Here is another across elementary project that we just finished up on the theme of heroes… and I was lucky to secure enough bulletin board space to display them all! In class, we discussed what makes someone a hero and thought of examples of heroes we knew: people in our everyday lives, historical figures, athletes… Each student chose a personal hero and did some thinking on how to portray them. We learned how to draw portraits, having previously learned about drawing the figure in a pose.
This unit was my first experiment in TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behaviour) and allowing more student-driven choice, which I have not been brave enough for with younger ones. It went pretty well, I had stations set up around the room with different materials. We were already familiar with these materials from earlier this year, so they required only a few reminders before they jumping into choice.
One focus of the unit was developing carefulness, one of the intellectual virtues. Students had the opportunity to practice with different materials first, before making decisions for the final piece. The final results were varied- some students chose to stick with coloured pencils and markers, others branched out into painting, pastel and collage. It was rewarding to sit back and watch the artistic process, as they figured out how to solve problems and combine different media together to create a finished piece.
The sweetest moments were reading the artist statements students wrote to accompany their finished artworks.
Gateway Art 