Category: Reflection

5 years later

1/1/2016

This picture is from my first post. I love breaking pastels and encourage others to do so when they get new ones in their hands.

Happy New Year!

2016 is going to be an amazing year and I am so looking forward to all of the things happening once we return to school. The Scholastic Awards will be announced for our region next Friday, we will be starting on our last project of the semester, and then wrapping up learning experiences before exams and starting over with a new group.

I started this blog five years ago as a New Year's resolution. Since then, it has not only given me and my students a space to showcase the learning in our classroom, but it has also connected us to other teachers and students, which was not something I had considered.

When I began blogging, it was to try and find a way to reflect and share what was happening in my classroom in hopes to improve my craft. It has lead to that and so much more.

Since the commitment I made to share on this blog, I have been a keynote or featured speaker in three states, regularly present at State, National, and Online conferences, and have been acknowledged with various State and National accolades.

What's better yet are the connections I have made with other teachers from across the world. I am honored to be a part of a thriving educational community of committed teachers who care about their craft and are always pushing to be better.

I am so excited to see what come our way in this new year and will continue to share the art adventures we have along the way!

If this blog has impacted your teaching or students in some way, please share how in the comments.

Otherwise, I will see you on the internets!

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Old to New

5/29/2015

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Last week, 8th grade students were asked to look through their portfolios and create something new from a past work. Here are some of the results:

Emily H: This is a piece that I redid from the beginning of the year, where I had drawn a realistic heart then attached to it, had a puzzle piece with triangles and the same color scheme as the triangles in this piece. I was trying to go along with the idea of identity, and how each puzzle piece in a jigsaw puzzle is different, but when they all come together, they create the entire puzzle. This can work for humans too; we are all individuals, like the individual puzzle pieces, but when we come together much like a jigsaw puzzle, we are all apart of the bigger picture: the human race. I reimagined this piece by taking actual puzzle pieces and painting a human heart on them, to better exemplify my idea and to make it more interesting.

Eleni N.: This dragon is an adaptation from my 5th grade piece, "Free Draw & Art Club." The original was an angry dragon sitting atop a hill, protecting it. Taking the idea of a dragon in an area caused me to create this. It's a dragon in its cave. I didn't copy this image over to make it look better, but instead stole the idea and created a whole new piece based off of the original one. I decided to keep it black and white due to the original piece being black and white.

Andrew V.: I reimagined a piece of art that I made at Nickels. The old project was a 2-point perspective drawing of a street corner. The way that I reimagined it was by completely changing the perspective. I took it from a 2-point to a 5-point perspective drawing. It gives the effect that the image is in a bubble or drop of water. I also changed the medium/the way that I colored it. This time instead of just using colored pencils, I used liquid spray paint for the background. Finally, I changed it from a boring street corner to a person holding the image in a bubble. The last one was a plain drawing of a street corner which was not very creative however I changed it to a city that a person is holding. The personal connection that I have with this is that I loved this project at Nickels and I am fascinated by the architecture of these giant buildings in cities like New York and Chicago. The reason that I chose to revisit this project is because it was on a topic that I love and the original piece that I did was not very creative and sort of boring. I wanted to go back and change it so it looked awesome and had my own personal flair to it. I made it more creative and unique the second time around.

Evette P.: I really enjoyed this art project, mainly because it gave me an opportunity to revisit my old art work. It also gave me a chance to see how much I have excelled in creativity and artistic talent in the passing time. I created this artwork going off of that I created last year, in 7th grade. My personal connection to my art mainly goes off of the idea of personally seeing my improvement and my usage of different techniques. One of the main reasons why I wanted to revisit this idea was because of how intriguing it looked in the first place, and due to the materials and techniques used. I have used many different materials through out the year but oil pastel had not been one of them. Revisiting a piece of work and but still being able to use new material this year expands my usage of materials and creativity. Looking back and seeing how I incorporated the usage of symmetry and oil pastel in my work gave me the overall idea to do this work of art related to something old, something new.

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Final Exams

1/23/2015

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This has been a great first semester of Art! We have made over 1500 pieces of art, won various competitions, worked with all kinds of media, and had a ton of fun doing it all!

To finish out the term, students worked on their final exams which included a reflection video, piece of art that demonstrates what they have learned, as well as a test filled with Art related questions.

I am going to miss this group of students, but I am excited to get a fresh batch on Monday and explore new possibilities with them.

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Finishing Strong

6/5/2014

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Students finished out the year strong as they reflected on what they have learned and had a chance to create a work that demonstrated that. The two videos are a result of asking students to reflect on their learning and share it with others.

In addition to taking their final exam on Moodle, students also created a work of art using methods and materials to demonstrate what they learned over the course of the term. You can see all of the creations on our online Artsonia gallery.

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final presentation

1/8/2013

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In After School Art, students work on a variety of individual projects at their own pace. Many enter competitions, and others just experiment to see what will happen when (fill in the blank)... It is a diverse group of students who do many different kinds of things. That is why we are putting together a collaborative portfolio using Google Docs to make a slideshow that encapsulates what everyone has been working on so far this year. I introduced it yesterday and students have until next Tuesday to complete their slide (including their name, at least 3 works, and a short reflection).

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camp survey

6/14/2012

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The following survey is for camp participants. The information collected will help me reflect on what I taught at the camp and how to improve it for future offerings. Please do not fill out unless you participated in the camp.

Thanks!

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last day reflections...

6/8/2012

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Students finished up their last day of school today. Although I will miss this group of kids, I am happy with the feedback they gave me on their exams.

Part of their exam was multiple choice, true and false, and matching questions on Moodle. They were asked about color, materials, and artists that we had learned about over the year. In most cases there was a huge gain from pre to post test. One student went from a 40% on the pre test to a 95% on the post, which was one of the biggest gains. In addition to this more traditional method of testing, students created a doodle bomb of the skills they learned this semester as well as a critique of me and the content of the class.

When asked what should change for next year, many students said they would like more choice on projects and the materials they use. Others did not like doing so many things electronically and some said that there should be more skype interviews with artists and field trip opportunities. When asked what should stay the same, 8th grade students predominantly said the Monster project was their favorite and 7th grade really loved doing the Animations. This feedback will give me a lot to think about over the summer when planning for next fall.

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i learned...

1/20/2012

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As a part of the final exam in art, students drew doodle bombs to express what they learned with details and examples of the concepts. They had to select at least two concepts they thought were the most important. Looks like students came up with much more...

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cleaning out and setting up

11/17/2011

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7th and 8th grade students GAP'ed (sort work into good, average, and poor piles) from their portfolio's today and put out their clay projects for display in the Media Center. Keep your eyes peeled for them to be posted on Artsonia within the next week! Students will be selecting work for display be the end of November for the upcoming Van Singel Fine Arts Center 1-12 show.

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end of the year!

6/10/2011

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It has been an awesome school year! It is amazing to think that it is over, but before you know it - 2011-12 will be here!

Some accomplishments from the year include students being published in 3 different books and a magazine, 8 Scholastic Art Awards, 1 Honorable Mention for the Davis Art ATC contest, 7 Sooper Art winners, 1 Artsonia Artist of the Week (2 others nominated), over $2500 in additional funding from various grants, field trips to ArtPrize and the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, over $900 in food and funds raised and donated to Byron Community Ministries from Arts students, over 800 paper cranes sent to Princeton for the Million Crane project, over 2300 student works published online...

That is a lot of stuff for just one year - I cannot wait to see what all is accomplished in the year to come!

I will continue to post various Art news online over the summer, so stay tuned and use this time away from school to make Art!