After naming various known Memphis landmarks, we took a 'field trip' to Memphis, via Google Earth. Then we visited David Lynch's website, observed the work and discussed the differences between what we saw on our field trip and the artist's representation. The kids were more than excited, they were engaged... best of all the content stuck! Check out the tour below for a quick peek.
It has been a while since I posted any new content but my classroom has been busy nonetheless. This quarter, we are studying the art of Memphis painter, David Lynch. Before viewing the work, we had a fantastic group discussion about cities and about what one might find when visiting such places. Given that our school is in a rural location outside Memphis, only about half of the students had actually visited the city. After naming various known Memphis landmarks, we took a 'field trip' to Memphis, via Google Earth. Then we visited David Lynch's website, observed the work and discussed the differences between what we saw on our field trip and the artist's representation. The kids were more than excited, they were engaged... best of all the content stuck! Check out the tour below for a quick peek.
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SpellingCityVocabulary is an important part of learning in the art room. We spend part of every class reviewing art terms and academic vocabulary. As a parent and a teacher, I struggle with ways to motivate some children to learn new words. SpellingCity.com is fun site which may encourage youngsters to spend time learning important words through games such as "hang mouse" and crossword puzzles. Teachers or parents simply type in the list of words and students can click on the "Teach Me" button to hear words pronounced, spelled and used in a sentence. Or click on the "Play a Game" button to interact with the new words in a fun and meaningful way. Once a student is ready, click on the "Test Me" button to take a test and then review the words missed. Teachers and parents may also print handwriting sheets. This is a great site to add to your classroom centers or "at home" studies! Developing a web site for my art classroom has been on my ‘to-do’ list since I returned to teaching one year ago. Instead, I ended up feeling a little like a newbie and spent most of my time planning, prepping, fundraising, and organizing for all of my little artists. The web site took a back seat. This fall, I decided the web page was a must and I set out to have it complete (or nearly so) before the first day of school. The web site www.mrschristopher.com includes standard information such as class rules and grading policy as well as a student art gallery. I have also included a teacher blog and wish list. Not only have I received great feedback from teachers and parents but also, in only three days, parents have responded with bags of donations for our creative classroom! What great support – why didn’t I think of this last year? The teacher blog will be updated weekly with information about our featured artist, class projects, photos, local art events and fundraiser information. Next week, I will share the site with my students and encourage them to explore the pages, visit the links and respond by commenting on the blog. For student safety, I have set comments on the blog to require teacher approval prior to posting. Later this fall, I hope to begin an “Art Tech Club” and I will be adding additional pages to showcase our art with technology. Web pages are becoming more and more popular among teachers and are often taking the place of newsletters. In a country where so much emphasis is placed on standardized tests, the Internet provides art teachers like me an opportunity to get a little PR! It is the perfect place to show the world that critical thinking, problem solving and cooperative learning does take place in the arts – at least it does in my room and I can’t wait to brag about it ☺ Image Chef is a neat little web tool that converts your text into a graphic image. It is different from Wordle because the words do not change size with the frequency of use. The niche is the shape of the graphic; all text is fitted inside the shape. Classroom teachers could use this in a number of ways: as graphic organizers, visual reminders for phonics, brainstorms, etc. Image Chef offers a number of tools. Click on "create" then "word mosaic." When questioned about assessment in the art room I often answer "we never stop learning. This much learning can only be assessed through continuous observation. Why don't you come by for a visit?" Like most art teachers, I display student work in the school hallways yet, the final art product is ONLY one component to art education. So many concepts are integrated into each and every learning activity, it may be hard to know where to begin with formative assessment - and honestly, I am looking for fun and creative forms of assessment! Aren't we all? I have just begun recording student responses but you will get the idea... have fun viewing and listening to the VoiceThread. Don't forget to check back once we return from spring break to hear from more of my students! "Droplet" My journey with Web 2.0 began in May, 2008. I began this blog, started experimenting with some really cool tools and found pockets of people - no not pockets - corners of the world filled with people who have similar professional interests. I have always loved technology, and I have specifically favored image manipulation software such as Photoshop. Lately however, I have discovered some of the technological wonders that exist outside artistic and visual design software. Holy Cow – it is a whole new world out there! In summary, it seems that developers and the public have decided that the benefits of sharing information far out weigh the benefit of receiving 100% credit. Remember the saying; “Two heads are better than one?” With the current Web2.0 technologies, we have thousands if not millions of heads collaborating – all for the purpose of improving information, software and technology. New ideas tend to surface when debate and collaboration take place and Web2.0 makes it possible to collaborate with anyone, anywhere, any time about anything – usually for free. Pretty cool. |
Angela V. ChristopherArtist, Mother, Teacher, Geek Check out my other sites:
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