Viewing and Writing About Art: A Language Arts Formative Assessment For All!

I'm so excited to share this neat writing/language arts activity I learned about at a recent conference! I really think it has TONS of great uses! 

I'd like to thank Robin Perringer, art teacher at Nashua High School, for sharing this with me. She uses this with her high school students as a formative assessment--she mentioned she uses this in her ceramics class, but says you can use this with any of your students at any age level or with work they've created themselves or work by someone else (famous or not).

NOTE: Do not tell your students they will be writing poetry! :-) My experience has been that a scant few will be excited, but many will either go pale with shock and start stressing right away or exclaim "no!" and refuse to create a "silly" (or whatever creative adjective they can think of) poem! ;-) Once they are done, the students are always so blown away by the awesome writing they've done.

Georgia O'Keefe, Cow's Skull with Calico Roses, 1931

Here's how it works:

1. Have your students look at a piece of artwork. This can be a piece they've finished (or think they've finished), someone else's work in the class, or a famous work of art.

2. Have your students create the following:

• Line 1: A creative name for the piece
• Line 2: An action phrase based on what you see
• Line 3: A simile or metaphor that describes the place/location/character or object
• Line 4: Another title, but simpler

And there you have it--an awesome "poem" and a sneaky way to check your student's understanding and get them thinking and talking about art!

Here's an example using an image by Georgia O'Keefe...

Smooth Porcelain Petals

Clutching, Hanging, Captured

Cold, like the dessert night.

Bone White.

I'm definitely putting this in my toolbox for future classes! ENJOY!

A Project That Really ROCKS!

I'm a little behind with my postings, but I wanted to share this great project I did with my after school "Spring Into Art" class for Mother's Day. Not only is this a great project to show mom you care, it's great for pretty much anytime! I mean, who doesn't like painted rocks, wire sculpture and poetry?!? ;-)

This piece was made for me by my 4th grade son.
He enjoyed this project and liked writing the poem about me
(to read it, scroll down).

I linked this project to nature, of course, and Alexander Calder, since the wire portion reminded me of his stabiles and standing mobiles. Check out this one at his website, www.calder.org:

This project can take off in a variety of directions: you could skip the poem and focus on creating a mobile-like structure where students explore balance, or you could use wood or foam core for the base, or mount the poem or a famous quote to the base…it is really up to you! Although the poetry piece makes a great integrated arts project.

Here are the directions for the version we did…Enjoy!

Rockin' Stabiles

Supplies Needed:

• A rock the size of a softball, or so…
• Acrylic paints
• Paint brushes, water buckets, paper plate palettes, newspaper
• Medium gauge copper wire (I think ours was 24 gauge, but check to see what works for you)
• Wire cutters
• Poem/Thank You Note Worksheets
• Pencils
• Plain white index cards (we used 4"x 6" ones)
• Fine point Sharpies
• Pretty colored paper or card stock (optional)
• Glue Sticks
• Scissors
• Craft foam scraps
• Hole punch

Directions:

1. Select a nice rock for your base, brush it off and paint it with the acrylics. Let dry.

2. Choose a poem/thank you note worksheet to work with. I downloaded the Diamante template from www.ReadWriteThink.org for the students to use. I encouraged the older students (4th grade) to use those. For the younger students and ones who struggle with writing, I let them write a thank you note to their mom. I provided a template for the thank you note as well, to prompt them a bit. As a mom, either writing is appreciated! 

My son wrote this about me:

Brandie

Beautiful, Awesome

Cleaning, Cooking, Vacuuming

You are very awesome.

Resting, Eating, Playing

Cool, Calm

Mom

3. Once the students were done their writing, I proofread them (although I let some of the creative spelling go sometimes because it was just so darn cute!). Transfer the writing to the index cards using Sharpies to make a nice-looking final copy.

4. Glue the index cards with the final writing onto a pretty piece of paper to create a nice border around the poem.

5. Cut a piece of wire to about 36" long. Wrap the wire around the rock a couple of times and twist the ends. One end can be a spiral to hold the poem you've written, the other end can curl out and around like the arm on Calder's work. You can cut smaller pieces of wire to make a mobile-type structure at this time, but I had students cut a shape from craft foam, punch a hole in it, and hang the shape from the arm.

6. Place the poem/thank you note in the spiral portion of the stabile (you may need to secure the note on the back with a bit of tape).

Enjoy!

My other son, who is in first grade, was finding it hard to write that day,
so he painted the rock and created the wire heart sculpture instead.

A Gem of an Illustration!

Here's an integrated arts project that is good if you have only a bit of time, but you're looking to create a display or short poetry book. I designed it with middle school students in mind and it is meant to be done in two class periods (give or take)...you know your students best, so adjust accordingly.

The writing:
With this project, students create diamante poems about two very different things. For my example, my son and I chose to write a poem about school versus vacation (we're on spring break now and loving it!). A diamante poem is a great way to write about two contrasting things and the poem actually is in a diamond shape when you are done. It doesn't take long to write a diamante poem and www.ReadWriteThink.org has a diamante poem interactive you can use with your students (flash required) and it will prompt them through the writing if it. Or you can use more traditional means such a a worksheet.

Diamante poems are also a good test of your students' ability to recognize and use proper word choice and parts of speech since there is a particular format students need to use when creating a diamante poem. ReadWriteThink also has a rubric for the writing portion of the lesson.

Once your students create their poems, you can print directly from ReadWriteThink (or you can have them type it up in word or handwrite the poems). I printed ours out from the ReadWriteThink site.

The illustrating:
Then have your students brainstorm about ways they could illustrate the first concept of their poems--in our case, it's "School Days." Then, have them brainstorm ways they could illustrate the final thought of their poem, again, in our case it is "Vacation." For time's sake, I'm was thinking abstract, maybe bringing in abstract artists and color field artists would be a great tie to this lesson. I also wanted the artwork to be dry (not water-based) so students could create and didn't have to wait for watercolors to dry...although, if I had more time, I would love to have students create their own papers for this using tempera paint or watercolors.

Give each student an 8" square piece of white construction paper (I chose that size because I knew the finished piece would fit in my laminator and I wanted to make a book with the final illustrated poems, but you can choose any size you wish).

Have the students fold their square in half, open it up, and turn the paper so that the fold is the "horizon line." Have students use collage techniques such as tearing, cutting, layering and gluing papers to create two very different "feeling" backgrounds abstractly illustrating the two contrasting concepts from their poems.

In our case, we glued rows and rows of text that had little editing marks on them in the dreaded "red pen" of the editor. This is because both my son and I have been focusing a lot on writing and editing lately in our schoolwork. For the lower portion of our background, we ripped and glued layers of paper to look like waves and a beach because we'd rather be there right now! I then broke the rules I bit and added some torn paper clouds to the upper portion. I think I'll add a kite, too, later...Anyway, lastly, we glued down our poem. The diamond shape of the poem works well to cut the background in half.

Make sure your students title their poems--ours is "School Daze," and write "written and illustrated by:" with their names somewhere on the piece...I didn't, sorry!

Ta-da! You are done. Great for a bulletin board display or a class book of poetry.

ENJOY!

And thank you to Steph I. at Plymouth State University for being the inspiration for this project! :-)

Summertime! At least for a few more weeks here in NH!

I try to keep my children's reading, writing, and math skills up over the summer. We start out strong, but I must say, I have had to "renegotiate" the summer contracts with my children this year. This is a skill that now makes me ready for the United Nations!

Anyway, I had my middle son write some poetry, type it into the computer, and then illustrate it. Since his poem was about "Summertime," he decided to do a variation of the flip flop collage project I posted about here.

He had a great time writing this, typing it in, and creating the 3D flip flops--especially when he found the minions in an ad = instant minion flip flops!

This would be a great sneaky project to get your kids to do a bit of writing before the end of the summer while preserving those summer memories. Or, if you are a teacher, it's a great welcome back project for integrating art and language arts!

Enjoy the rest of YOUR summer!