Birds Eye View

This was a really fun lesson that I found on Teachers Pay Teachers.  What a great math/art lesson!  This lesson challenged their conceptual understanding of parallel/perpendicular lines and right angles. although the lesson was quite challenging for my students, most of them persevered.  I was very active during the first few days, buzzing around trying the help them understand.  The hard work payed off and most students were able to create a 3-D city.  These make me dizzy!

I think we will take a break from rulers and rules :-)

Keith Haring triptych

We've got a spontaneous urban art/graffiti theme going on in room B-6/

These triptych's were based on the art of Keith Haring.  Keith was an American artist and activist whose work responded to the street culture of New York City.  To begin this lesson, I presented them with a power point and showed them many examples of his artwork.  Keith did many of his drawings in the subway stations and was well known as "the subway artist".  The students were very interested in this.  It led to a great discussion about the difference between tasteful, positive graffiti and the negative, hasty graffiti that runs rampant through urban areas.

I provided students with a handout contain various Keith Haring line drawings.  We also discussed what some of these drawings symbolize.  Then students created there 5x7 drawings in the style of Keith Haring.  They were encouraged to be creative and combine his imagery in unique ways or come up with their own, which many did. they were asked to color their drawings using the three sets of complimentary colors.  When they finished, they were asked to explain in writing what their drawing represents.  Some of the stories were quite profound!  My students are so intelligent!

Graffiti Name Tag

This is perhaps the most personal lesson we have done so far.  My school is in an urban environment and students see a lot of "graffiti" in their daily life. The students were really invested in this one and most spent nearly two weeks working on them.  We began with a slide shop to look at different types of graffiti art.  Of course, we talked about the difference between legal and illegal graffiti :-).  Next, we watched a you tube video from DK drawing.  Students were able to watch a "professional" graffiti artist complete a tag from start to finish.

There were not too many specific instructions for this one.  I provided the student with a handout of different fonts and that was about it.  They were also given the option of creating their own tag name. I am quite impressed with these works of art!