Art Experiences.
Cooper Home and Fossil Ridge Lesson One: Pumpkin Illustrations
About the lesson:
In this lesson, we introduced students to the ideation process by creating a pumpkin drawing. This allowed them to explore ideas and establish themselves as creators. Students were given the chance to share their interests, which allowed us to gauge their artistic backgrounds and establish some of their goals for the course. After brainstorming some ideas, students were asked to create an illustration of a pumpkin, complete with a background and a caption. Students were given access to a variety of 2-D drawing materials, including markers, colored pencils, and crayons. Students experimented with mixing materials, expanding upon ideas, and creating pumpkins with unique appearances and personalities. |
Essential Understandings
Outcomes
Students will be able to:
Skills
In the first class with Cooper Home and Fossil Ridge, the students explored the prompt of drawing a pumpkin. Students went step by step through the process of ideation by creating a pumpkin on the whiteboard, "first you start with the general pumpkin shape, then add a stem, then finally color the pumpkin orange and the stem green or brown". The teachers then asked them to make choices, like whether they wanted the pumpkin to be more round, oblong, or ribbed, or if they wanted the pumpkin to be dark orange, light orange, yellow, green, or any color in between. Upon completion of the pumpkin students added other elements to their drawings (such as gords, leaves, and other fall inspired objects in the background). Through the process students shared ideas and stories which established a positive community setting in which everyone was there help each other grow, expand their ideas, and enjoy art together. The teachers saw their individual choices come out, while simultaneously creating a similar images as a class.
To start the creative process, the teachers introduced themselves and showed their artwork to the students. As a class they discussed shared interests and their own artistic backgrounds. This discussion included their interests, hobbies, favorite colors, favorite types of art, favorite animals, and their favorite TV shows and movies. From this discussion ideas were drawn on the board to aid in creating pumpkin illustrations. Students began creating their pumpkins with the markers for the initial outlines, and then utilizing colored pencils, crayons, and markers to color in their drawings. Once their pumpkins were complete students generated ideas for a caption to accent the visual story they had created.
- Artists use critical thinking and organizational techniques to follow lesson guidelines
- Artists learn to enjoy the intrinsic value of art making
- Artists are productive and on task
- Artists create and innovate using the ideation process
- Artists establish a sense of comfort with the studio, materials, staff, and peers
Outcomes
Students will be able to:
- Students will be able to create their own rendition of a pumpkin in their notebooks, allowing students with the desire to come up with their own imagery to do so, and allowing students new to the process to become excited about the ideation process.
- Using their artwork, students will be able to enjoy making artwork that relays their personal style, developing a sense of intrinsic value, artistic identity, and community in the classroom.
- After a short Introduction, students will be excited to see the artwork of their peers and establish connections by discussing their creative process with the class.
Skills
- Critical thinking and organizational techniques
- Creative problem solving
- Establishing a sense of comfort with the studio, materials, staff, and peers
- Drawing Techniques
- Critique Etiquette
In the first class with Cooper Home and Fossil Ridge, the students explored the prompt of drawing a pumpkin. Students went step by step through the process of ideation by creating a pumpkin on the whiteboard, "first you start with the general pumpkin shape, then add a stem, then finally color the pumpkin orange and the stem green or brown". The teachers then asked them to make choices, like whether they wanted the pumpkin to be more round, oblong, or ribbed, or if they wanted the pumpkin to be dark orange, light orange, yellow, green, or any color in between. Upon completion of the pumpkin students added other elements to their drawings (such as gords, leaves, and other fall inspired objects in the background). Through the process students shared ideas and stories which established a positive community setting in which everyone was there help each other grow, expand their ideas, and enjoy art together. The teachers saw their individual choices come out, while simultaneously creating a similar images as a class.
To start the creative process, the teachers introduced themselves and showed their artwork to the students. As a class they discussed shared interests and their own artistic backgrounds. This discussion included their interests, hobbies, favorite colors, favorite types of art, favorite animals, and their favorite TV shows and movies. From this discussion ideas were drawn on the board to aid in creating pumpkin illustrations. Students began creating their pumpkins with the markers for the initial outlines, and then utilizing colored pencils, crayons, and markers to color in their drawings. Once their pumpkins were complete students generated ideas for a caption to accent the visual story they had created.
Documentation
Complete documentation for this class can be found here. |
Lesson Plan
The Lesson Plan for this lesson can be found here. |
Reflection.
What worked well for this art experience? Why? In regards to pre-assessment the lesson was a success. Anna and I had no idea what to expect, as this was our first lesson teaching together in the service learning program. We made it a point to construct this first lesson with ample opportunity for the students to introduce themselves, discuss their artistic backgrounds, and think about what they would like to get from the class. Before introducing the lesson Anna and I introduced ourselves to the class along these guidelines, to serve as an example, and instructed each student to share their name and their answers to the three prompts. This served as an icebreaker and gave Anna and me insight on topics of interest to start personal interactions with each student throughout the lesson, as well as giving the students common ground, and shared interests to discuss with each other. Another main goal of the lesson was to establish a positive working environment in which students felt comfortable with ourselves and each other to ask questions, or for help whenever they needed it, as well as creating a general excitement for the course. From our readings we felt establishing this classroom dynamic in the first lesson was essential for students feeling they could make “mistakes” without fear of judgment or ridicule, and know that we were all growing together as a unit at our own paces. I was proud of our ability to engage with students intimately and, on a personal level, while maintaining a consistent work flow, with all students engaged and on task throughout. This was in large part due to the nature of our students, who took great initiative in making yesterday’s class a success.
What didn’t work well for this art experience? Why? Personally this experience provided me with huge insight into teaching students with varying artistic backgrounds and abilities. In the service learning program I felt the students’ strengths and weakness could be described as exaggerated in a sense, or more accurately, highlighted the underlying truth that every person has unique skills, weaknesses, and ways of learning no matter what age, grade, or level you are teaching. For example, one of our students that was non-verbal was artistically the strongest, while some students with verbal strengths may have had more difficulty in other areas. This first lesson was a great opportunity to get to know each individual personally, and discover what I could provide as a teacher to facilitate the growth of their strengths and problem solve through areas of difficulty. As I as teaching the students I experienced myself learning as a student of teaching, and had weak areas in my approach to learn from as well. What didn’t work well in our lesson was our ability to adjusting to the different drawing speeds of the students. Some of the students finished very quickly while others worked much slower. For our next lesson we will design the lesson plan to account for this much more thoroughly.
What would you do differently? Why? Something Anna and I will do differently next lesson is to be more authoritative. We talked with Alison after the lesson about areas to improve, and she highlighted that there were several instances that we had asked students if they would like to share. Instead, Alison informed us that it is better to create a sense of assuredness, and establish the presence that this is what we are going to do and this is how we are going to do it. I believe this was in part to our in-experience, as well as a product of “feeling out” the culture of the class. After the lesson we were amazed at how receptive and hardworking all the students were and will be incorporating these techniques into our teaching style for the next lesson as well as how I approach teaching moving forward.
What didn’t work well for this art experience? Why? Personally this experience provided me with huge insight into teaching students with varying artistic backgrounds and abilities. In the service learning program I felt the students’ strengths and weakness could be described as exaggerated in a sense, or more accurately, highlighted the underlying truth that every person has unique skills, weaknesses, and ways of learning no matter what age, grade, or level you are teaching. For example, one of our students that was non-verbal was artistically the strongest, while some students with verbal strengths may have had more difficulty in other areas. This first lesson was a great opportunity to get to know each individual personally, and discover what I could provide as a teacher to facilitate the growth of their strengths and problem solve through areas of difficulty. As I as teaching the students I experienced myself learning as a student of teaching, and had weak areas in my approach to learn from as well. What didn’t work well in our lesson was our ability to adjusting to the different drawing speeds of the students. Some of the students finished very quickly while others worked much slower. For our next lesson we will design the lesson plan to account for this much more thoroughly.
What would you do differently? Why? Something Anna and I will do differently next lesson is to be more authoritative. We talked with Alison after the lesson about areas to improve, and she highlighted that there were several instances that we had asked students if they would like to share. Instead, Alison informed us that it is better to create a sense of assuredness, and establish the presence that this is what we are going to do and this is how we are going to do it. I believe this was in part to our in-experience, as well as a product of “feeling out” the culture of the class. After the lesson we were amazed at how receptive and hardworking all the students were and will be incorporating these techniques into our teaching style for the next lesson as well as how I approach teaching moving forward.
Slideshow.
This slideshow presentation highlights some of the student artwork from the lesson. A complete analysis of the images shown and how they correlate to the students' learning can be found through accessing the documentation link above.