Tag: Collaboration

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6th Grade Early Entry

Today we had 6th grade early entry for new students to our school. Since I teach art, we have two groups of students… A day and B day students. Today we met with the A day students for 15 mins on google meets for a team building activity!

Usually in normal circumstances, I would have students come in and paint their hands and stamp them on a canvas for our class mural.

We talk about making our mark, and expressing ourselves as artists. I ask them to think of a symbol or design that would represent who they are. We discussed collaboration and how we come together to make a masterpiece. Each one of us an important part of the whole.

Since we aren’t in school… I wanted to create this same experience in the virtual world. One tool I learned about this week in our professional development meetings, was Jamboard!

Jamboard is a google app that allows people to collaborate in order to create. There are different tools, such as marker, pen, paintbrush, and highlighter. Sticky notes are great for adding text.

So students got to work on their digital class mural, making their mark and expressing themselves in the digital world.

  • 6th grade

It was so amazing watching the mural to unfold! Seeing the students mark making in the moment and how everyone was working on their own ideas and at the same time we were all working together!

This was a great team building activity, and I we had a final piece of art after 15 mins!

I am looking forward to doing this with the rest of my students.

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We Are a Part of Something Greater

What better way to collaborate then with an art project, so we started the school year off with a class mural.

I had each class vote on an image that would represent their class, and then I created that image using masking tape over a square board. Students then chose a color to represent themselves and stamped their hands over the board.

When the paint dried, I peeled it away to reveal a white outline of the image they chose. Students then signed their names within the white lines.  This represents our classes choice to work together as a team, and remember we are apart of something greater.

This reminder is not only for the art room, but for life. When we remember our perspectives are only one of many, we can work together towards a greater goal.

<3 Migwetch and Gii’zaagi’in

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7 Deadly Sins: Mixed Media

Michael Bell and David Modler presented a hands on workshop at the NAEA convention in Chicago that was the highlight of my convention experience.

The workshop began with each participant in a group of 4, there were 7 groups…this would work perfectly for any classroom.  Each group received a laminated card with one of the seven deadly sins. We were asked to keep the word a secret from the other groups, as we would be guessing at the end who had which word.

To begin we were asked to brainstorm anything that came to mind when we thought of this word…this would help us start to feel the word which made it easier to visually represent the word. The group I was in had the word Greed.

Once we had finished brainstorming, each of the group members took turns making marks while being blindfolded for 3 minutes. The first two people used vine charcoal and only made geometric shapes, while the third person was able to choose any material they wanted while making lines, and the fourth person created texture with any material of their choice.

After we each blindly made marks to express our word, we discussed what we wanted to do with what we had to make it feel and look more like greed. We started brainstorming the symbolism of our lines shapes and colors, and began adding more definition to our design. Each group member had a minute without being blindfolded to add to the work what they felt showed our word. We then began to work together to finalize our piece…

The results of each group were truly unique and individual but each group really captured the energy of their word. I knew quickly this was something I had to try with my students!

When I returned to school on Monday, I had revised the activity to be age appropriate for middle school students and instead of using the 7 deadly sins, we represented the emotions Love, Happiness, Peace, Excitement, Anger, Hate, and Loneliness.

My students did an AMAZING job visually representing each word, and they all enjoyed themselves. A few students in each class asked if we could do it again! Not only were they able to show each emotion using only colors, lines and shapes…they were also able to talk about how it represented their word!

This would be a fun activity to do with teachers as well, perhaps for a professional development activity. Teachers could use the 21st century learning skills as their prompt.

Collaborating to create one piece of art could sometimes be seen as a challenge, one person might have a hard time letting go of their concepts and ideas. Blindfolding each group member worked to help everyone let go of their expectations and to be in the moment, while taking turns created a space for change. Spontaneity helps a person to let go and be present in the now.   This was a perfect example of a theme directed intuitive art making process.

<3 Thank you Michael and David!