Art Values and Rules

I spent the summer looking at my class and my curriculum but one thing that I did was read the book Discipline with Dignity. It changed my thinking about how to run my classroom. I always thought that I had to not smile until after Christmas break and that all rules are non-negotiable. If you break a rule 3 times its a detention, etc. etc. The problem was that I don't fit that mold. Discipline with Dignity gave me back my personality and my own way to run my classroom. I love it.

I discussed with my classes that I value, Safety, Respect, Responsibility, Creativity and Hard work. But that I also value them and I want them to have a say in the rules in my classroom. We did a chalk talk to express our ideas and then I wrote them down.

Here's our classroom rules from Fall 2015 and Winter 2016

 

If a student does break these rules, he may find the following are the consequences. I will determine each consequence at the time of the incident. I will be fair but not always the same. As we know students don't learn the same way when taking in classroom information, they also don't learn rules the same way. Some consequences may work perfectly for one student but not for another. 

Here are some examples of possible consequences:

• Clean up duty (students will come at lunch to clean up)
• Stay after class 5 mins
• Lunch detention in detention room
• Lunch detention with Mrs. Tillman
• Stay after school to work on missing work
• Roll play correct behavior
• Write an apology note
• Explain in a short written paragraph the reason why we have the rule
• Conference with the asst. principal &/or principal
• After school detention
• Refocus ticket

8th Grade Fingerprint self-portraits

For this project I really wanted something for the students who struggle to see themselves as amazing. I really started looking at work like this when I had a student who was out last year and I needed to write projects that could be made at home but I also wanted something for the student that left and impression for them. Something he could work on that made an important impact on who they are. As middle school students I sometimes feel that they focus a lot on them self but that they don't actually see all of the good things. In this project we focused on hundreds of attributes that describe a person. I then had them highlight their most favorite these would be used in their piece in a way that stood out for everyone to see. We then looked very closely at our own fingerprints. I would suggest printing the print on a balloon and blowing it up for all to see the details but we made do without that accommodation. After studying our fingerprints we sketched them and then redrew them for our final design. Once all of our lines were drawn in we traced them using our attributes and then added color.

Purpose of the project:
 - To teach students that words can be used to create art (typography)
 - As a reflective tool for students to observe their personality qualities and what attributes describe themselves.

 - To highlight their best attributes and shine a light on how amazing they truly are.

Students were graded on the following criteria:
 - The student has used words to create a line

 - They have included personal attributes that describe them self and have highlighted their certain attributes in a creative and unique way.

 - The student has a design that resembles their own fingerprint 

 - Craftsmanship: Make sure that their picture is done neatly.
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This year I decided to try this project with my 7th grade students. It worked out nicely and we had some really nice and successful images. As happens every year I found that the students really struggled to think of things to say about themselves but eventually we able to come up with plenty of positive things. As always we had many awesome projects.

7th Grade Lego Self-Portrait

This is such a fun project that I enjoy doing with my students. Not only is this a fun project but this is a great way to begin looking at the basic shapes of the body. I begin by discussing the different shapes of the body and then showing the drawing figure that I have. Then we begin discussing and walking through how to draw this person. Unfortunately, this year I had to have a sub teach the lesson but it seems that my students did an awesome job anyways.

                          Nanano U                              Mariana C                           Soshi A

                           Sara H                                     Sophie N                           Marissa W

Purpose of the project:
 - To teach students that shapes can be used in the creation of a person or object.
 - As a reflective tool for students to observe their personality qualities and how                                       they are perceived.

Students were graded on the following criteria:
 - The student has used basic shapes to draw a lego like person
 - They have included personal attribute on their person (like glasses, favorite sweater, etc) and have       colored the person.

What I believe as an educator...

I can't really say much more than that I agree wholeheartedly with this blog post and I really wanted to share it with the parents of my students. I don't believe that I could say it better than Dr. Justin Tarte says it on October 17th, 2014 in his post  "What if this was your district's grading policy?" . The thing is I work in an amazing district and it is our grading policy. It's much longer and has a lot more words, but we are lucky that this is our grading policy and this is what we really and truly believe at a district level. I am proud to work for this district that I do. As one of my wise students said today "As long as you're learning, it doesn't matter how."

3-D Name Designs 8th Grade

Well I am back from my week long hiatus with my sick son. He is doing much better but we still struggle every night and he is definitely worn out by the end of the day. I am definitely looking forward to the days of finally being able to sleep through the night.

I am proud to post these wonderful 8th grade pictures of their 3-D pieces and apologize for not getting them posted sooner.

For this project we made the letters in our names look 3-D. The inspiration for this project was from this video on YouTube How to Draw 3D letters. Then we carefully copied the process using our own names. This proved to be a difficult experience and took many sheets of paper to finally get the perfect letter.  Here are some of the students who worked tirelessly at getting their name perfect. I am impressed with how well they did. Every student should be proud of their work on this project as it was a hard one to start the year with.

   

Students were graded on the following criteria:
  - Did the letters look 3-D, were the lines drawn correctly for the illusion
  - Craftsmanship (was it done neatly)

Graffiti Name Assignments - 6th Grade

Well I have finally gotten almost all of my 6th graders Graffiti assignments graded. This was a huge task and most of the students didn't write their names on the back of the assignments but isn't that the life of a teacher, we eventually figure out where these assignment go. It appears that we are doing a much better job on our 2nd assignment. I love teaching the graffiti process, first as it teaches the students how to start basic drawing skills. We discuss how to first write you letter, then draw around it, and then finally design your letter to make it look artistic. This year I didn't talk about how to color but I was amazed as this was the best year of work I have ever had from my 6th grade students. I am very excited and totally impressed. Here is a small sampling of the amazing work. As always please check out my Twitter page for more amazing student work.

Op Art Names - 7th Grade

Every year I like to start the students with a Name project. This works best with the 6th grade graders and the new students but also helps my scattered brain remember all the names I misplaced over the summer. Yes, I often misplace names in my brain but I do have a retrieval issue that has plagued me all my life. I doesn't mean that I don't love my students I truly do I just have an issue that sometimes doesn't allow me to pull the names of students quickly and easily. My family notices this mostly in form of please pass the red stuff on the table meaning the ketchup.

For this assignment I followed the same directions that I used for the Op Art Names, however, I changed it up some and had the students draw their initials instead of their hands. Students drew their names using our graffiti letter technique. We discussed keeping the letters separated and not have them overlap to keep the illusion of depth. We also discuss how to draw long curved lines for the long parts of the letter.  Then using markers and a ruler they drew straight lines until they hit the outline of their letter, at that point they bent the line to make it look like it was traveling over their shape. For ease we started by drawing a bunch of lines in one color, at various distances on our paper, then switch to another color. By trying to alternate each color constantly across the page it takes too much time and tends to get frustrating but by jumping around with the colors the projects seemed to go faster and was more successful.

Nikolay S. 

 Amber S.

Students were graded on the following criteria:
  - Did the lines gently bend over their letter did the letter pop out.
  - CRAFTSMANSHIP (was it done neatly)