McKenzie Robinson's Arts Bridge Experience

For their final project, the students participated in their school's "Art and Math" night. They set up their artwork around the classroom, and I wrote little descriptions of each project for their parents to see. Many of the kids brought their families into the classroom and walked them around, explaining what they had learned. It was so rewarding for me to see how excited they were to show their parents what they had made. They were most excited about their islands, and wanted to tell their families about every detail of them. They even were excited to talk about the pieces their classmates had created. I love how confident children were about their work - they were not apologetic about it at all. They did not overthink things or worry that they were not good enough, they were just excited to express their individual ideas. I really have learned so much from these students, and from teaching them about art. It has been a wonderful experience for me! I have been reminded of the reasons that I love art, and I have been able to improve my ability to plan, teach, and help them stretch their creativity. I hope to have more teaching opportunities like this one in the future.

For our last lesson, I wanted them to experience creating something as a group. We also hadn't gone over texture yet, so I wanted to introduce them to that as well. We had to do this all in one visit, but I still think it was a good experience for the kids, and they were able to do something a little different than their previous projects. This did take a little more prep time, since we didn't have a lot of class time.

The kids have been learning about Christmas traditions around the world, so I wanted to work with that for our December projects. The first project was fun, but I was able to see a lot of ways that I could improve for the next one.

First, I asked them what they've learned this week about Christmas in Germany and Australia. I read them "The Elves and the Shoemaker" since it is a German folktale. We talked about the benefits of service - how the elves used their talents to help the Shoemaker, and in return the Shoemaker and his wife made them clothes. We talked about using our art to do an act of service for someone.

I gave each child a half sheet of white paper, and had them make a pattern on it. I should have spent more time going over what patterns are and possible shapes and lines to use in their patterns, but we were running short on time because the book took longer than I thought.

Luckily, their patterns turned still turned out pretty good and the kids were really creative with them. They then cut elf legs (long rectangles) out of their patterns and glued them onto their cards with elf shoes, which I had made earlier to save time. When they finished, they wrote their cards to give to someone as an act of service.

This was a fun project, but afterwards Cindy and I talked about doing something more creative with them (not so cookie-cutter). I realized that I should have spent more time on the skill they were learning about, so I implemented that into our next project. This is how some of their elf cards turned out!

I was so excited to have my first actual teaching visit this last Friday! It was a lot of fun and a great learning experience in what works with these second graders and what I can improve on for my future lessons. The class has been learning about how characters in stories are feeling and how they react based on those emotions, so for this project I wanted to build off of that and teach them how to use lines and color to show emotion. I wasn't sure if this would be too easy or too hard for second graders since I hadn't taught them yet, but it ended up being a great concept to cover for their age level. There were some parts of this that I would change if I were to do this lesson again, but some parts that worked really well.






Content Covered: Language Arts
State Standards and Objectives:
-Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.
-Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.
Learning Outcomes: The student will be able to recognize the meaning of details in illustrations and how the illustrations contribute to the text.

Content Covered: Color, Line, Design
State Standards and Objectives:
-Use color to show mood and emotions.
-Show emotions and facial expressions using line.
Combine and overlap shapes.
Learning Outcomes: The student will be able to use color and line to convey different emotions.


Materials Needed:
-"Glad Monster Sad Monster" book by Ed Emberley and Anne Miranda
-Paper plates
-Colored Construction Paper
-Scissors
-Gluesticks
-Crayons
-Popsicle sticks