Fourth grade connections with Writing and Art

Voices of children
Whir of wings
Bright with the sheen of the dew
Flashed like the plane-tree
Beautiful

Under the stairs
In the coat cupboard
Hiding place
I can't wait to tell

Pop
Bushes cracked
Frightful
I was terrified
Just wait
I heard another shot






These are some recent works by fourth grade students.  I had scrounged some old book discards from the school library and approached the writing teacher and asked her to collaborate with me on this project.  She worked with students to create the emotion poems.  In the art room we discuss how they might illustrate the feelings and the artwork happened with me.  I've been extremely impressed by many of these and would really love to share them all!  You can check out additional postings here and here.

Common core connections - writing

In my district we are all about fulfilling the guidelines of the common core.  There is a big push on making connections across the curriculum as well.   When the year's PD plans called for integrating writing into all subject areas, it was a given that the specialist would be in attendance to determine how writing would become a part of their program as well.  Earlier this month, we spent an afternoon planning how to have students do opinion writing.  I immediately decided to present artist statements as opinion writing and approach my students with materials in hand for what I thought would be a 45 minute writing period.  Three weeks later, I grabbed the computer cart, wheeled it into the art room and supervised classes intensely typing extensive art statements into their Artsonia accounts. In reflection, this took a tremendous amount of time away from artistic creation.  I do see the value of making the connections and think the most important connection was to have students understand that what they do  in English class can easily carry over into the art room with their art writing.  By week three, most students were making connections and had gotten beyond resisting my request to write because we were in the art room.  We will continue to create regular artistic statements because the students really seem to enjoy writing about their art.  I hope we can scale back the process so that it doesn't take so much time away from valuable art making.  It is important for students to be able to talk about their art making and to develop a strong artistic vocabulary.  This is a valuable portion of the art making process.  I hope that those connections and writing will strengthen student skills in writing and in art making as they become more reflective about their own work.

Learning to use Artsonia

creating an Artist Statement on the iPad

 I decided to use Artsonia in my schools this year after years of looking at it and feeling like it would just be too difficult to manage.  These start up days are pretty intense.  With 600 students to put into the system and parental permissions to enter along with art work, I feel like all of my time has been on Artsonia the  past two weeks.  I'm beginning to see the rewards.  Fourth grade students are in the process of completing projects.  There are always a few students who manage their time well and finish well ahead of everyone else.  I have set up the desktop in my room and my iPad so that students can go into the program and enter their own artist statements.  I covered all the expectations ahead of time with the entire group and even supplied a dictionary for checking the spelling of challenging words.  I have been truly impressed with the writing skills of this group.  They have really put a lot of thought into what they are saying and taken pride in their art and the process.

Using the desktop to add an Artist Statement on Artsonia

The Artsonia program is going to help me with many of the challenges put forth in our new teacher evaluation and my colleagues are impressed with the writing the students are creating in art class.  I'm feeling really positive about all of this.  If  you haven't looked into Artsonia for your school, you really should check it out.

Here is a sample of a student's statement:

When I do art I think of so many ideas. I do not know which idea to pick from. I love art so much and art is fun to. I think my art is inspiring to other people.If you do not think you can do it try and try hard until you think you are good like me. Thats what I feel when I am doing art.