Showing posts with label Talking To Students About Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Talking To Students About Art. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

35 questions for promoting aesthetic inquiry in k-12 art classrooms

Questions for Promoting Aesthetic Inquiry: Students should never be allowed to answer questions with a simple "yes" or "no." Teachers should always encourage and wait for the students to give a reason(s) for their answers. This practice will develop complex thinking skills.
  1.  What is the difference between bad art and good art?
  2. What is the difference between bad art and something that isn’t art at all?
  3.  If something is carelessly constructed, from junk, can we call it art?
  4. Why do people disagree so much about how art should look?
  5. If I think some art is ugly, can it still be called art?
  6. If an artwork costs a lot of money, does that mean it is better than less expensive art?
  7. If art is kept inside an art museum, does that mean it is more important than art that is kept inside our homes?
  8.  If an object is useful, is it considered art?
  9. Are you born an artist or can you learn to be an artist?
  10. Is a very old piece of art more valuable than a newly created piece of art?
  11.  How do you become an art expert?
  12.  If I’m making an artwork, am I working or playing?
  13.  Should artwork be used to sell things, if so when is it the correct thing to do? When is it wrong to use artwork to sell things?
  14.  Can people make art in a factory or does it need to be made by hand?
  15. Can art be about ugliness?
  16.  Are animals, insects, or plants considered art?
  17.  Can you describe for me what a beautiful portrait of a lady would look like, and why you think that is the way she should look?
  18.  Does artwork mean only one thing to every person? Can one artwork have multiple meanings?
  19.  Who makes the best art in your opinion?
  20.  Can more than one person work on one artwork at a time?
  21. Should a gallery sell an artwork for less money if it was created by a woman, instead of a man?
  22.  Does a painting of a city need to look real in order for us to enjoy looking at it?
  23.  Is there such a thing as art that should never exist?
  24.  Why should artists invest so much time in their work when they could be easily entertained in a theater or with a book?
  25. Can we consider anything art?
  26.  Should the government pay artists to create artworks that offend some people?
  27. Should artists need to prove that they are capable of painting something realistically? If so, why?
  28.  Do artists need to sell their work?
  29.  If one painting is bigger than another, does that mean it is better?
  30. If you could copy another artists’ work exactly, would your copy be as valuable?
  31.  Can monkeys or elephants make art?
  32. If art is easy to make is it less valuable or less important?
  33. Can you name something that is not art but people might think that it is?
  34. How long do you think it would take to make important artworks?
  35. Who makes the best art?
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Sunday, December 19, 2010

games for art classrooms


      Above is a picture of some art cards that I made for my classroom. Teachers can easily collect images from free clipart resources to craft their own. I use this set to play a game similar to "Concentration."

My African Mask Card Deck depicts different indigenous people's art as black and white line drawings only. For this exercise, students are asked to sort their decks of cards according to the tribe of peoples they believe crafted the artifacts. The game requires focus and careful study of geometrical elements, symbols, and unique markings included on every card depicting an object. Below I have included the drawings and their eight tribal affiliations. Teachers read the Terms of Use for clipart here at my journal before downloading these drawings to craft a deck of your own.
  1. Papuan Clipart Gulf Artifacts
  2. Central Clipart Mexico Artifacts
  3. Nigeria Clipart Artifacts
  4. Kwakiuti Clipart Artifacts
  5. Senufo Clipart Artifacts
  6. Mali Clipart Artifacts
  7. Angola Clipart Artifacts
  8. Mende Clipart Artifacts

      I will keep a linking list below of board games and card games that are good to keep on hand for your art students should they finish projects early. These games all reinforce topics that are related to materials taught in the art class room.

Board Games and Card Games For Art Classrooms:

Fun Art Games For Kids Online: If your students are allowed to access these art games online, they will discover new and create ways to remember and understand art and art history with many of these web games.
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Monday, December 13, 2010

the history of the picture study movement

 
How do homeroom teachers integrate studies in 
art into modern American classrooms? Watch the video above for ideas.

      The study of art appreciation in America began with the Picture Study Movement in the late 1800’s and began to fade at the end of the 1920’s. Picture study was an important part of the art education curriculum. Attention to the aesthetics in classrooms led to public interest in beautifying the school, home, and community, which was known as “Art in Daily Living”. The idea was to bring culture to the child to change the parents.
      Picture study was made possible by the improved technologies of reproduction of images, growing public interest in art, the Progressive Movement in education, and growing numbers of immigrant children who were more visually literate than they were in English. The type of art included in the curriculum was from the Renaissance onward, but nothing considered “modern art” was taught. Often, teachers selected pictures that had a moral message. This is because a major factor in the development in aesthetics as a subject was its relationship to the moral education of the new citizens due to the influx of immigrants during the period. Aesthetics and art masterpieces were part of the popular idea of self culture, and the moralistic response to an artwork was within the capabilities of the teacher, who often did not have the artistic training to discuss the formal qualities of the artwork.
      A typical Picture Study lesson was as follows: Teachers purchased materials from the Perry Picture Series, for example. This is similar to the prepackaged curriculum we have today. These materials included a teacher’s picture that was larger for the class to look at together, and then smaller reproduction approximately 2 ¾” by 2” for each child to look at. These were generally in black and white or sepia tone. Children would often collect these cards and trade them much like modern day baseball cards. The teacher would give the students a certain amount of information about the picture and the artist who created it, such as the picture’s representational content, artist’s vital statistics, and a few biographical details about the artist. These were all included in the materials so an unskilled teacher could still present the information to his or her class. Then the teacher would ask a few discussion questions. Sometimes suggestions for language arts projects or studio activities were included in the materials.
      The picture study movement died out at the end of the 1920’s as a result of new ideas regarding learning art appreciation through studio work became more popular in the United States. (Wikipedia.com)
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