Wednesday, 25 September 2013

Foothills Elementary School - Grade Two

 I had the opportunity of going to Foothills Elementary school today and I'd like to share some of the grade two's fine art.  The teacher guided the students in developing learning intentions and criterias for their art.  I took pictures of four students' art work with the teacher's permission of course.


Learning Intention and Criteria

Unique and talented art by grade two students

1 comment:

  1. What a great idea to take a photo of both the learning intentions and the artwork! This art is vivid and although it follows an example closely, there is still some indiviidual variation to talk about. On our "what to say about kids's art" topic, I would have everyone look at these art works together and draw their attention to different parts. For example, which tree do you notice most? Why? (bottom right, because the orange is darker than the blue used for the sky). Which sky do you notice most? How did the artist make that happen? (bottom left, darker shade of blue for the sky). Notice how this artist made the colour so thick that hardly any white showed through - do we still think that good colouring has to have the strokes go all in one direction? In which picture do you notice the shadow the most? Why (top left - much daker green than the green mixed with yellow). What have we learned about working with oil pastels? (that is, what we do with pastels that we can't do with crayons, pencil crayons, or markers?) Notice the special things that pastels can do being used in these pictures - mixing colours in top and bottom left and smudging colours together in bottom right. Notice the solid colour with no strokes showing in the sky in the top right picture (is it finished? For context, show some Van Gogh, where the brush strokes going in different directions are what make it great art!). This is the kind of conversation that you can have with kids about their art work. After they (and you) have some experience, you can ask them what they notice about the group of art works and note when they talk about the elements or new techniques. So you can guide a group of kids toward more sophisticated criteria over time - i.e. reconsider the opinion about "good" colouring, add a new criteria for trying a new technique. You get the picture???

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