Spooky Radio Plays

 I am having an absolute ball listening to all of the radio plays! My students have blown me away their with creative stories and their ability to take on such diverse characters. I have uploaded several radio plays to the Virtual Art Show - please check them out!! A handful of students took on the challenge of creating an advertisement for their radio play as well, a few of which I am posting below. Enjoy!

Happy Friday!

Orange and Purple classes got to share their hard work with their classmates today - we listened to radio plays! I am so impressed by all of the radio plays I have heard so far. Each story is unique and students demonstrated their creative sides through their voice acting skills and Foley. I have uploaded some of the radio plays to my virtual art show already - check them out! Next week Red and Blue classes will be finishing their radio plays, so I will add a few more performances to the slideshow next Friday.

With the time we had left, students played the Bob Ross inspired quick-draw game Happy Little Accidents, where they are given a word and a scribble, and must doodle the image in 60 seconds! Students always have a blast with this game, showing off their digital drawing skills and their innovative designs.

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!

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!

Winding down

I can't believe that we only have seven more classes together! Students are spending the last days of the semester working on a collaborative puppet show inspired by Indonesian Wayang Kulit. Over the next four days, groups will be writing scripts and creating shadow puppets out of poster board. The last three days of the semester will be devoted to sharing the puppet shows with their classmates. This is always such a fun and creative end to the semester, so I look forward to seeing what students will come up with!

ALSO, the Virtual Art Show has finally been updated! You can see highlights from the last several projects. I'm so proud of the creativity my students have shown this semester. You rock!

Week Three

A lot has occurred in the art room this week! I posted earlier this week about the Balance drawings students were working on and they are now complete and will be uploaded to the Virtual Art Show this weekend (as well as more images of the class flags). I believe I've said it before, but the VAS is used to showcase strong examples from each project and I try to take photos of everyone's artwork at least once.

Thursday students wrote their first artist statement. I explained to them that artists will generally write a few paragraphs about their artwork if they are exhibiting it in a gallery explaining to the viewers their thoughts about their work and why they created in. In creative arts, students will write an artist statement after every project for a few reasons: 1) To let the viewer know about their intent for creating their artwork. 2) To show me what they've learned about the culture or content we studied in order to create this artwork. 3) To further practice their ELA writing skills. Creative arts is a class that ties in to just about every other middle school content area, so I try to make the connections clear to my students!

I'm including a few photographs of completed drawings. I have a handful of students who are not quite finished, so I will be pulling them for ELT next week to provide them additional time to complete their drawings.

 

I'm excited for students to dive into their next project, the Kaleidoscope Name Drawing next week. Check out my social media pages for images of their progress throughout next week!

Week three of I&I had students building and testing their marshmallow launchers. I was impressed by the many different designs students came up with, all of which were successful! You can see some images and videos of the marshmallow launchers on my Instagram @msstrasserart_fcps. This was students' first experience using a design log and working through the design process. Thursday most students began working on a design process playlist, a mini-project that I'm excited for students to work through. The playlist allows for students to experience several different design challenges at their own pace and even selecting which order they would like to complete them in. Most of the lessons in I&I are designed for students to conduct their own research and spearhead their own learning, allowing for students to take their time and work at their own pace. Look for more snapshots on Instagram and Twitter as they begin sketching and building!