Value Presentation

Click here to see a presentation I made with Google Presentation on colour value. I will be using this presentation during my practicum.

Prince George Model

Yesterday (or actually, two days ago now but it still feels like Friday to me today), I blogged about art demo lessons my class presented in our 'season' teams on September 30. Today, I wanted to make note about the 'winter' team's lesson prepared for us because it was very engaging. They brought in objects from nature like pine cones, bark, and sticks, as well as art supplies such as plasticine and pipe cleaners, and had us, in our 'season' team groups, to construct a representation of anything we wanted. They gave us a sheet of card-stock to make our models on top of. My group decided to make a model of Prince George. We started by drawing the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers the city is built around on the card-stock and then proceeded to design our model from there. The model had little plasticine rabbits, a couple foxes, Mr. PG, and coniferous and deciduous trees. It also had the Exploration Place, the Two Rivers Art Gallery, and a parking lot for visitors who go to those places.

Here is a photograph of my 'spring' team with our model of Prince George:

I really like this activity because of its collaborative nature. Because we were doing art in a group, we had to be cooperative and respectful of each other's ideas and creations. I think this activity would be great in a classroom with younger students because they would have to work on these qualities and there is also the potential they could learn from each other's strengths. I also think using different materials would make the project enjoyable for students. Very cool art lesson, 'winter' team!

Art Lesson Demo

On Tuesday, September 30, my class did group presentations. We did our presentations according to ‘season' teams. I am in the ‘spring' team and we decided to do a visual arts lesson on abstract self-portraits my classmate Karim learnt about last year. You start with a piece of construction paper, any colour or shade, and then use oil or chalk pastels to draw shapes and different shaped lines to colour on top of using complimentary colours. As an example, orange is a complimentary colour to blue so you would colour one side of the face with orange and then the other side of the face would be blue.

In our lesson, everybody in the class made their own self-portrait. The art looked so lovely so we decided to pin their work up on the wall! Here are my class’ self-portraits:

I wanted to dig a little deeper to see how I would be able to incorporate this art lesson in my practicum or my future teaching career. Since my next practicum in grade 5, I looked at the grade 5 PLOs. I think A5: create 2-D and 3-D images that express personal identity, is appropriate to this lesson. The abstract self-portrait is an expression of self because first of all it is a drawing of the self, and second of all, the colours chosen to complete the artwork can be favourite colours or be symbolic colours that means something to the student. Students can explore their identity with this art project because it is very flexible and abstract. I would love to use this idea in a future art lesson.