Day 4: Art Inspires Ideas for the Classroom
July 29th, 2010
After three full days of tours and lectures and discussions and seminars and art-making and readings (phew!), teachers started developing their own lessons inspired by a work of art in the Getty’s collection. One of the biggest challenges was choosing just one work of art!
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- Museum educator Veronica Alvarez discusses how to develop good questions about works of art.
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- Fifth grade teachers gather in the galleries to learn how to engage students in discussions about art.
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- Museum educator Theresa Sotto explains a way to sequence discussion questions as teachers follow along in their handouts.
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- In the Education Resource Center, museum educator Sandy Rodriguez gives an overview of the Getty’s online resources for K-12 teachers.
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- Teachers work in grade-level teams to develop a lesson inspired by a 17th-century painting of animals by Jan Brueghel the Elder.
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- A painting of a man working in the fields and a painting of a 19th-century princess sparked many lesson ideas among second grade teachers.
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During the course of the week, we have discussed how people bring a personal approach when viewing a work of art. The article in tonight’s reading addressed the importance of artmaking to also be relevant. How would I do this in my classroom? I think a simple way to do this is by creating extension activities to lessons in which the students make personal connections to the focus of the lesson. If the lesson focused on symbols, I would ask the students to illustrate a symbol that would represent themselves and ask them to briefly explain why. If the lesson focused on setting, I would ask the students to illustrate their favorite setting and ask them to briefly explain why. This is a really basic idea and I’m excited to get more ideas from my colleagues!
The idea of art being meaningful has been modeled throughout this week’s seminar. We have viewed, responded to, and worked on and created activities from pieces of artwork in your museum that fosters student learning from subjects that we have to teach our students on a daily basis. The activities have been authentic because they are important to our school culture, but you have allowed us to create these hands-on activities from the creative corners of every individual mind. Every activity has been relevant because they have connected right back to what is expected in our school culture. I try to approach my classroom in a way that is engaging, meaningful, and relevant. I never have to ask a student more than once to write a letter to their favorite Disney character. Why? What child doesn’t like Disney? Disney is relevant to children. Disney is an authentic tool to a teacher. Writing friendly letters is relevant to the standards. A personal connection that motivates learning is meaningful. One activity that I love to do in the classroom is to create kinte cloths. This is relevant to my students because most are African American. It is meaningful because their parents, friends, pastors, etc. wear kente cloths all the time especially during Black History month. First I pass out a 11 x 4.5 strip of art paper. Then I have my students paint the whole paper one color, wait 10 minutes and paint another color over it. Next I give my students forks which they use to scratch patterns onto the painted paper. Finally we laminate the papers and they are beautiful replicas of kente cloths. Authentic + Relevant = Meaningful.
What an amazing four days! I agree with what Mary Ann had to say about making art relevant to the students, and I’ll take her advice to heart. The section in the article about authenticity also struck me. I need to provide time for my students to make art that originates in their own imaginations instead of mine. While this may sound obvious, it doesn’t necessarily happen very often.
Thank you Mary Ann, Donna, and Yvonne, for sharing your thoughts and ideas, and for caring so much about providing meaningful opportunities for your students to have rich experiences while creating art.
As an extension of our 2nd grade lesson, which uses portraits and self portrait-making by students, I am thinking of asking the students to bring meaningful, small objects to assemble a collage that will tell the story of the student’s life, or what is important to the child. What can be more authentic and relevant! Marily
As an extension of our 2nd grade lesson, which uses portraits and self portrait-making by students, I am thinking of asking the students to bring meaningful, small objects to assemble a collage that will tell the story of the student’s life, or what is important to the child. What can be more authentic and relevant! Marilyn