Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Today I threw a wrench into the 6 minute draw

I've shared about the 6 minute draw with you in the past.  You can check the previous post Here and Here.  I love the 6 minute draw.  It helps students to transition into my classroom and into an art state of mind and it gives me a few minutes to prepare for the next grade level.  Today I really did throw a wrench into things but I am intrigued by the outcome and plan to do it again!
Here is what happened:   I have been following all the pins and post on recycling or up-cycling of books and have been thinking about just how I might want to do that in my classroom.  I had used books last year with my fourth grade classes and posted that as recycling old books last spring.  Today I made a trip into the school library to see what was in the discard box.  I primarily was looking for books with more text than illustrations to use in collage or for illustration.  As I disassembled one of the books it occurred to me that the pages were about the same size as the paper I used for 6 minute draw.  I wondered what my students would do with the pages if I substituted the pages for their paper without any explanation.  When the 4th and 3rd grade students came in today, I did exactly that.  A helpful student in each class quickly informed me that the paper had writing on it.  I responded that I was aware as I had put the paper on their tables and they should begin their 6 minute draw.  I was very curious how they would handle the paper; if they would draw across the writing as if it wasn't there, incorporate it into the design or try to manage around it.  Here are the results and they did all three!  I loved the outcome and I will definitely be throwing that wrench in with my other school tomorrow!  I'm thinking about maybe giving them color pencils or markers to embellish next week.  This unplanned creativeness may turn into something really amazing!























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