It seems as though the year has flown by; most likely because we were moving at break-neck speed to learn the entire Grade Six curriculum before EQAO.
So what does a teacher do with students when EQAO is over and the curriculum has been taught? We have fun! We have been spending June making movies and having Art lessons. For Social Studies, the students worked in groups to research a Canadian Explorer, they then wrote scripts to bring their Explorer to "life". After completing their scripts, they used the iPads to film their movies. It was so much fun watching them create their costumes and make their props. Who knew that you could make a ship out of four desks and a blanket? Or that meter sticks could be your oars? Next, they worked with iMovie to edit and publish their movies. Lastly, we watched the movies - this was highly entertaining, especially the "bloopers" they all felt should be included.
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| Practising Our Filming Techniques |
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| A Sailor Spots Land! |
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| William Baffin begging for funding. |
In Art, we studied positive and negative space via print-making by watching Youtube videos. This was one of our favourites:
We simplified this technique somewhat because I didn't want the students working with the Exacto knife. I purchased inexpensive foam sheets from Michael's Craft store.
1. Brainstorm
2. Rough Draft
3. Revise and Edit
4. Publish
I explained that we could actually rename this the "Creative Process" because it is the same whenever we create something, including a piece of artwork.
The students then brainstormed and began creating rough drafts of potential subjects. This actually took up the bulk of our lesson. Here are some sample drafts.
In some cases, the final product changed a great deal from the original drafts. Some students wanted to draw an image, some wanted to do something more abstract.
Once students were happy with their final draft they copied it onto their piece of foam using a pen to gouge the image into the foam. Some students opted to cut out sections using scissors similar to the video above.
We used an ink roller and water-based block printing ink/paint that I also found at the craft store and a roller to cover our foam.
Here are some of the results:
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| This student started off drawing a mustache. She ended up putting her mustache into the "Big Apple" and decided she should put New York City inside. |
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| This student wanted to create an image resembling the Artwork we had studied by Aboriginal artists. He made several prints exploring colour and adjoining the same print over and over again to make different patterns. |
I love having the whole day to do Art. One or two 40 minute periods is never enough time to really DIG into artwork - it is just too messy and consuming. Today, we learned all about charcoal and pencil sketches. Everyone was engaged, on-task, and learning. One of my students actually held up a first draft and a final piece and said "look how much I improved from when I started this morning until now".
