Class Flag Winners

I am thoroughly enjoying being back in school M-F because I forgot how awesome it felt to FLY through projects. Students have already completed their first Draw Something, the personality map, class flag, Elements of Art presentations, and started their first doodle calendar! I will be updating artwork on the Virtual Art Show over the long weekend, so be sure to check back. 

Students were divided into small groups this week to become "experts" on one of the seven Elements of Art. Once they conducted a little bit of research on their element, they created a slideshow to present their findings to the class, as a way to put all the information together like a jigsaw puzzle. Presentations were started today, but will have to be completed when we get back on Wednesday.

Each class had outstanding class flag submissions, making it very difficult to vote for a winning design. I really loved being able to see the collaboration occur in the classroom - I missed the sound of students busy at work! After looking at everyone's personality maps, we created a list of shared interests that the class had in common in order to start establishing our class culture. Groups were instructed to use the class color and the list of interests to create a flag that displayed the things that matter to us most. Here are the winning designs (the others will be included in the Virtual Art Show):

March Update

 Hello! Every semester I post that I want to update my blog biweekly and every semester I post this same message saying that I keep forgetting to make posts! I'm changing things up and I'm writing this post on a Tuesday so that I don't forget to add one on Friday.

We have been BUSY in creative arts and I&I this semester! Hybrid is in full-swing and students are doing an outstanding job navigating the virtual and in-person classroom. Due to some snow days at the beginning of the term, Red & Blue classes are a week behind Orange & Purple classes, but it hasn't stopped us from making some awesome art! I'll post some examples below, but I'm also working on putting together the start to our spring Virtual Art Show. 

So far this term, students have shared a bit about themselves by creating Personality Maps. 

 Then we discussed "culture" and how a culture is established when a group of people share common interests/beliefs. Each creative arts class has their very own culture, so after a great discussion of what students value most, classes created and voted on a class flag. Here are the winning flags:

In a mini-project, students were introduced to one of my favorite artists, Kehinde Wiley, and practiced portrait drawing with decorative backgrounds, like his artwork. This assignment introduced many students to digital art, and I am beyond impressed with these drawings! 

Most recently, students have been learning about the Elements of Art. Students completed a PlayPosit to learn the definitions, a scavenger hunt to find examples, and finally created an artwork that demonstrated their understanding of all 7 elements. I love this project because it is completely open-ended and students are able to draw whatever they are interested in. Two classes have finished this project entirely, and two others are finishing it up this week.

To start off each class, students work on Doodle Calendars. Some days we don't have any drawing on our agenda, so I want to be able to offer this creative outlet as the start to every class. So far the prompts have been fun holidays in February and March, and the doodles students have been coming up with are extremely creative! Many students are working digitally on Kami (or their own digital program), while others are drawing their doodle calendars on paper.

I hope to start regularly updating my blog, but for more frequent updates, follow me on Twitter and Instagram! Since March is Youth Art Month, I've been posting artwork from both first semester and current students on Twitter to celebrate all my talented students. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend perusing the galleries on the Delaplaine website - the Youth Art Month exhibitions are top notch!

And the winners are...

 This week students voted on which flag they wanted to represent their class. It was very challenging for students to pick a winner because ALL the flags were OUTSTANDING! The winning flags are now proudly displayed as the course icon in Schoology. Here are the final flags for each class:

Red Class - made by Blake, Ellis, and Josh

Orange Class - made by Michelle, Callan, Jessica

Blue Class - made by Cadia, Mason G, Izzy

Purple Class - made by Martin, Silas, Gus

Are you able to tell what values each class hold most important? These four flags were chosen due to their creativity and excellent display of our class values & interests. All of the flags are featured on the virtual art show (click the tab at the top of the blog).

I received a ton of positive feedback from students after this project. I am so happy to be able to provide my students with a way to collaborate with classmates, even at a distance! I am going to craft up some more great projects that incorporate collaboration because they did a fantastic job of it and it is so nice to be able to communicate with friends!

Virtual Class Flags

 I always begin creative arts with a class flag project. Typically students come up with a design as a class, and then everyone creates a drawing that represents something important that the whole class values. Since we aren't meeting in person this semester, students are working to create a digital class flag, and so far I am beyond impressed with their collaboration skills!

We started the week off with a pear deck and discussion on culture - first reflecting on cultures we belong to and then looking at similarities between us that help create our class culture. I put students in teams of 3 and 4 and this is where the fun began: the challenge is to create a flag that represents our class culture using a Google slide and communicating only through chat boxes. I was so proud to see how well the members of each group were able to communicate their thoughts so clearly and share responsibilities in searching for items to include in their flag. Here are a few screenshots of the process:

Next week students are going to complete their flags and fill out a short artist statement explaining how the flag represents our class as a whole. The final step is to vote for the flag students like best and the winning flag will be proudly displayed as our Schoology image! I cannot wait to see how these flags turn out next week. Stay tuned!

Kaleidoscope Name Design

This week was filled with a lot of art-making! On Monday we looked at examples of Islamic art and learned about radial balance - a type of balance where elements are radiating from a center point and the weight is equally distributed around the center. Each day this week the warm-up prompts related to radial balance to reinforce the concept. Students demonstrated their understanding of radial balance by creating a kaleidoscopic image of their name by tracing a stencil of their name as a flipped tessellation. I've been sharing in-progress photos this week of this fantastic project - each name kaleidoscope looks completely different!

Now that students have created the image, they are working on coloring the artwork using a combination of harmonious colors - colors that have a pleasing appearance.

I will post more pictures all next week and add completed artworks to the Virtual Art Show! The Virtual Art Show is where I showcase student work. There is a tab at the top of my blog where you can click to see the slideshow for my current classes and also the slideshows from all my previous students. Students can look at the slideshows from last semester/last year to preview some of the artworks they will be able to complete while in creative arts. The first thing I am going to upload to the Virtual Art Show are the class flags. It is great to have so much artwork on my walls!

Happy Valentine's Day & enjoy the three day weekend!