awesome night to celebrate our Arts programs at WMS. My favorite part of it was seeing students step up in leadership roles and really take charge of the evening. This is something I want to do more of with my students and find additional leadership opportunities for them to share their knowledge and love of Art with others through acts of service.

Thank you TangerKIDS Program!

I like writing grants. I have presented about it at conferences and helped others write their grants and projects for their classrooms. I actually love helping others with theirs (even more than mine). I got started with grant writing because someone helped me and I look at helping others as a way of paying it forward.

Thanks to a more recent effort with the TangerKIDS program, we gained the needed funds to help our National Scholastic Gold Medalist get to the celebration at Carnegie Hall. We are so thankful for the opportunity this grant allows this student and our program in promoting a legacy of excellence.

I am particularly excited to attend the celebration, too, because it is also the ten year anniversary of my first National Scholastic Medalist and trip to NYC!

When Old Becomes New

To finish up the semester, students worked on one of my favorite themes: Something Old, Something New. This theme asks students to go into their portfolios and rework ideas from the past, showing they have grown in skill and understanding since that original work was created.

Here are some of the works students created as a result of this prompt:

Brayden: I did Photoshop because its fun and it looks good. I used a portrait from last year to change and make much better. I did better on craft, creativity, content, and composition. For example, The creativity is a lot better, and it looks a lot cooler and better. Also it is more neat. The last one looked like scribbles, and this one is real, and much nicer. I wanted to do Photoshop because I like the effects of it.

Olivia: In this artwork we had to create a new version of an older artwork we made and I decided to redo my observational shoe drawing from last year. To make this artwork better I made it more creative by spraying yellow water color around the shoe. Another way that I improved this artwork is by the composition. I added more color and because I used complimentary colors I think it added a better rhythm to the piece. I really wanted to revisit this idea because I never really got to finish it last year and I knew that I could make it a lot more creative if I used everything that I learned in class this year.

Alex: This piece of art is a recreation of my continuous line portrait “Tears of Destiny.” To improve this piece I used opacity and different color strokes as a new form of craft. I also used more things to fill the space like the bandana for more creativity. My personal connection to this art was that the original piece of this art was not created very well. I wanted to revisit it to make it better and show that I improved as an artist.

Ellie: I decided to use the technique of drawing, because I have never done it before. I wanted to try it so that eventually I can improve and get better at drawing. I used the art element of color because the gray portrait pops when it is against the blue background. I used the Creativity C because I used a new technique where I put swirls on the paper in washable markers, and then I put water color over them to smear them out. I also used the Craft C because I took my time to make it the best that I can. I decided to recreate this piece because I could see that I didn't do my very best the first time, so I wanted to do another piece that I took a longer time and did my very best.

Adam: In fifth grade, I drew a polar bear that was an okay piece of artwork. This year, I recreated the drawing. This time with paint. I definitely improved my art skills since then. This is because I used craft, creativity, composition, and content to make a great piece of artwork. For example, my craft improved a lot. It took me a lot of effort to draw it, and then paint it. Also, I used content because of the value on the polar bear. The darker colors emphasis shadows and highlights on the bear. I chose to revisit the idea of the polar bear because it was something that I knew I could do better on.

Faith: For this project I chose to remake was from project challenge 2:spaces and places. The piece that I did with project challenge 2, was a sun set on the beach. I really liked drawing out all of the things in that piece and I liked the materials that I got to use such as pencils and colored pencils. Although that piece still turned out pretty good, I felt that it wasn't my best work and I could do better and I really wanted to push myself on this last project. So I decided to take a picture that I had taken when I was on vacation in the great smoky mountains and look at it and draw what was in the picture. Some of the materials that I used in my last piece in project challenge 2 was that I had to draw everything out before I colored all of it. For this project I decided that I really wanted to work with different values with pencils and I thought that the picture that I took would be a perfect one because of the mountains. One of the four Cs that I used when creating this piece was craft. This is true because the way that I made this piece was with all different shading pencils and that was all I used because I really like the way that they looked. One other of the four Cs that I used in this piece is creativity. This is true because I think that this piece was pretty original because of the materials that I used because it seems like there seems to be a lot of pieces that use landscape and draw them. The reason I wanted to revisit this idea was because of how much I enjoyed making project challenge 2 but I really felt that I could push myself to do better then I did the 1st time. The personal connection that I have to this piece is I absolutely loved going to the great smoky mountains for vacation. It was my most favorite place that I had ever been to and I have been there twice and just loved being there and seeing the scenery so I decided that I could use one of the pictures from when I went there and use it in my art work.

Focusing on Math in STEAM

To close out our STEAM units for the semester, I asked students to create a work that employs math concepts in their work. Leaving the door open to a variety of options, I was a little nervous with what students would do for this one.

Students selected so many interesting options for their work and made new connections between math and art concepts to do so. It was fun to see them go through their works and land on finished pieces.

Here is a sampling of their work:

Sophia: For this math project, I decided to do origami because it seemed fun and it was something I have never done before. To make this, I created different sized 3D triangles using different colored paper. Then I arranged them in a frame (not shown in the picture) for a cleaner look. This relates to math because I had to measure the lengths of the triangles to create them and arrange them together using their angles. I like this project because it is clean cut and organized, but also fun.

Khiem: In this art I used angles and perspective from the filming unit. To make a video interesting you need different perspective so I took that idea and used on this one. I try to make it look like from a angle above. The crane is flying by the water and in the hand a person hold one of them.

Tess: To make this op-art piece, I used isometric graph paper to draw boxes in random directions, overlapping and going underneath each other. I did this twice to make two different patterns, then I traced the two patterns to create three identical copies of each. I decided to use complementary colors so each design would be unique, but still match with the other patterns.

Vanessa: For this project I did a tessellation and that means I made a shape out of paper and made a puzzle out of it and to color it I used water color.

Maria: In order to create this origami sculpture I needed knowledge of math concepts in order to be successful. Paper folding, or origami relates to shapes and angles. While creating the three dimensional angular boxes, every angle of each fold had to be exact. If not, each box would not be congruent, and would not represent the 3D shape I was trying to make. Recognition of shapes and designs that would make this project appealing were also useful. Making this project required me to use art ideas as well, such as printmaking, and other collage techniques.

We have a Venue!

I am very excited to announce that we have secured a venue to display our work for ArtPrize10! Our work will be on display on the second floor of The Downtown Market.

It is an awesome place I go to regularly and I know our students will be eager to head to the market and enjoy viewing the work as they also partake on the ice cream, popcorn, barbecue, and my personal favorite of chicken and waffles while there.

We are all still working on our pieces as we look ahead to installing the works in September. This is going to be a great event to kick off the school year in the Fall and get students excited about art. It is also awesome to be in the running for the Youth Collaboration Award for $2500!

1 Comment

math doodling - vi hart

2/5/2011

0 Comments

I found a link to Vi Hart through an art education ning I belong to and really thought this was a cool thing to share with anyone who happens to be following this blog.

I love to doodle. I still doodle on my notes for classes I currently take or even notes during a meeting. It helps me focus on what is being said and I enjoy the randomness of the designs as they come onto the page.

Vi Hart takes doodling to a whole other level with these videos that use the visual forms to express mathmatical ideas. If only someone would have taught me math through doodling...