African Musical Performances

It has been entirely too long since my last post! We just finished up our unit on African music & dance, where we combined visual art, dance, and drumming to create group performances. My last post discussed the creation of the Djembe drums with papier-mâché; they turned out beautiful! Groups collaborated to plan for the paintings on the drums, choosing a design that shows cohesion. Some groups wanted their decorations to be alike, some chose one element to repeat throughout the designs, and one group even created an entire scene when their drums were put together! I had students use acrylic paint this semester versus the tempera paint last semester used, which yielded much nicer results. The colors are so much brighter and covered the newspaper fully.

 

Check out the Virtual Art Show for many more beautiful drums! For the performances to take place, students had a dance lesson on some traditional African dance moves. They combined some traditional steps with popular dance moves to create their routine that went with their drum rhythm. The students had a blast coming up with routines and sharing them with their classmates. I will need permission from students, but I should be posting some snippets on Twitter to share what they came up with. 

Next, students are working together to discuss our classroom culture, taking a closer look at what we all hold special to ourselves and how we may share that with one another. I didn't create class flags at the beginning of this semester because I was so excited to jump into our first project (and get to know everyone's names through it), so we will be creating our class flags right before Spring Break. I will post an update next week to show off symbols for the class flags!

Djembe Drums

Last week students were introduced to Design an Ad, a contest through The Frederick News Post. The great thing about this contest is that each class is competing with only themselves, so someone from every group wins! The winning advertisements will be printed in a special publication in the FNP on May 8th. Students worked on their artwork during the latter half of the week and will continue their artwork throughout the month of March in between activities. On Monday, students were introduced to their next unit, the African Musical Performance. This is a fun one for the students because they are combining visual arts, dance, and music into one! Yesterday, the students created armatures for their miniature Djembe drums and today began to add papier-mâché. I was so pleased with how smoothly clean-up ran today because one of my two sinks were out of commission! Most students completed one layer of papier-mâché today, so we are on track to start painting mid-week next week.

A Full Week!

It was so great to finally have a five-day week last week! With five straight days of school, students accomplished quite a bit! At the beginning of the week, students added their finishing touches to their Elements of Art Compositions (pictures will be added to the virtual art show later this week). We devoted a lot of time discussing how to write a proper artist statement. Artists write about their artwork after each visual art project for a number of reasons: to reflect on the project, to explain their intentions behind creating their artwork, and most importantly, to reinforce their ELA skills! Students will have one more day to finish up their artist statements, and then it's on to our next unit!

Snow Day Craziness

It has been difficult getting through these creative arts projects because we've been missing so much school due to the snow and ice! This elements of art project has taken a little longer than expected, but students have been coming up with some creative compositions! The project is going to come to an end on Tuesday, so stay tuned for an update of the Virtual Art Show. For now, I'll post some in-progress and completed works.

I &I students have been working on an innovation project called Nailed It! In teams of two, they are coming up with a play to innovate an existing product to enhance it in some way. The last couple of days, the groups have been working on filling out a patent form and creating a technical drawing of their design. Next week, we'll discuss hot glue safety and review utility knife safety, and students will be able to construct a prototype! I will certainly have more pictures of this project next week once students start building.

Elements of Art

This was another short week due to snow, but we had enough time for students to review the Elements of Art! I call it a review because these are concepts that every student first learns in elementary school, and we are conducting lessons to help reactivate this information in our brains. The past three years I have had students take notes while I stand around and basically lecture, providing examples of the elements through little pictures. The lesson wasn't so exciting for students, so I decided to make a change and I put together a digital scavenger hunt! First students watched a video that described each of the seven elements. Then, following the prompts of the sequential slides, students either typed in the definition or they were searching for imagery that demonstrated the element. I am beyond proud of the examples that these students were able to uncover! Once students completed the scavenger hunt, they started working on sketches and rough drafts to plan for their Elements of Art Composition, where they must demonstrate the 7 Elements of Art through subject matter of their choosing. Some artists are choosing to divide their paper into sections devoted specifically to one element, while others are creating a cohesive composition that subtly incorporates all seven elements. After the long weekend, we're going to get started on our final artwork. Students can use colored pencil, pencil, marker, or crayon to complete their artwork and show off their knowledge of the elements!

One Project Down!

Semester II creative arts students completed their their first project on Friday! I am updating the Virtual Art Show now to display some of their kaleidoscopes. I can't wait to decorate my classroom with their artwork when we finally return to school after all this snow and ice. On Friday students wrote an artist statement on their artwork. This was many students' first time writing an artist statement, and we're going to spend some time in the next few weeks perfecting the art of artist statements.

For our next project, students are going to learn about the Elements of Art. I've set up a digital scavenger hunt for them to complete to practice finding the different elements in artwork and photographs. After the scavenger hunt, students are going to create a choice-based artwork using dry media that displays the seven elements. I'll continue to post photos on social media of the students and their artwork. If you're not following me already, add me!

Twitter: @StrasserArt_OMS / Instagram: @MsStrasserArt_FCPS

Stay warm out there!

Wayang Kulit

During the first week of the new semester, my current I&I students presented their Indonesian Wayang Kulit they created during CA. I am so sad that I was absent the last two days of Term II, resulting in students not being able to present their hard work, but I know they all enjoyed the creation process. I'm including a few images from some of the performances below. Tonight I'm going to put together some short videos to share on Twitter, so stay tuned!