Challenging Thinking by TC Art and Art Ed

Challenging Thinking Possibilities and Potentials for Teaching and Learning in the Visual Arts Grades 3 - 8 Judith M. Burton and Iris Bildstein Program in Art and Art Education

Challenging Thinking Possibilities and Potentials for Teaching and Learning in the Visual Arts Grades 3 - 8 Judith M. Burton and Iris Bildstein

Department of Arts and Humanities Program in Art and Art Education

Acknowledgements The authors are deeply grateful for the many contributions from: Sheyda Ardelan, Ingrid Butterer, Renee Darvin, Olga Hubard, Nina Lasky, Gretle Smith For editing help: Michelle Jacobs, Lisa Jo Sagolla Photo credits: Sheyda Ardalan, Judith M. Burton, Al Hurwitz, Linda Louis Design: John Boudreau, Boudreau Design

This publication was made possible through the generosity of the Myers Foundations.

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Table of Contents Introduction iv Ways of Worldmaking

Organization of the Text: The Challenges

Part 1. Knowing Your Pupils

Part 2. Thinking About Lesson Planning

Part 3. Considering Different Kinds of Lessons

Part 4. Connecting Lessons in Sequences

Part 5. Connecting Lessons in Spirals

Part 6. Connecting Lessons Across the Curriculum

Part 7. Integrating Assessment

A Final Word

Appendix: Personal Worksheets

About the Authors

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Introduction

Painting: Shopping

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This little text is for art teachers, student teachers and classroom teachers who care about the importance of art practice in the lives and learning of their pupils. In the best of circumstances, when infants, children and adolescents make paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, collages and digital designs, they are doing more than creating admired artworks, they are constructing narratives out of their lives and experiences. As they tell their stories in the various materials of art young people engage an interplay between the way they think, feel and sense. Whether exploring a material, drawing from an object, developing a theme or expanding on the richness of a design, they are investigating and constructing their relationships with their worlds. In this process curiosity, imagination and a sense of wonder are harnessed to acts of perception, inquiry, critique and aesthetic judgment. The contribution of art practice to learning is, thus, profound. This book is written at a time of challenge to just such a view of the contribution of art practice to learning. The recent economic crisis, combined with increased attention to standardized testing required by â&#x20AC;&#x153;No Child Left Behindâ&#x20AC;? has meant budget cutting for schools leading to a radical decline in art education provision. In the present climate, art teachers are frequently confronted with pre-determined curricula, and

their pupils’ efforts subjected to narrowly prescriptive forms of evaluation, often based on emulating styles of Western realism. The cumulative effect of scripted teaching and of learning narrowed to dexterity within one singular style of art is to deny teachers their own rich pedagogical and artistic resources. It also eliminates the kind of rich and rounded curriculum based on forms of learning that engage a wide spectrum of young peoples’ interests and abilities.1 The visual arts constitute important ways of knowing and learning for all children and adolescents, for they are among the primary languages through which personal and cultural meaning find echoes within each other. In this day and age, it is absolutely critical that all young people are empowered to use their minds, imaginations, aesthetic insights and creative capacities in service of constructing their own life-worlds, establishing professional goals and contributing to the culture. Indeed, the needs of the twenty-first century require human minds endowed with just these capacities.2 This text is not a curriculum but it is constructed round the notion that teaching and learning progress in an ongoing spiral fashion. Here, the spiral symbolizes the iterative and recursive nature of teaching and learning in which thoughts, ideas and concepts are visited and revisited

at new levels of interest and ability. The text seeks to help teachers as they work to interpret state and local mandates and to set them free to think, plan and practice “outside the box.” The principles and practices offered in what follows call for teachers to draw upon their own imaginations and experiences and honor those of their pupils and the particular contexts in which they work together. The text acknowledges the importance of establishing high standards and expectations for all young people, yet recognizes that these can be accomplished more fully and imaginatively when teaching is challenging, and learning exciting.

1 Burton, J.M. & Hafeli, M.C. (Forthcoming). Conversations in art: The dialectics of teaching and learning. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association. 2 UNESCO. Road Map for Arts Education. The World Conference on Arts Education: Building Creative Capacities for the 21st Century, Lisbon 6-7 March 2006; Seoul 25-27 May 2010.

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Ways of Worldmaking

Linocut and print: Self-portrait

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Teaching art is a complex and demanding affair, yet it can be wonderfully rewarding. It enables teachers to enrich their personal landscape of learning with insights about the development of children and adolescents and the changing worlds in which they live. Reciprocally, thoughtful teachers understand that their own personal commitments and interests enrich their pedagogy and become integral to the developmental stories of those they teach. Yet, what makes art teaching problematic these days is not only the inhospitable educational climate created by “No Child Left Behind” but also the explosion that has taken place in the artworld itself. Over the past ten or so years, new styles of art and of art practice have emerged to re-shape the cultural landscape. Influences from a diversity of cultural traditions have merged with the introduction of new materials and the tools of digital technology have exploded our ideas about what art is and the purposes it serves in contemporary media dominated society. In the shift from the ideals of the fine arts tradition to the more everyday notion of visual arts, and as a mirror of the larger culture and its practices, we must ask ourselves the question of what we teach and why? Are there any longer agreed upon ”fundamentals” attached to art education? As we approach this question we need to recognize that art teachers are, for the most part, trained as artists within the contemporary

climate of art theory and practice. Teachers, thus, bring to their students their knowledge of the wider world of art and culture as shaped by their own interests and artistic inclinations. This artistic background constitutes a critical thread of teachers’ pedagogical repertoires. Other threads are formed from teachers’ knowledge of artistic development, their appraisal of the realties of their pupils’ lives and their sensitivity to the ecological climate of the specific context in which they work. Good teaching involves being able to move with flexibility within and across these many threads as they network into teachers’ personal response repertoires.1 All this goes to say that to teach art is no longer possible to teach fixed and immutable bodies of knowledge and conventional practices. Instead, good teachers enter into learning with their students as they co-construct ideas and explore practices that center on the need to make the world a meaningful place. Worldmaking invites young people to draw upon the variety of intellectual, social, emotional and aesthetic encounters that characterize their everyday lives, interweaving and shaping them into forms of visual meaning. In helping young people to structure their ideas in visual form teachers need to honor curiosity, wonder, imagination and reflection. Good teachers also need to be sensitive observers and listeners able to translate their knowledge about their pupils, art, culture and society, into flexible instructional practices, as they perceive

these to meet the need of the discipline and challenge pupils’ learning. Such translations are by no means simple; they often evolve in the body of a lesson and should be accomplished with an eye to the greatest possible flexibility and the promotion of a diversity of individual outcomes in learning. In the best of circumstances art teachers have considerable flexibility to design the work they do with their students. Of course this kind of flexibility raises questions for teachers about what and how to teach and to what ends. How to use such freedom thoughtfully and responsibly, then, is the topic of what follows in this text. Without being prescriptive, we suggest that there are some guiding principles that enter into the way that good art teachers engage with the issues of youngsters’ lives and design lessons, practice instruction and embed assessment within the flow of their everyday teaching worlds. As interpreted here, guiding principles are not conceived as sets of fixed regulatory practices, rather we offer them simply as “things to think about,” as options for guiding the planning of instructional practices within the complexities of particular teaching situations. For instance we give priority to the importance of teaching that builds on student knowledge and experiences, and encourage a diversity of interests and interpretations. We stress the importance of offering different kinds of challenges to reflection, imagination and criti-

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cal capacities that help youngsters to go beyond the immediacy of their thinking. Within a dialogic approach to teaching and learning we honor the materials and practices of art as tools of thought and reflection that ultimately become the voices of expression. We also suggest that multiple modes of assessment, thoughtfully integrated into teaching and learning, offer youngsters a range of perspectives on their work and allow them to give direction to and take responsibility for their own efforts. At each step along the way, teachers and prospective teachers are reminded that their lesson plans become fully realized only when they are translated into forms that bring teachers and their pupils into rich and meaningful engagements.2 While this text gives priority to acts of creating with materials it nonetheless draws upon youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ever-changing historical, critical, aesthetic and socio-cultural responses as these inform their practice and are shaped by different developmental abilities. The view espoused here assumes that young people live and grow-up in socio-cultural worlds whose values and beliefs are multiple, diverse, and reflected in traditional and contemporary art practices as well as in the social and material culture that surrounds them. Young people inevitably work within the forms of their cultural realities as transmitted by teachers, peers, parents and artists; yet, it is their individual curiosity about and personal experiences

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of the world that drive their artistic practice and give it imaginative and creative resonance. The learning needs of young people and those who teach them cannot be fixed in time or place and are ever evolving as they overlap and inform each other. While some youngsters may possess special gifts and talents that mark them out for careers in art and must be helped to blossom, all young people need to be able to flourish, be challenged and nurtured in their art making abilities. Opportunities to engage in worldmaking3 through the materials, processes and techniques of art offer all young people a lens that is essential, cognitively distinctive, yet integrative and complementary with other ways of knowing in verbal language, science, mathematics, music, dance and drama.

1 Wallace, D.B. & Gruber, H.E. (1989). Creative people at work. NY: Oxford University Press. 2 For a more in-depth exploration of these ideas see: Burton, J. M. A Guide for Teaching and Learning in the Visual Arts. Teachers College Columbia University. 3 Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Playing with materials: Exploration and discovery

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Organization of the Text: The Challenges This text is designed to help art teachers, student teachers and classroom teachers support and challenge young people’s artistic development in rigorous and thoughtful ways. We argue that art teachers have the responsibility to make thoughtful and informed decisions about what and how their pupils learn. When planning for learning, teachers need to be as sensitive to their own ideological and aesthetic biases as they are to the ideas and interests of the young people they teach. It is in the interactive space created by the overlap of teachers’ and pupils’ ideas that planning takes place and learning is accomplished. We have built the text around two learning sequences which together comprise twenty-eight lessons; the first lesson sequence is designed for grades 3-4 and consists of eleven lessons, and the second, designed for grades 6-8, consists of seventeen lessons. It is important to note that each sequence may be adapted to meet the needs of students at different ages and in different kinds of settings. For instance, while in what follows the sequences are presented independently, an imaginative teacher might combine the lessons into a fuller and more complex spiral curriculum that spans three or four different grade levels. We begin by addressing the developmental needs of pupils from infancy to early adolescence for lessons stand or fall on their ability to reach deeply into youngsters’ interests and abilities. We follow this with advice

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on lesson planning, identifying its various components, and offer some examples of different types of lessons such as those focused on memory, imagination, observation and so forth. These example lessons are then carried forward and positioned within the two sequences, grades 3-4 and 6-8; this is followed by some suggestions for alternative organizations of the sequences that meet different kinds of conceptual, contextual or curricular needs. The same lessons are then carried forward again and re-envisioned in the context of more long-term spiral organization of learning in which teachers are invited to imagine new kinds of sequences including prior and follow-on experiences that might span several grade levels. Teachers and student teachers are reminded that what is offered here is a horizontal/vertical structure for organizing learning in practice; it is based on the belief that learning is layered over time, but that there is much to-ing and fro-ing as individual pupils contextualize what they learn within their own worldmaking needs. The lessons that inform the sequences and spirals, thus, need to be richly and flexibly conceived, informed by the kind of interdisciplinary connections and thoughtful assessment procedures that conclude this text. We offer this model of planning for teaching and learning not as an end in itself but as a kind of blueprint that we hope will suggest other possibilities to be explored by

individual teachers in relation to their own pupils, settings and curricular goals. What is offered here are challenges that open doorsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;things to think about rather than fixed recipes to be followed. Part 1: Knowing your pupils. This highlights the changing needs, dispositions and ways of thinking that young people bring with them into classrooms and art studios. It offers a brief overview of the artistic development of children and adolescents grades K-8, as the context and rationale for planning lessons. The point is made that artistic development depends on past experiences, thus information about pupils prior to third grade and after seventh grade can enlighten planning. A great many changes take place during these years which overlap and are not always neatly sequenced in time; developmental change depends on many supports and challenges including experiences with materials, practices and ideas offered both in schools and outside. Part 2: Thinking about lesson planning. Here we build in some guiding principles for designing the kinds of lessons that engage young peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s curiosity and imaginations. We focus upon the several components needed for exemplary lesson design and highlight the importance of dialogue as the vehicle for exploring learning in-depth and engaging

Surface printing with a potato: A design

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young people in the development of their own insights, practices and interpretations. Participation in group or class dialogue, it is stressed, also helps young people to become sensitive to, share and learn from the ideas of others. Part 3: Considering different kinds of lessons. We offer some example lessons each of which calls into focus distinctive practices with materials and ideas. We suggest, however, that these examples can be set within different kinds of learning sequences from the two included here, or they can be expanded upon over time, depending upon individual teachersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; interests. To show how variations can be achieved, each of the eleven lessons is cross-referenced to its position in the sequences that follow in Part 4 of this text. Each lesson shows how the components set forth in Part 2 function to help teachers think through the various phases of planning and integrate them into a seamless flow. When planning it is always important to anticipate important learning yet at the same time inspire a diversity of outcomes that respect the interests and experiences of individual pupils. Digital design

Part 4: Connecting lessons in sequences. Here we suggest that rich and complex learning occurs when set within horizontal sequences,

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whereby individual lessons both draw upon and expand each other in imaginative and flexible ways. We are mindful that lessons cannot always be thought of as “bounded” by fixed time limits, as the learning they inspire often expands and flows in unanticipated ways. A sequence, thus, implies a flow or continuity to teaching and learning that encompass a few or many lessons spanning different time periods and responding to the curricular contexts of individual schools. Thoughtfully conceived, a sequence allows learning to become layered and reinforced as it accumulates across several lesson periods. Two sequences are offered here, one for grades 3-4 consisting of eleven lessons, and the other for grades 6-8 comprising seventeen lessons. Each sequence opens with an overall objective designed to capture what will be learned as a consequence of the lessons within it. When thinking about lesson objectives they should always leave open the possibility that learning will take different forms and produce different outcomes. Following the two sequences we show how they can be re-designed by positioning the same lessons in four new ways to accommodate different kinds of conceptual and contextual needs. In other words, we suggest that the same lessons differently configured, can contribute to an array of different kinds of learning and artistic outcomes.

Part 5: Connecting lessons in spirals. Now we move beyond specific grade-level planning and examine the continuous nature of teaching and learning, of how ideas, practices and concepts can be revisited over time and at more complex levels. Essentially, spiral organizations of teaching and learning thread vertically across different grade levels, allowing for a revisiting and further elaboration of experiences as developmental capacities and interests grow in complexity. As an example, we move forward in our planning by offering a set of spirals focusing on art learning in what we think of as four domains: sketchbook/journals, sustained practice, cultural groundings, and materials. We envision these domains filtering through all of the lessons included in the two sequences of Part 4. Thus, we return to our twenty-eight lessons and suggest how they might be re-organized in relation to the four domains forming new and different kinds of long-term vertical sequences. Part 6: Connecting lessons across the curriculum. Looking beyond the traditional offerings of art classrooms we suggest that both “sequence” and “spiral” planning might embrace interdisciplinary connections. Here, we show how the lessons that form the sequences set forth in Part 4 can provide the impetus for reaching out for dialogue with other subject matter disciplines, such as science, math, social studies and lan-

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guage. It is suggested that young people’s minds and art practices can be challenged and immeasurably enriched by engaging with concepts, ideas, experiences and expectations from other disciplines.

We also include personal worksheets in the Appendix. We hope that individual teachers will take the opportunity to create their own plans based on the challenges offered here.

Part 7: Integrating assessment. Here we offer suggestions for embedding assessment procedures into the design of single lessons, sequences and spirals. Assessment, it is pointed out should not be an arbitrary “add on” to teaching and learning but should be a critical concern and embedded into all stages of planning from the outset. It is also suggested that assessment should take several different forms in order to embrace both the processes and outcomes of artistic learning and practice and offer a comprehensive and multifaceted view of pupil accomplishments. It is suggested that thoughtful assessment should always engage young people in the process since the ability to take different kinds of perspectives on their own work is central to good learning. Note: We offer examples of young people’s artwork, grades 3-8, to enliven points made in the text. The examples do not embrace all possible variations or possibilities of the work young people make; rather the examples are included to capture imaginations so that teachers might arrive at their own distinctive visions of learning and pedagogical practice.

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Collage: Two ladies trying on hats

DOMAINS • Observation/Investigation • Working from Imagination

• Others…

Schematization This is schematization, or map, of the text which follows; it positions grade level sequences and across grade spirals in overlapping relationships. The four domains that interweave and activate the spirals do not even begin to exhaust the range of possibilities for teaching and learning. Teachers are encouraged to add their own domais to this list.

PRE-SCHOOL

As the text that follows suggests, the sequences which integrate into the work of the domains, may consist of a few or many lessons depending on the learning to be acquired.

For excellent guides to the needs of special learners, see: Gerber, B.L., & Guay, D.M. (Eds.). (2006). Reaching and Teaching Students with Special Needs through Art. Reston, VA: National Arts Education Association.

SEQUENCES

GRADES 3 - 4 LEARNING IN PRACTICE

Note: While this text does not address the needs of special learners specifically, it is hoped that some of the suggestions that follow might be adapted to their needs.

• Exploring Materials • Cultural Experiences

Integrating learning with other disciplines

GRADES 6 - 7 Integrating learning with other disciplines

Gerber, B.L., & Kellman, J. (Eds.). (2010). Understanding Students with Autism through Art. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.

GRADE 12

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Part 1 Knowing Your Pupils

Thinking About Development: Envisioning Relationships This text is concerned with the artistic development of all children and adolescents. It is based on the premise that all young people have the capacity to construct, shape and express their ideas in visual form. Embedded in the forms they create young people tell us about the events of their lives and how they think and feel about their relationships to their worlds. As they construct ever more differentiated visual forms curiosity, investigation, imagination, perception and openness to playful-yetdisciplined experimentation with materials become important tools of thought. Artistic development and the visual narratives within which it is embedded are, thus, rooted in the complexities of youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; familial and social lives as refracted through their individual personalities and interests. The actions of teachers, parents, peers, the school and the socio-cultural world beyond, constitute those influences that give both aesthetic and social meaning to youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; efforts. Artistic development is about acquiring important knowledge of the world and the relationships from which it is constituted--knowledge which is not gained through other means. Development involves acquiring the expressive tools to form that knowledge in ways that take thinking beyond the here and now. Artistic development depends upon the thoughtful guidance of teachers and classroom environments that provide learning challenges approFred working at home

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priate to young peoples’ ages and abilities. Teachers need to be sensitive to the sources of youngsters’ ideas and the array of developmental capacities and interests they bring with them into classrooms and studios. For while much learning takes place in schools a great deal also takes place outside schools as young people engage with the realities of their everyday lives and become alive to the complexity of the cultural forms that surround them. Among other influences media images dominate a great deal of contemporary youngsters’ lives suggesting narratives, situations, characters and dilemmas that can be harnessed to inspire both imagination and critique. The diversity of influences impinging upon young people outside school is nowadays reflected in the pupil composition of most classrooms and, within the context of thoughtful group dialogues, is a rich source of sharing and interactive learning. There are, thus, a great many psychological, aesthetic, social and cultural factors that conspire to promote artistic development in individual children and adolescents. For this reason it is, perhaps, misleading to think of development in terms of single, end-on, fixed stages of thought and action. There are, however, some general developmental phases that young people pass through in which different dimensions of their thinking coalesce as they contend with new kinds of interests and challeng-

es. In what follows, for instance, we will see how early artistic development, rooted in body action and play, extends over time to interests in the world of family, friends and the larger socio-cultural environment. Mediating these interests we encounter concerns with a host of relationships such as those based on feelings about identity, love, power, gender, morality and truth. Shaped within the materials1 and processes of art, images and visual configurations engage with increasingly complex ideas about details and space, as materials become the expressive voice linking youngsters’ inner and outer worlds. It is tools of thought such as curiosity, investigation, reflection and imagination that interweave ideas, feelings and artistic sensibilities acting to shape them into aesthetic, expressive, visual forms. Given this complexity, and as they progress, young people do not march neatly and in lock-step with each other, rather any one class of pupils may include youngsters at different phases. Furthermore, development allows for much to-ing and fro-ing as older ideas and memories are re-visited at new levels of interest and leaps are made into new arenas of thought and imagination. Development is also dependent upon the kind of experiences with materials offered within youngsters’ worlds by their families and schools and this can vary enormously. Some children have

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PreSchool - Kindergarten

Painting: Interweavings of lines and patches

Clay: Repetition and variation

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Painting: Enclosures as places with insides and outsides

Collage: Places to hide. First expressive use of materisals

very few opportunities to play and explore materials while others may have been encouraged to experiment, invent and build with many and different kinds; some youngsters may have no place in which to create art while others may have an art corner at home and generous provision in school. Becoming sensitive to the complexities shaping artistic development is important when planning lessons that challenge learning; but it is also critical to acknowledge the realities of the actual lives and experiences that particular individuals and groups of young people bring with them into their art classrooms and studios. Understanding development from a more theoretical perspective, then, is an important tool that helps teachers diagnose the sources of their pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ideas and embrace the dilemmas they encounter in working with visual materials. To this end art teachers need to become extremely good observers of individual childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ideas and be able to motivate entire groups in terms of sharing, extending, negotiating and supporting each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts. Similarly, when planning lessons art teachers also need to be able to focus learning so that it can be contextualized and interpreted within the variety of interests, abilities and learning needs of the young people they teach. Teachers with new groups of students will sometimes need to draw

upon earlier or later phases of learning in order to root learning more securely. Indeed one of the most difficult and demanding tasks for teachers in the current educational climate is to design learning challenges for young people who are socially and physically on track yet artistically lack the kind of complex artistic repertoire they will need to construct and express the thoughts ideas and responses that are of the most compelling interest to them. In some third grade classrooms, for example, many pupils may not have had prior experiences working with materials and visual ideas, and in seventh grade may not have had art lessons since their fourth grade. Conversely, in the same classes might be found young people who have been more fortunate in attending art classes out of school or have been encouraged and supported in their endeavors by parents. Thus, teachers need to be knowledgeable about the potential span of developmental abilities in order to move flexibly in support of a divergence of learning needs in their classrooms.

generative marks upon the world. These marks include interweavings of lines and patches of great variety which, sooner or later, find organized forms in enclosures and complex designs. Over time, and through the creation of increasingly complex visual configurations, young children learn that each material they explore can be responded to in terms of its physical characteristics such as weight and resilience; its plastic and visual qualities such as movement, color, bends, curves and angles; and also relational and expressive possibilities such as near together and far apart, and the feelings these engender. Explorations with different types of materials bring into being an array of distinctive responses as playful learning engages much repetition and variation. This very early learning constitutes a foundational phase in young childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development, for here they are constructing basic repertoires of actions with materials and exploring the possibilities for imaginative expression that these hold for them personally.

Pre-School - Kindergarten Very early learning is invested in exploration and discovery across a variety of materials and combinations of materials. Young children are active learners who, through invention and play, first learn to make their

Kindergarten - Grade 1 There is a great deal of overlap between pre-school development and that which evolves between Kindergarten and grade 1. Much depends upon whether or not children have been supported in their early inves-

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Kindergarten - Grade 1

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Clay: “A lady with a friendly snake.” Named during the process of making.

Painting: “A boat on a windy day” Named before making.

Drawing: A person from observation

Collage: “My daddy’s visit to Rome.” Named during the process of making.

tigative play with materials, and whether or not they bring forward with them a rich repertoire of actions and insights as the context from which a new phase of development will emerge. At some point, between preschool and grade 1, young children will begin offering names for their work. Naming usually begins almost as an afterthought when a work/ design is completed; later naming occurs while a work is in progress and finally, a name is announced at the start of action with a material. The subjects of these early works are very fluid and changeable as young children are making their first connection between ideas about materials and their experiences in the world. While naming is often fanciful and bears little visual reference to its announced subject, it nonetheless signals that young children are beginning to construct visual narratives within which they tell the story of their ideas. Because young children draw on a wide array of sensory responses and feelings, early stories are not meant to “look like” the subject to which they refer, rather they capture the broader array of experiences that inform their responses. Over time, young children begin to name their ideas in advance of working with materials; these early narratives are often assisted by a new journey in development. From configurations consisting of a repertoire of enclosures, intersecting lines, pile-ups of patches of color, children generate

Grades 1 - 2 early images such as those of parents and other family members, their homes, schools, pets and vehicles, in which size, position and detail are indicators of emotional salience. Early images in paint, crayon, clay and collage call attention to the people, animals, places, activities and events that color young childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emotional lives. Grades 1 - 2 Again, there is much overlap between the actions and interests of grades 1 and 2 as children continue their interests in creating images of important people and objects in their lives. In the natural course of development childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s curiosities about human relationships emerge more fully as they grow older and begin to experience a variety of people, actions, and everyday happenings beyond their homes. Works of this phase often give priority to single objects, wholes, parts, and details and the presence of ground lines on which images of people and objects can be placed. Size and relative position of images continue to represent the emotional salience of their referents in the lives and experiences of children at this age. However, over time configurations in paint, crayon, clay and collage that are first centered on self-interests open to curiosity about, and observations of, the wider social world and the interactive ac-

Drawing from observation: Interest in objects; a bite taken from an apple.

Clay: Interest in animals; an imagined dinosaur.

Drawing: A fire in my school; showing use of an imagined baseline. Mixed Media: Myself as king

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tivities of others. The events that emerge in young children’s artworks2 at this phase interweave experiences from imagination, memory and direct observation, and capture highly personal often-idiosyncratic interpretations. Even at this young age children’s artwork may fold in references to ideas and events taken directly from the media or even famous works of art. As children’s subject-matter ideas become more complex and personally nuanced, they include in their two-dimensional works multiple base-lines and sky-lines in order to show spatial distance. Over time, such lines are often abandoned in favor of placing images lower on a page depicting things that are near to, and placing images higher up to show that they are far away. Usually, the middle ground of two-dimensional works becomes the site for the central activity or theme being explored. In both two-and three-dimensional media images begin to reflect more real-world size relationships and some children may even transform size relationships to capture their ideas about distance, depth or emotional importance. While children’s ideas about their worlds are becoming much more concrete, their curiosities and imaginations are becoming important tools of personal investigation and inquiry. Children enjoy working out of school in their sketchbooks noting things of interest from their own observations and using these as resources for their more fully

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developed works in school. Thus, with the right kind of challenges and supports, the works young children make in two and three dimensions will capture their own personal interpretations of the world. Grades 2 - 4 The middle years of childhood bring with them expanding views of the world that incorporate changing ideas about the self, and human relationships. Children at this phase are both concrete and highly imaginative thinkers. Over time they begin to develop growing appreciation for, and understanding of, the social rules, requirements and the skills expected of them to be participating members of society. They are curious about, and very good observers of, events in the real world both in their immediate environment and far away; they also become fascinated with what makes things work in the way that they do. They are developing their own social and aesthetic value systems and learning what it means to be caring and responsible people. This expanding world-view is reflected in children’s paintings, drawings, designs, three-dimensional works and collages. Earlier interests informed by observation, memory, imagination, investigation and inquiry now become centered on events and happenings with several and quite complex parts. The explorations of size and

Grades 2 - 4 distance relationships of the previous phase are now extended to new initiatives involving the depiction of different vantage points expressing new ideas about the third dimension. In two-dimensional works, spatial configurations such as fold-overs, expanding walls, transparencies and bird’s-eye views, re-present views that, either singly or in combination, expose aspects of the world normally hidden from a single vantage point. Similarly, in three-dimensional works, children explore combining different and often divergent perspectives reflecting their curiosity about the relationships among parts, actions and details that distinguish the character of objects in their worlds. At this time, too, young people are also interested in exploring new kinds of non-traditional materials and they will investigate and invent different ways of transforming in their expressive uses. Media sources, visits to local museums and cultural sites, all enrich children’s expanding views of the world and the role of art in opening up new thoughts, ideas and feelings for them personally. This is a critical period in children’s artistic development, for young people are eager to develop increasingly subtle understanding of the properties and qualities of materials that match the growing complexity of their ideas and the urgency they experience to give these ideas expressive form.

Clay: Lady watching TV and reading her book; details from observation

Painting: Getting to work; showing multiple baselines, multiple parts and relationships of distance

Painting: I’m thinking about something naughty; showing vertical organization of space.

Drawing: Group work based on hand bags.

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Grades 5 - 6

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Clay: Narrative; this man has no work, he is resting with his dog

Drawing: Narrative; what I wish for in my dreams

Drawing from observations: My dog; made outside school.

Painting on chairs: Group work

Grades 5 - 6 As children grow and change so they acquire more reflective views of the world. They ask questions about morality, truth, and value and grapple more intensely with the rules and conventions governing the society within which they live. While they continue to be wonderfully curious, imaginative and inventive, they also take a much more reflective and self-conscious view of their art, often testing their own efforts for accuracy and truth. They continue to explore social themes either close to home or from other times and places. Yet, there emerges a new more critical slant to their observations and interpretations, and they will often compare their work to admired adult models or to that of other pupils. This is the time when young people develop distinctive view points and values of their own, but they often begin to experience their personal commitments as being in conflict with those held by their parents and teachers. Grappling with the many, different and divergent ways in which the world can be experienced, conceptualized and re-presented3 becomes a major developmental task for young people growing up in Western cultures. Most youngsters enter this phase with multiple interests, although quite often this multiplicity is demonstrated more fully in their out of

school interests and activities where the directive hand of their teachers is less in evidence. In two-dimensional work they will often explore creating images from a multiplicity of sources: from their own observations, and memories; they will copy from media, from fine art and popular culture, not infrequently they will combine all sources within works of great freedom and imagination. These explorations often involve considerable investigation, and what is learned provides resources for their narrative works in both two and three dimensions. It is usually from these kinds of investigative forays that we see new thoughts emerging about the representation of the third dimension. Young people begin to explore the spatial plane as a new type of expression of the relationship between distance and depth in their works, and as the primary site for the action of their narratives. Their interest in deep space leads to a concern with perspective and, often, confusion about how to depict the relationship between the different vantage points they can now imagine from their own singular point of view. Grades 6 - 8 One of the major issues at this time in young peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development is continuity. Children who continue in the same school may or may not

be offered regular and continuing art lessons with specialist teachers as part of their learning, and other youngsters with different artistic backgrounds may join them. Indeed, many young people change schools during these years. Thus, any middle or junior high school class may include pupils with very diverse and inconsistent backgrounds. Notwithstanding these challenges, there are some things teachers need to bear in mind if they are concerned to support on-going artistic development. Many young people, however wonderfully expressive their past work has been, enter a period when their drawings, paintings, designs, three-dimensional works and collages, tend to become smaller, tighter and lacking in their former invention and expressivity. Questions about reality and rightness in re-presentational works now come more fully to the fore and often inhibit youngsterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own best efforts. We need to remember that this is the time of sometimes dramatic and uneven physical changes in young peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives which, along with emotional and cognitive growth, conspire to shatter their experiences of a stable reality and a consistent and enduring sense of self. While young people often enter this phase of development with a diverse range of artistic competencies and interests, the experiences of self they undergo are often paralleled in important ways by experiences of inconsistency in

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Grades 6 - 8

Drawing: made from research notes compiled during a museum visit

Drawing: A football player after a game

their artistic repertoires as well. In light of this, they begin a search for new more nuanced ideas about materials and their potential as vehicles for constructing and expressing new views of the relationships between themselves and their worlds. At this time, young people quite naturally engage in a great deal of exploratory learning that brings into being new types of images often combining parts and actions often from divergent sources. With the creation of new hybrid images, and also in their more formal artwork in painting, collage and clay, we find adolescent preoccupations with narratives that explore diverse ideas about the self, such as being looked at, going on a journey, multiple selves, interplaying ideal and actual selves, narratives in which new ideas about reality, human experience, and art are tried out. Along with their exploratory play and forays into new forms of narrative, youngsters are concerned with acquiring more formal skills in drawing, painting, collage and sculpture. A Final Note The brief picture of artistic development presented above can only capture the highlights of a complex story. Readers are reminded again that, ultimately, development is very personal and idiosyncratic, and each young person will exemplify the story in a different way. Thus, while

3-Dimensional Design: Exploring the idea of physical and aesthetic balance and their relationship

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Clay: Self-portrait; â&#x20AC;&#x153;my hands speak for meâ&#x20AC;?

much can be gained from becoming insightful about development in general, nothing replaces careful and thoughtful observation of young people as they work and engage with materials. To sensitive observers and knowledgeable teachers, young people will always “tell” what it is they are interest in and make clear the dilemmas and problems they encounter. Teachers are reminded that social, cultural and gender issues thread their ways through artistic development protruding more clearly and insistently at some times rather than others and these concerns need to be respected. Young people grow and develop within a matrix of different cultures that frame many of the practices of art and the values that surround them. For young people in schools where art is little valued, they might find support for their interests in outside community provisions. Here, too, they will need knowledgeable practitioners if they are to flourish in the acquisition of visual voices in and through which they can speak of what concerns them most.

3 The words “re-presented” and “re-presentation” as used here lays stress on the hyphen--as the re presentation of inner thoughts, ideas and experiences, through practices with different kinds of materials in which they are formed and expressed.

See: Burton, J.M. (2000) Learner Centered Art Education Revisited. Studies in Art Education, Vol. 41, No. 4. pp 330-345.

1 The word “material” is used throughout this text. While most familiarly this refers to materials as used in painting, drawing and sculpture materials it can also be extended to include scrap and digital sources that provide new and different challenges to exploration and expression. 2 While the term “artwork” results from practices such as painting, drawing, collage and threedimensional design, as used above it also includes works made in digital and hybrid media.

Cartoon of a cartoon: My manga story

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Part 2 Thinking About Lesson Planning

Planning Lessons: Overview Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interests and ideas about themselves and their worlds grow in depth and richness over time and, with adequate nurturance and support, so too does their ability to capture their experiences in the materials and expressive possibilities of art. It is the teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s task to be sensitive to the life-worlds of their students as they plan and construct their lessons. By the same token, it is important that teachers draw upon their own specialist knowledge about art, procedures and possibilities in order to offer the right kinds of challenges to inspire rigorous artistic learning. Imaginative lesson design is centered on the clarity of a learning objective and the richness of the dialogue between teacher and students that explores the learning in the context of young peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own ideas and interests. A good lesson offers a meeting ground between the ideas and purposes of the teacher and those of the students. For this reason, it is best that a lesson has one objective that is focused yet open enough to allow young people to enter the learning establishing their own interpretations and objectives. What is offered here are suggestions for the components that comprise good lesson design. Each component, offers a specific challenge to thinking and learning, both for teachers and their pupils. The components are designed to carry learning forward building on each other and

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encouraging pupils to reflect on their own ideas, and share ideas with each other. At any point in the flow of learning a teacher may offer specific information to broaden thinking or give a brief demonstration to reinforce a particular skill. However, teachers are reminded that these should be offered in the context of the on-going dialogue of the lesson as it moves forward.

Some Preliminaries Choosing Materials: A material becomes the voice of learning once it is acted upon and transformed into the expression of an idea. It is in the process of working in and through a material, or combination of materials, that learning will be reflected upon, developed and expressed. The choice of material is, therefore, very important and must be carefully thought about and resonate with what a teacher hopes her pupils will learn. Planning Objectives: This expresses the fundamental learning of a lesson or groups of lessons and provides challenges to think, ponder, be curious or critical, reflect, encounter surprise, and imagine as part of

enlarging abilities to learn in the context of practice. The objective states what is it a teacher hopes students will learn, and why this learning is important. In addition, the objective must hold open the possibility for pupils to interpret the learning in the context of their interests and experiences and develop their own objectives as these emerge through the process of creation.

share their ideas with each other gaining new perspectives and stretching their own thinking A good dialogue can be constructed around a set of distinctive components each of which function rather differently; each component invites pupils to examine the learning at hand from a different perspective but as they move forward they gradually open up the learning to increasing depth and variety of interpretation.

Dynamic Activation: This asks teachers to think about the kinds of activities pupils will engage in during the lesson. For example, will they create drawings from imagination, explore the plastic and movement qualities of clay, build a sculpture from wire and scrap, visit a museum, etc?

The Lesson Components

Dialogue: Good lessons proceed on the basis of a thoughtful and challenging dialogue between teachers and students in which the learning is focused and then explored in increasing depth. The value of a dialogue is that it asks pupils to reflect on challenging thoughts, concepts and ideas, and it also requires that teachers listen to their pupils and reflect on their own responses building these into the forward movement of the lesson. In the context of a dialogue young people can test out and

Exploring Ideas: Depending on studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; responses to the lesson spark, teachers can then invite them to associate their thoughts and ideas with the topic of the lesson. Here, teachers need to be adroit at maintaining their learning focus, while responding to studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ideas, and interweaving both as they move reflection and thinking into evergreater depth. Listening, sharing and learning from each other is important here.

Spark: What teachers say to capture interest in the learning to be explored. This is an opening gambit, an intriguing way to establish the topic of the lesson.

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Recap: Because lesson dialogues can cover a great many ideas and responses it is important to pause from time to time and for teachers to make a brief resume of the issues raised. A recap not only allows teachers to avoid confusion among a host of competing ideas, but also to pinpoint the ideas that emerge as particularly salient to the forward movement of the lesson.

Flow into Action: As the dialogue draws to a close, students will become eager to begin acting upon and developing their ideas in their materials. With a few reminders about options for places to begin, teachers should allow for a smooth and immediate transition into a new kind of dialogue, this time a non-verbal dialogue, with the materials through which the learning will be acquired.

Ideas into Materials: Having explored the subject or topic of the lesson, teachers now move into a new phase of the dialogue in which students are invited to consider their ideas in the context of the material or materials they will be using. How will they think their ideas into the material(s)? What aspects of their ideas will they highlight and why? What aspects of the material, or materials, will they select to give voice to their thinking? Here again encouragement to reflect and share different kinds of interpretations and ideas contributes to everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s learning.

Closing Reflection: At the end of individual lessons or groups of lessons, teachers should invite students to reflect upon the learning of the lesson(s) and the many and different ways this has found expression in the works created. Again, reflection is best carried out through dialogue in which students are invited to share and look closely and learn from each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work It is at this point as teachers listen carefully to their pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; responses that they can tell if they have achieved their own objectives and ascertain if their teaching has been successful.

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Graffiti as a vehicle of social commentary

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Part 3 Considering Different Kinds of Lessons

Different Kinds of Lessons Designing good lessons is in itself an art and in this section we begin by thinking about some of the different types of lessons we might want to teach. Depending upon a teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s objective, or what it is they would like young people to learn, lessons and lesson dialogues can be focused differently. In what follows, are a number of different lesson focuses including some suggestions about the kinds of dialogues that might support them; these are then more fully developed in the actual lesson plans that follow. It is important to remember, however, that while lessons may be focused rather specifically, each lesson actually calls upon the learning experiences of all others; teachers might need to remind their pupils of past learning from time to time. What is included here, of course, does not exhaust all possible lesson types and we encourage teachers to add to this list from their own repertoires.

Exploratory Lessons Objectives and dialogues about learning from open-ended play and discovery in relation to a material, practice, experience or idea.

Note: Of course objectives for learning should always be calibrated to larger curricula goals that reflect the specific contexts of individual schools.

Imagination Lessons Dialogues about taking ideas on different kinds of journeys, transforming and reinterpreting things, thinking outside the box.

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Observation Lessons Dialogues about skills of perception, close looking, being curious, and translating responses into different types of materials--sometimes unlikely. Memory Lessons Dialogues about thinking back in time to important happenings, and recalling personal interpretations, or speculating on the responses of others.

Material Lessons Dialogues about the investigation and possible uses of materials and combination of materials and the ideas that might emerge from different actions, explorations and practices. Inventing Lessons Questions about testing out ideas or materials or combining them differently for different functional and non-functional purposes. Open-ended Lessons Dialogues about ideas or experiences that leave open the specifics of subject matter, or material to individual interests and preferences and choices. Aesthetic Lessons Dialogues about making personal decisions and judgments within a work that are not necessarily bounded by real world considerations; thinking of reasons for those decisions.

Popular Culture Lessons Investigating the purposes and uses of contemporary images, objects and ideas and critiquing them for their powers of influence. Exploring integrating media/cultural images within personal works for specific purposes. Fine Art Lessons Dialogues about how ideas change and evolve over time and why, and the personal choices made by individuals and groups of artists. Investigation of the work and practice of individual artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;what can be learned from this? Digital Lessons Dialogues about investigating, selecting and combining visual-verbal resources, and play with design/compositional possibilities; this can also engage back and forth responses with traditional studio materials and practices.

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Some Lesson Examples

Cross referenced to the following sequences in Part 4

Lesson 3: Aesthetic lesson

1 or 2 Class Periods

(Grades 3-4)

Dynamic Activation: Choose one idea from prior lessons (See lessons 1 and 2 in the sequence that follows) as the basis for a ‘non-rectangular’ painting based on “my idea inside the computer.” Materials: Tempera paint: Red, blue, yellow, black and white (encourage mixing); choice of white or colored paper of three sizes; mixing trays with water pots; two different sized brushes and sponge for each pupil. Objective: Pupils will examine the ‘ideas’ they developed in their last two drawing lessons and learn that when they think about these ideas in relation to a different medium such as paint, their ideas will need to change. As they discuss their ideas and how they will need to change, they will also be invited to consider exactly the ‘right’ shape of paper for the depiction of their idea, learning that there is an important relationship between subject matter and the form of its presentation. Spark: In art, sometimes we make drawings and sometimes we make paintings, how are they different—what kinds of different things do they allow you to show about your ideas? Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class) • If you choose one of your drawing ideas from last time, what kind of painting would it make? • If you chose another of your drawings for a painting, what ideas would you have then? • Which part of your idea might become very special in a painting? • Would you think of adding new things to your idea? What might they be? Recap Ideas: Select an array of different responses to recap so that pupils can envision and share the range of possibilities suggested by the class, and be open to new suggestions Ideas into Materials: (Questions to ask a class) • What kinds of colors will you need to mix for your painting? • What about for the special part, how will you mix your colors for that? • Where might you need to use thick paint, thin paint; more of one color than another? • If the painting of your object suggested that you needed to change the shape of your paper, how might you think about this; what shape might it be? Flow into Action: Remind pupils that they have choices about where and how to begin their painting; will they begin by changing the shape of the paper, or will they begin with the object; how much of the paper will it occupy, where will the special part be? Reflection: Invite the class to display their paintings along with the original drawing that inspired them. Have them discuss the range of ideas explored and the different ways they changed in the paint. Ask individuals to share why they chose their particular shape for the final work.

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Lesson 4: Digital Lessons

2 Class Periods

(Grades 3-4)

Lesson 5: Invention Lesson

(Grades 3-4)

Dynamic Activation: Visit to the classroom of an artist who combines digital technology with conventional media: Professional presentation and follow-up practice for pupils

Dynamic Activation: Using scraps and found materials students will invent their own magical vehicle.

Materials: Computers and a selection of drawing, painting and three-dimensional materials.

Materials: Bits of scrap materials, recycled materials, glue, fasteners, scissors, etc.

Objective: Through participating in the artist’s presentation, learn that many contemporary artists work in several different expressive media, switching back and forth as their ideas develop. Attempting this themselves pupils can search the computer for their own favorite images (explain image to them), noting the different forms in which they come, and learn that they can select aspects of the images to combine in their own hybrid (explain the word) work.

Objective: Students will learn that they can invent their own magical vehicle that incorporates parts of known vehicles with those of their imagination to create something original.

Following the artist’s presentation:

Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class)

Spark: The other night I was flipping through the TV channels and I caught a glimpse of my favorite movie from when I was a kid. The name of the movie is Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. It featured a carlike vehicle that could fly and float. I thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Spark: What images did the artist find in his computer?

• If you could create a magical vehicle- what special powers would you want it to have?

Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class)

• Would yours be a vehicle of land, sea or air- or would it be a combination?

• How many different versions of his images did he find? Where did he look? • What made him select certain images over others? What did he do to them? • What made him choose his art materials? How did he put them together? • Is what he made a work of art? If not, what is it? Recap Ideas: Get the pupils to call to mind and share their responses to the artist’s presentation and recap them as a basis for moving the lesson forward. Ideas into Materials: (Questions to ask a class)

• What kind of physical features would it need to have to engage its magical energy? • Would it be a vehicle that only fits you, or could many people travel in it? Recap Ideas: Re-state the responses that the students gave to make sure they’ve heard everything and it has slipped into their consciousness as they continue. Ideas into Materials: (Questions the designer/artist might ask the class) • From the found materials and scraps that we have to use, what bits do you think you could use for the exterior of your vehicle? And for the interior?

• If you could choose your own favorite image what would it be, how many variations do you think there are on your image?

• How will you create the special parts of your vehicle? Will you use hard and sturdy materials or more soft and floppy bits? Or combine them?

• Let’s look……..(work at the computer)

• Will you attach parts together with glue so they are stiff or with fasteners so they can move?

• How many variations did you find? How are they the same/different? • Think about creating your own work from these images, which parts might you choose to combine?

• Will certain parts be concealed or will all special parts be seen?

• What materials will you choose for the different parts of your idea? Why? How will you make them go together?

Flow into Action: Before students launch into their work get them to think about how they will begin their art work, what is magical about their vehicle and how they will combine their materials when inventing something original.

Flow into Action: Now you have lots of variations of your image, which will you choose to work from, or will you choose special parts; how will you choose your materials; where will you begin?

Reflection: Ask students questions that reveal if the lesson objective was met - in the case of this lesson a reflection question might be: “How does the construction of your invention support its magical qualities?”

Reflection: Have the class display their work for each other, focus the discussion on the range of ideas attempted, have the pupils share their choices for materials, and get their responses to working with the computer in this way.

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Lesson 8: Fine art

2 Class Periods

(Grades 3-4)

Dynamic Activation: Library investigation of different kinds of vehicles, past and present

(Grades 6-8)

Materials: Journal sketchbook and an assortment of drawing materials.

Dynamic Activation: Observe, investigate and draw one object from at least four different vantage points.

Objective: Learn that human beings have invented all sorts of different vehicles for different purposes from time immemorial; many artists have included these vehicles in their artworks for different purposes and they have also invented vehicles for special purposes.

Materials: Drawing or charcoal pencils, large drawing paper to fit all vantage points. (Limit drawing materials so that students can focus on the way things look – not the effects of the materials)

Following the library investigation or museum visit:

Objective: Students will learn that the same object looks different from multiple perspectives. (This is a great prelude to understanding dimensionality and things in the round.)

Spark: What was the strangest vehicle you saw in your research and what did it do? Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class) • What other kinds of vehicles did you find in the artists’ works that you had never ever seen before?

Spark: The other day I was in a parking garage. I saw this car and from the front view it looked like a regular sized car, but as I passed it by, I was shocked by how long it was. It looked like a totally different vehicle. Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class)

• Why do you think the artists included these images in their works?

• How many different ways can you look at the same thing?

• What role do you think the images played, were they important, and in the foreground or in the background?

• What’s different about looking at something from the front and back or side to side?

• You discovered that some artists invented special vehicles; do you think they looked at real vehicles first, or where do you think they got their ideas?

• When do objects look bigger, smaller, shorter or longer? • What kind of things look the same from all views?

Recap Ideas: Share with the pupils the range of responses that came up in discussion along with some of the reasons they gave for why and how artists invented special vehicles.

Recap Ideas: Re-state the responses that the students gave to make sure they’ve heard everything and it has slipped into their consciousness as they continue on.

Ideas into Materials: (Questions to ask a class)

• If you could invent your very own vehicle, what would it be? • What special capacities would your vehicle have? • Would some of its part be visible and some only visible to you; which ones would these be? • If you make some drawings of your invented vehicle, how many sides would you need to show so we know what makes it special; what colors and lines would you need to make to show all the various parts of your invention? Flow into Action: How will you begin to design your vehicle idea, how many parts will it have, how many views will you need to show, where will you begin? Reflection: Have the pupils display their ideas for everyone, ask for volunteers to explain how they worked on their ideas and what they had found in their library research or seen in their museum visit that sparked the development of their ideas.

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Lesson 12: Observation Lesson

• What kind of marks will you need to make if your object is rounded/straight, or bumpy/ smooth? • When might you combine a variety of lines? • What kind of marks will you make with your pencil to show that your object is near/far, heavy/weightless, and/or light/dark? Flow into Action: Before students launch into their work get them to think about how they will begin their drawings. What perspectives they might observe and share and how they will position their paper(s) to accommodate the different views of their object. Reflection: Ask students questions that reveal if the lesson objective was met. In the case of this lesson a reflection question might be: “What did you notice from drawing the same object from different views?”

Lesson 13: Exploration Lesson

(Grades 6-8)

Lesson 15: Open-Ended Lesson

1 or 2 Class Periods

(Grades 6-8)

Dynamic Activation: Observe, investigate and draw one object using at least three different drawing materials

Dynamic Activation: Combine collage and drawing in the exploration of the relationship between the inside and outside of an invented object

Materials: Craypas, charcoal, markers, large drawing paper to fit all drawing explorations

Materials: Variety of drawing and collage materials such as: craypas, markers, scraps of textured materials, glue

Objective: Students will learn that the same object can be rendered with different materials, creating different looks of the same object Spark: Over the weekend I was looking through some old family pictures and came upon the same family photo in black/white and also in color. Even though the subject was identical, the photos looked very different. Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class) • If you were to draw the same object several times, from the exact same vantage pointhow could you make the drawings look very different?

Objective: Students will investigate the relationship(s), functions(s) and purposes of the inside and outside parts of an invented object of their own creation. They will learn that they can combine different materials to capture the distinctive parts of their object. Spark: The first time I looked under the hood of my car- I was shocked. The outside of my car is so sleek and smooth and yet the engine, underneath the hood, is made up of lots of little bits, pieces, caps, tubes, wires etc. Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class)

• What creates different moods and effects when drawing the same object?

• How do we know what things look like on the inside?

• What impressions do colored drawings over black/white, smooth over scratchy, and focused over smudged give?

• What kind of things look different on the outside then they do on the inside?

Recap Ideas: Re-state the responses that the students gave to make sure they’ve heard everything and it has slipped into their consciousness as they continue on. Ideas into Materials: (Questions to ask a class) • What kind of materials would you use to describe your object as being happy, solemn, quiet or scary?

• What does the outside of an object do in relation to its insides? • What determines the outside shape of an object? Recap Ideas: Re-state the responses that the students gave to make sure they’ve heard everything and it has slipped into their consciousness as they continue. Ideas into Materials: (Questions to ask a class) • What parts of your object might you draw? Why?

• How could you make your drawings look very old and worn or very new and fresh?

• What parts of your object might you create with collage? Why?

• Which materials would you use to describe your object as smooth or rough? Why?

• Which of your collage materials will you use?

Flow into Action: Before students launch into their work get them to think about how they will begin their drawings, what kind of moods or impressions they might explore and how they will position their paper(s) to accommodate the different materials used. Reflection: Ask students questions that reveal if the lesson objective was met- in the case of this lesson a reflection question might be: “What did you notice from drawing the same object using different materials?”

• What might be the relationship between the parts that will be collaged and those that will be drawn? • How can you combine drawing and collage to best describe the special function of your object? Flow into Action: Before students launch into their work get them to think about how they will begin, what is the object that they are going to create and how they will combine drawing and collage to describe the relationship between the inside and outside of their object. Reflection: Ask students questions that reveal if the lesson objective was met- reflection question might be: “How did the combining of drawing and collage help you describe the relationship between the inside and outside of the object you created?”

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Lesson 16: Pop Culture Lesson

1 or 2 Class Periods

(Grades 6-8)

Several class periods

(Grades 6-8)

Dynamic Activation: Invite a professional designer/artist into the class to critique student work and discuss how s/he approaches the challenge of creating new work

Dynamic Activation: Create a 3D cyborg/avatar from imagination that negotiates the relationship between inner and outer worlds.

Materials: Completed student work

Materials: Papier mache, wire (for armatures- optional), found materials, tools

Objective: Students will gain insight into how professionals look at, evaluate and critique (their) art work and how they deal with the issues of making their own work.

Objective: Students will create a 3D creature/cyborg/avatar from imagination, basing “its appearance” upon the relationship between its internal and external worlds.

Spark: When we are sick we can go to a doctor who determines what’s wrong and how to make us better. When we make art- designers/artists can share with us how they look at our work, offer suggestions and possibilities as well as share how they deal with issues of making their own work.

Spark: I have a very cute dog. Sometimes she sits on my lap and looks into my eyes. I’m always wondering what’s going on in her head.

Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask the class prior to introducing the guest designer/artist) • What is it that designers/artists do?

Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class) • How do we know what individuals think or feel? • What do thoughts and/or emotions look like?

• How do you think they handle artwork that does not turn out the way they want?

• What are things that go on under one’s skin that we never see? What’s our evidence of that?

• How do they get better at making art and design?

• How do our outsides express things about our insides?

• Do designers/artists always make art the same way? Why is that? Recap Ideas: Re-state the responses that the students gave to make sure they’ve heard everything and it has slipped into their consciousness as they continue. Ideas into Materials: (Questions the designer/artist might ask the class) • How was this artwork made? (referring to a specific piece) • What parts of the artwork work well? What parts are a little weak? Why? • How could this artwork be improved? • What different approaches could have been used in making this work? How would that change the artwork? • What would happen if this work of art was made in different materials? Flow into Action: (No flow into action here- because no art will be made during this lesson) Recap Ideas: Consider recapping the responses to the designer/artist’s questions and critique. Reflection: Asks student questions that reveal if the lesson objective was met- in the case of this lesson a reflection question might be: “What did you learn about making art and your own artwork from the designer/artist discussing his/her own artwork and ways of working?”

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Lesson 20: Imagination Lesson

Recap Ideas: Re-state the responses that the students gave to make sure they’ve heard everything and it has slipped into their consciousness as they continue. Ideas into Materials: (Questions to ask a class) • How will you show that your cyborg’s powers or abilities impact the way it looks on the outside? • What materials might you use to construct its outsides? Its insides? How might you combine your materials? • How can you show the relationship between what happens internally and externally? • Will you show both bits of the inside and outside? How will you do that? Flow into Action: Before students launch into their work get them to think about how they will begin their art work, the function of their cyborg and how that function may impact its appearance. Reflection: Asks student questions that reveal if the lesson objective was met- in the case of this lesson a reflection question might be: “How does the appearance of your cyborg inform us about its internal activity?”

Lesson 28: Fine Art Lesson

1 Class Period

(Grades 6-8)

See Appendix: Personal Worksheets, page 93, for a blank template to create your own Lesson Plan.

Dynamic Activation: Invite a museum curator to critique the “streets of curiosities.” Materials: Completed student work- “streets of curiosities.” Objective: Students will learn that when creating a collaborative art work, where and how things are placed can impact and change the look and meaning of their collaborative work. Spark: The other night I got out of bed to get a glass of water. It was pitch black because the lights were off and while walking into the kitchen I stubbed my toe on an end table that I had recently moved. Changing the position of the table not only changed the look of the room but changed the flow of my living room. Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask the class prior to introducing the guest designer/artist) • Who decides where artwork in a museum is placed? • How does the curator determine which pieces of art work to place together or near each other? • Do curators always place art work the same way? Why is that? • What happens when art work gets arranged or re-arranged differently in the same area in a museum? Recap Ideas: Re-state the responses that the students gave to make sure they’ve heard everything and it has slipped into their consciousness as they continue. Ideas into Materials: (Questions the designer/artist might ask the class) • How was this artwork made or assembled? (referring to a specific piece) • How would it be different if things were moved around? • Are there ways that it could have been improved- if so how? • What different approaches could have been used in making this work? How would that change the artwork? • How does the position of things express the meaning of what you want in your art work? Flow into Action: (No flow into action here- because no art will be made during this lesson) Recap Ideas: Consider recapping the responses to the curator’s questions and critique. Reflection: Ask students questions that reveal if the lesson objective was met- in the case of this lesson a reflection question might be: “What did you learn about placement of things when making art, either with others or by yourself, from the curator and what s/he does?”

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Part 4 Connecting Lessons in Sequences

Making Connections: Complex Networks Of course good learning may take place within single lessons but usually this needs grounding within a larger vision for learning that enables the development of concepts and ideas to be pursued over time. Most lessons can be thought about in terms of sequences of continuous and related teaching and learning experiences, in which each lesson moves forward offering new perspectives on a concept, practice or idea. In order to build richness into learning, and ideally, sequences of lesson should also incorporate cultural visits, visiting artists, and collaborations with other subject areas or community groups. It is important to recognize that the flow from lesson to lesson does not necessarily have to be linear but can take many and different directions as we suggest here, and diagram in the pages that follow. Sequences may consist of a few or many individual lessons; they may be framed to address an art concept or practice, a theme or topic, different uses of material or particular art practice, or a set of intriguing questions. However they are framed sequences should allow for lessons to build on each other within an integrative flow to learning and lead to rich in-depth experiences. A carefully planned sequence of lessons, should take account of young peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; need to understand how ideas relate to each other and build in complexity. It should also allow for past learning to be re-visit-

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ed when necessary and provide opportunities for students to apply and extend their learning in a number of different directions, contexts and from different vantage points. When designing sequences of lessons, teachers need to be mindful of their professional, state, and local standards. What is offered here is a vehicle for interpreting standards in such a way as to ensure that planning is respectful of development, the characteristics of artistic practice, and the particular ways in which learning takes place in the visual arts. Put another way, it is to be hoped that teachers may envision state and local standards in terms of guidelines open to interpretation in imaginative and developmentally appropriate ways. Sequences and the development of ideas It is important to note that sequences in teaching and learning can be thought about in both linear and non-linear terms. For example, practically speaking the lessons that compose a sequence are usually taught horizontally in real time on a daily or weekly basis depending upon the particular circumstances of individual schools. On the other hand, the conceptual content (or objectives for learning) that lies at the heart of a sequence of teaching and learning can be chunked or grouped to flow in

many different ways according to the content to be addressed, interests of the teacher or the specific learning needs of pupils. In other words, a sequence of lessons designed to frame learning one way, can always be re-organized to frame it differently, to call forth additional highlights or nuances. In what follows, therefore, we bring forward the different lesson types set forth in Part 3 and place them within two detailed sequences; these sequences are then followed by four re-interpretations, or re-organizations, each of which highlighting different concepts and objectives for learning. What is offered here is only one way of organizing, or chunking, the flow of learning to create a sequence. We make the point that this model is essentially very flexible and offers individual teachers plenty of scope to explore different organizations to meet their own goals for pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; learning needs. The following two sequences are designed to inspire reflection, interactive dialogue and learning. Sequence 1 is designed for grades 3-4 consists of 11 lessons. Sequence 2 is designed for grades 6-8 and consists of 17 lessons. Essentially, each sequence is designed to respect the rich ideas, questions, and ways of thinking that young people bring with them to their art classrooms, and this should also be true of any good

teaching. The sequences also respect the fact that given the right kinds of opportunities, young people will become active and enthusiastic learners on their own behalf. To this end therefore, both sequences take seriously the role of the imagination as a tool of thought, respect the sensory and feeling content of young peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experiences, and challenge their cognitive abilities to make sense and meaning from their encounters with their worlds. The sequences also call upon youngsterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aesthetic sensibilities in making decisions about the form, design and expressive content of their own work. While the learning objectives that frame each sequence are designed to inform the kinds of dialogues teachers might have with their classes, these should function to enable each young person to contextualize the learning in their own way and within the framework of their own interests. As readers will see in the charts that follow, each sequence is designed to ask three inter-related questions, each of which is translated into a focused learning objective.

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Sequence 1. The magic kingdom inside the computer screen. Grades 3-4 What ideas might computers have inside them? Objective: Through observation and investigation of computer parts learn that while they usually function to bring information to us electronically, we can also use our own imaginations to suggest different kinds of information and ideas they might transmit. What new things can I now do? Objective: If our imaginations were computers, what kinds of ideas might they give us to help create a magic vehicle that could do anything or travel anywhere we wanted? Learn that it is possible to combine research materials from books and computers with our own imaginations to develop ideas and designs that never before existed. What parts of my world would I change? Objective: Learn that in and through art and by using our imaginations we can both investigate and change things in our worlds.

Mixed media: Lion mask

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Sequence 2. Turning insides out and outsides in. Grades 6-7 Why are things that shape? Objective: Investigation of different kinds of relationships between forms of objects and their functions: broken mixers, machinery, TVs, shells, open book bags, clothing, tree bark, etc. (it is important that both insides and outsides can be seen simultaneously). Learn that the insides of objects (not seen) can play a variety of different roles in their external (what is seen) form and function and that sometimes one must imagine what this might be. Do we all have an inner world: How do we know this? Objective: Through combining work in observation, investigation and imagination learn that people have inner worlds of feelings that influence their external behavior: We catch glimpses of this as we learn to read the physical characteristics and actions of others. What makes us curious? Objective: Learn that it is important to wonder about things, why they are like they are and the often hidden reasons that make them so.

Digital explorations: Conceived as a tool for learning, the computer plays a distinctive role in many art classrooms. Integrated into the following sequences, work with the computer offers pupils all kinds of access to information, ideas of others, strategies for exploring the design and layering of images, and working out possible solutions to problems. Reflectiontion: Class discussions and critiques can be inserted into the sequences at any point(s) and should proceed on the basis of focusing what has been learned and the different ways in which individual pupils have interpreted and made the learning their own.

Note: Depending on the amount of time an individual school allocates for art periods, the lessons included here may need more time than is available; also, it is often the case that pupils take more time to fully develop their ideas than a teacher has envisioned in advance. To ensure the full stretch of learning, teachers should, therefore use their own best judgment about whether or not to extend each lesson to embrace the full richness of the learning they offer. As when planning in general, teachers are encouraged to be open and flexible in their responses to the learning that unfolds in their classrooms. For additional work on the spiral curriculum: Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. NY: Vintage Books. Spiral Art Education/Home. <www.ulc.edu/classes/ad/ad382/>

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Drawings from imagination

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Sequence 1 Grades 3 to 4

Developmental synopsis Children at this age are both concrete thinkers and highly imaginative. They develop a growing appreciation for and understanding of social rules and the skills expected to be participating members of society. They are curious about and very good observers of events in the real world both local and far away, and are fascinated with what makes things work in the way that they do. Drawing upon earlier interests which called upon responses from different sources: observation, memory, imagination, investigation and inquiry these now become the foundation for new curiosities centered on narratives about events and happenings with quite complex and multiple parts. In twodimensional works, fold-overs, expanding walls, transparencies, and birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;seye views, re-present spatial views that, either singly or in combination, make present aspects of the world normally hidden from single vantage points. In three-dimensional works children explore combining different and often divergent perspectives and become curious about the relationships among parts, actions and the details that distinguish objects in their worlds. Media sources, visits to local museums, cultural sites, and guided tours of their local communities all enrich childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expanding views of the world and the role of art in opening up new thoughts, ideas and feelings for them personally.

These lessons are important because young people between 3rd and 4th grades are naturally curious and engaged in learning the intellectual and social skills of their culture. They are learning too that they can reinterpret many of the things of the real-world, and in their inner worlds of imaginations generate ideas for expression in art that are uniquely their own. This sequence reinforces the idea that knowledge is not just about facts but about the ideas we have about things; the sequence also honors pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; own generativity. The sequence assumes that pupils will have had experiences with different kinds of drawing materials, painting and collage, clay, and working with scrap materials.

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Sequence 1 Type of Lessons

Sequences

Lesson Example Page

What ideas might computers have inside them? Objective: Through observation and investigation of computer parts learn that while they usually function to bring information to us electronically, we can also use our own imaginations to suggest different kinds of information and ideas they might transmit. LESSON NO.

1. Journal/sketchbook. Observation and investigation of bits/parts of old computers 2. Journal/sketchbook. Combining different drawing materials, for different purposes attach ideas to the various bits/parts drawn in the previous lesson. AESTHETIC

3. Sustained practice: Choose one idea from the previous lesson to make into a ‘non rectangular’ painting based on “my idea inside the computer.” The idea for a non-rectangular painting gets across the idea that in art we can work outside usual conventions and use our imaginations creatively.

DIGITAL

4. Invite an artist who combines digital technology with traditional media to visit the art classroom to show his or her work and engage the class in dialogue.

What new things can I do now? Objective: If our imaginations were computers, what kinds of ideas might they give us to help create a magic vehicle that could do anything we wanted? Learn that it is possible to combine research materials from books and computers with our own imaginations to develop ideas and designs that never before existed.

INVENTING

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5. “My magic vehicle” - Combing some of the ideas from lessons 1-3, with new research and investigation, construct a vehicle from imagination that can perform special functions or tasks—what might this be?

Type of Lessons

Sequences

Lesson Example Page

(Sequence 1 Cont’d)

6. Collage and cloth: “What would I wear in my magic vehicle?” Imagine yourself in your vehicle, and design the outfit that best serves its purposes. 7. Illustrated story: “My magic vehicle and I have an adventure.” Drawing on ideas developed in lessons 5 and 6 create a context for yourself and your vehicle in which something special happens— what might that be? FINE ART

8. Journal/sketchbook: Library investigation of different kinds of vehicles past and present. Explore photographs from past and present as well as fantastic designs and think about where your own special vehicle might fit; how might it add something to the vehicles you have discovered?

What parts of my world would I change? Objective: Learn that in and through art and by using our imaginations we can both investigate and change things in our worlds from one state of being to another. 9. Sustained practice. What parts of my world would I change and what parts would I leave the same? Group work of two to four youngsters sharing and combining ideas, either painting or working in clay or both. 10. Sustained practice. Scrap construction based on “My magic computer.” Build a special computer using different kinds of materials and name all the things you would like it to do. 11. Invite an illustrator of children’s stories to visit the class to show and discuss his or her work and become an audience for the class to show they own work from the sequence.

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Variation A Section Title Lesson

Variation B Journal/ sketchbook work

Sustained practice

Grounding and extending

What ideas might computers have inside?

Lesson 4

What new things can I do now?

Grounding and extending

What parts of my world would I change?

Variation A. In this sequence lessons 1 and 2 invite pupils to collect information through active observation and investigation and in lesson 8 to use their journal/sketchbooks to carry out library research. Each of these activities offers specific and important learning which is then carried forward in terms of a new and expanding repertoire to inform sustained practice activities. Lessons 3, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 offer opportunities to work with an array of different kinds of materials, experiment with their uses, and be imaginative in generating ideas. As ideas become form, pupils are expected to be rigorous in their aesthetic-artistic development and bring their work to the kind of closure with which they feel satisfied. As sustained practice contributes new thoughts, perceptions and ideas to pupil repertoires, these then become elemental in the growing ability to appreciate, converse with, and learn from the woks of others in lessons 4 and 11.

Sustained practice

What new things can I do now?

What parts of my world would I change?

Journal/ sketchbook work

What ideas might computers have inside?

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Section Title

Variation B. Keeps the same order of questions but varies the lessons within each segment. Here, more emphasis is placed on opening each segment with a cultural (grounding) experience offering pupils opportunities to learn from visiting artists and library research in preparation for their own works. A teacher may prefer this order if it resonates with other aspects of the art program or more interdisciplinary goals.

Variation C Lesson

Variation D Journal/ sketchbook work

Sustained practice

Grounding and extending

What ideas might computers have inside?

Lesson 4

What parts of my world would I change?

11 10

What new things can I do now?

Variation C. Changes the order in which the questions might be raised, asking first “what ideas might computers have inside them” then “ what parts of my world would I change” and finally, “what new things can I do now.” However, the learning challenges offered within each lesson remain the same within each segment. A teacher might prefer this order for conceptual reasons, or because it resonates with others aspects of the art curriculum or integrated learning planning.

Grounding and extending

What parts of my world would I change?

10 11

Sustained practice

What ideas might computers have inside?

Journal/ sketchbook work

Variation D. Changes the order in which the questions might be asked and also re-orders the lessons within each segment of the sequence. Here, emphasis is given to opening each segment with sustained practice experiences, which then provide the basis for sketchbook/journal work and cultural visits. Again, a teacher might prefer this order as it launches pupils very directly into work with a variety of materials while drawing on their imaginations and memories.

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Sequence 2

The following sequence can be adapted for 5th-, 6th-, 7th- or 8thgrade pupils depending on their past experiences in art and their aptitude and maturity. Developmental synopsis Grades 6 - 8

Young people continue to be wonderfully curious, imaginative and inventive, taking a much more reflective and self-conscious view of their art, often testing their own efforts for accuracy and truth. They explore social themes either close to home or from other times and places, and there emerges a new more critical slant to their observations and interpretations; they will often compare their work to admired adult models. Young people develop distinctive points of view and values of their own and grappling with the many and different ways in which the world can be experienced, conceptualized, and re-presented becomes a major developmental task. In two-dimensional work, they explore creating images from a multiplicity of sources: from their own observations, and memories; they copy from media, from fine art and popular culture, not infrequently combining all sources intermingling them within works of imagination. Explorations often involve considerable investigation and what is learned will provide resources for their narrative works in both

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two and three dimensions. Young people begin to explore the spatial plane as an expression of the relationship between distance and depth in their work and as the primary site for the action of their narratives. Their interest in deep space leads to a concern with perspective and, often, confusion about how to depict the relationship between the vantage points they can now imagine from their own singular point of view. Many young people, however wonderfully expressive their past work has been, now enter a period in which their drawings, paintings, clay works and collages tend to become smaller, tighter and lacking in former invention and expressivity. Questions about reality and rightness in re-presentational works come more fully to the fore and often inhibit youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; own best efforts. They begin a search for new and more nuanced ideas about materials and their potential and test their uses as vehicles for constructing and expressing changing views of the relationships between themselves and their worlds. Young people at this time quite naturally engage in a great deal of exploratory learning involving doodling and cartooning and bringing into being new types of images that combine parts and actions from often divergent sources. Within the creation of such images and in their more formal artwork in painting, collage and clay, we find preoccupations with narratives that explore a divergence of ideas about the self. Along with their exploratory play, and forays into new forms of

narrative, youngsters are concerned to acquire more formal skills in drawing, painting, collage and sculpture. These lessons are important because young people between grades 6- 8 are exploring new perspectives on their worlds of experience. To this end, they are able to grapple with the idea that there are events in daily experience and in art in which things they cannot see nonetheless shape things and events they can see. Knowledge of the presence of the unseen comes from experiences stored in memories, gleaned from cultural socio-political conventions, from personal practice and feelings. The sequence assumes that pupils will have had experiences and are familiar with using and combining two- and three-dimensional materials. Many pupils will be familiar with photography, video and Photoshop, and will wnat to include these practices in their artwork.

Digital design

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Sequence 2 Type of Lessons

Sequences

Lesson Example Page

Why are things that shape? Objective: Investigation of different kinds of relationships between forms of objects and their functions: broken mixers, machinery, TVs, shells, open book bags, clothing, tree bark, etc. (it is important that both insides and outsides can be seen simultaneously). Learn that the insides of objects (not seen) can play a variety of different roles in their external (what is seen) form and function and that sometimes one must imagine what this might be. OBSERVATION

12. Journal work: From close observation, investigate and draw one object from at least four different vantage points.

EXPLORATION

13. Journal work: Staying with the same object or swapping to a new one, carry out observational investigations exploring the effects of different kinds of drawing materials.

14. Group discussion, new perspectives: Relationships between insides and outsides from direct observation, and from explorations in different materials. Group ideas and responses recorded in journals.

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OPEN-ENDED

15. Create a personal object from imagination: Using the learning from the three prior sessions design an object in which collage materials and drawing materials are combined to explore the relationship between the inside and outside of an object that has a particular function. This work could be any size, and should be photographed for inclusion in journals along with a written account (descriptive or poetic) of the nature and purpose of the relationship explored.

POP CULTURE

16. Invite a designer to class to critique work and discuss how he/she approaches the challenge of creating something new.

Type of Lessons

Sequences

Lesson Example Page

(Sequence 2 Cont’d)

Do we all have an inner world; how do we know this? Objective: Through combining work in observation, investigation and imagination learn that people have inner worlds of feelings that influence their external behavior. We catch glimpses of this as we learn to read the physical characteristics and actions of others. 17. Journal work: Investigating people’s inner feelings and the different ways in which these are expressed. Using and combining different materials, create self-portrait/portrait drawings capturing the essential ‘character’ of the sitter; drawing a range of different facial expressions; draw from a skull and then make an imaginative reconstruction of how the brain works. 18. Journal work: Investigating why and how people hide. Using charcoal or graphite make quick/ sustained sketches of posed models hiding in various venues and composed in different physical attitudes. 19. Journal work: Discussion and observation of different kinds of masks in local museums or from an in-classroom slide presentation. IMAGINATION

20. Using imagination, create a personal cyborg or avatar (size to be decided by the teacher or group). Using learning from three prior sessions construct a freestanding three-dimensional figure in which papier-mâché and found materials are combined to explore the relationship between inner and outer worlds. Photograph for journals and write or illustrate a story involving the invented creature. This might be group work. Size is optional.

21. Visit a museum of science/technology or invite a local computer expert to visit the classroom to demonstrate state of the art cyborgian technology.

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Type of Lessons

Sequences

Lesson Example Page

(Sequence Cont’d)

What makes us curious? Objective: Learn that it is important to wonder about things, why they are like they are and the often hidden reasons that make them so. 22. Journal work: What makes us curious, what is behind things? Discussion of some of the personal things that make pupils wonder, and investigation of some of the different avenues their wondering might lead them. 23. Journal work: Observation sketching in the neighborhood, focusing on different kinds of buildings: Shops, houses, churches, billboards, street furniture, graffiti, garbage, etc. 24. Journal work: Class discussion about what has been learned through drawing in the neighborhood—why are things as they are, what can we tell about the neighborhood from investigation, what more can we know and how? 25. Discussion and talk with architects/town planners. 26. Create a personal cabinet of curiosities in which a viewer is inspired to wonder about how the objects were chosen and arranged; write an artist’s statement in which what is seen and unseen outside is explored and explained. 27. Group work: design a street of ‘curiosities’ and create a road map and other explanatory materials that provides an ‘adventure’ for a visitor. FINE ART

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28. Invite a museum curator to critique the ‘street of curiosities.’

Variation A Lesson

Variation B Journal/ sketchbook work

Sustained practice

Grounding and extending

Why are things that shape?

Lesson 22

17 18

Why are things that shape? 12

What makes us curious?

Do we have an inner world?

Variation A. In the above sequence lessons 12, 13 and 14 are focused on detailed observation and investigation of inner-outer structures in objects, lessons 17 and 18 are similarly focused but on inner feelings, and lessons 22, 23 and 24 on the hidden reasons for everyday events and occurrences. Cumulatively, these learning experiences provide resources for sustained practice and the exercise of imagination in inventing an object, a cyborg and cabinet of curiosities each with their own hidden reasons for existing. Carried forward in to lessons 16, 19,21, 25 and 28, pupils’ own generative resources become frameworks for appreciating and conversing with the work of others interjecting critical voices on issues of morality, values and beliefs.

Grounding and extending

Sustained practice

What makes us curious?

Do we have an inner world?

Journal/ sketchbook work

Variation B. Suggests an alternative ordering to the questions, asking first ‘what makes us curious’, then ‘why are things that shape’ and, finally, ‘do we have an inner world? However, the learning challenges remain the same as version A within each segment. A teacher may prefer this order of questions for conceptual reasons or because this resonates with other aspects of their curriculum or integrated learning planning.

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Variation C Lesson

Variation D Journal/ sketchbook work

Sustained practice

Grounding and extending

Why are things that shape?

Lesson 20

What makes us curious?

Grounding and extending

Why are things that shape?

Variation C. Not only changes the order in which the questions might be raised but also reorders many of the lessons within each segment. Here, there is more emphasis on placing the Grounding/Extending experiences earlier within each segment, offering pupils the opportunities to gather information from cultural sources before beginning their own works. Again, a teacher may prefer this order if it resonates with larger curricula goals.

Sustained practice

Do we have an inner world?

Journal/ sketchbook work

Variation D. Changes the order in which the questions might be raised and reorders the lessons within each segment of the sequence. Here, emphasis is given to sustained practice at the outset of each segment which provides the basis, then, for journal/ sketchbook work and cultural visits. Again, a teacher may prefer this order as it launches pupils very directly into work with a variety of materials while drawing upon their memories and imaginations. 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 See Appendix: Personal Worksheets, page 93, for a blank template to create your own Sequences.

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Working together on a mural

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Part 5 Connecting Lessons in Spirals

Connecting Lessons in Spirals The ideas we work with in the visual arts are complex and multi-layered, and no single lesson or sequence of lessons can exhaust the rich learning to be gained through thoughtful and imaginative planning. In the hands and minds of good teachers, ideas, subjects, topics and skills can be revisited from time to time over the course of young peoples’ educational experiences. Revisiting offers opportunities to consolidate and engage in new thinking and integrate more complex practices within their artistic repertoires. While this text is not a full curriculum, it nonetheless argues for a dynamic way of thinking about learning across time. Sometimes we tend to forget that the word curriculum derives from the Latin currere to run, which makes thinking about lesson planning an active and forward looking enterprise. The image of a spiral, thus, becomes a good one, for it suggests a set of points moving flexibly back and forth round a fixed center of gravity. We may think of these points as lessons, or learning experiences, and the fixed center, as the specific goals teachers have for their pupils’ growth and development. In what follows we re-visit the lessons in sequences 1 and 2, and imagine how they might be thought about differently if placed along a spiral organization that moves in time across several grade levels. For while we may think about the lessons that compose the sequences as horizontal organizations of learning, we can also think about them in terms of their contribution to a vertical organization of learning.

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For instance, lessons and learning in the medium of clay taught in third or fourth grade, may have been preceded by earlier lessons and learning in first and second grade, then followed on by lessons and learning in fifth and sixth grades. In short, while each of these lessons may have been part of different horizontal grade level sequences of learning, each can also be conceived to contribute to vertical organizations that span several grade levels. To accomplish this new organization of teaching and learning we are inviting teachers to imagine what lessons might have preceded, and what might follow those included in the two sequences already presented, and what more extensive journeys in learning might be achieved this way. For the purpose of illustrating this vertical or “spiral” way of thinking we have now regrouped the twenty-eight lessons of sequences 1 and 2 according to the following learning activities or what we call “domains”, as these span several grade levels; these will be familiar to most teachers, they are: Observation/investigation (journals and sketchbooks) Working from imagination (sustained practice) Cultural experiences (Groundings) Using materials

Domains Journal/sketchbook work: Focuses on observation, learning to look closely; investigation, collecting information, and interpretation, by using imagination. Ideally, every sequence should result in a visual-verbal journal, or personal resource text, that can be kept and become part of individual pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; portfolios and used to reflect on and to inform other learning sequences. Sustained practice: These experiences draw upon journal/sketchbook learning and invite pupils to be deeply imaginative in using this learning for their own expressive interpretive and aesthetic ends. These experiences may take two, three or more lessons to complete; and the works undertaken might be quite large and complex, either individual or group inspired. Outcomes should be developed as far as possible and photographed for inclusion in journals/sketchbooks and where possible should be supported by written accounts: documentation of processes, personal narratives or poems. Cultural visits: These experiences both inform and extend pupil learning and artistic practice and may be inserted at various points during

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the sequence. Such experiences can take learning outside the classroom or may be provided by way of slide shows, power point presentations or visiting artist sessions in classrooms. Essentially, these experiences provide the direct meeting between pupils and the culture(s) in which they grow up and live; they ground pupil learning in the endeavors of others past, present and future and offer opportunities for informed conversations across time and place in which critical questions about values, beliefs and practices can be raised and discussed. In the following pages each grouping of lessons is presented in capsulated form on the spirals, and each lesson is accompanied by its number within the originating sequence for easy reference (see pages 24-29) and to show the potential flow of learning from grade to grade. Teachers are invited to imagine how the different lessons within each grouping might be plotted along the spiral over time. In addition to imagining prior and follow-up lessons, teachers might think about other lessons for each grade level that lie outside the two sequences, but are nonetheless crucial to the continuation of pupils’ experiences and learning.

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Thinking about the organization of lessons over time allows teachers to anticipate how they might envision enlarging pupils’ artistic repertoires and the different directions these might take. Spiral groupings of lessons also offer a structure for thinking about how to layer learning in complexity and how this relates to the ongoing and changing circumstances of young peoples’ lives and to the introduction of new and evolving skills. However, teachers should always proceed with caution; while they may have envisioned structures for carrying forward their own programs of learning, these should always be flexible enough to accommodate unexpected turns in young peoples’ experiences and needs as well as within their own interests and school contexts.

Painting: Enjoying the pool

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Prior Lessons

Observation/Investigation

SEQ. 1:

Journals and Sketchbooks

Consider what kinds of observation experiences might precede those offered in Sequences 1 and 2.

Drawing from parts and bits of old computers (1,2) Lessons from within Sequences 1&2

Drawing investigation of different kinds of vehicles (8) SEQ. 2: Drawing one object from different vantage points (12, 13) Drawing different facial expressions (17)

What learning is to be carried forward? What makes for interesting observational challenges at different ages? What experiences might follow on those offered above?

Drawing people in different positions hiding-posed (18) Drawing from various masks in museum (19) Drawing ideas: Being curious about things we cannot see (22)

Follow On Lessons

Drawing different aspects of neighborhood (23)

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Prior Lessons

SEQ. 1: Non-rectangular painting based on: My idea inside the computer ((3)

Working from imagination

Scrap construction based on: My magic vehicle (5)

Sustained Practice

Collage and cloth: What would I wear in my magic vehicle (6) Lessons from within Sequences 1&2

Illustration: My magic vehicle and I have an adventure (7) Painting/clay: Changing our worlds (9) Scrap construction: My magic computer (10) SEQ. 2: Mixed media: Personal object exploring relationships of insides-outsides (15) Imaginative reconstruction: The working brain (17)

Encouraging and nurturing the imagination is critical to all visual arts learning. What kinds of challenges to the imagination might lay the groundwork for the lessons offered in Sequences 1 and 2, what experiences might radiate from them in later grades?

Papier-mâché and found materials: Create a personal avatar (20) Mixed media and found materials: create a cabinet of curiosities (26)

Follow On Lessons

Create a road map for “an adventure” (27)

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Prior Lessons

Cultural experiences

SEQ. 1:

Groundings

Visits to museums and artist’s visits to art classrooms should be vital offerings of all good art programs and planned for very carefully.

Visiting artist combining traditional materials and technology (4) Lessons from within Sequences 1&2

Library investigation of different kinds of vehicles (8) Visiting artist: Illustrator of children’s books (11) SEQ. 2: Visiting artist: designer: Challenges of creating something new (16)

How will pupils be introduced to the world of museums and practicing artists; how will such visits grow in richness over time; how will they provide on-going groundings for pupils’ own efforts?

Museum visit: Different kinds of masks (19) Museum visit: Science/technology (21) Visiting artists: Town planners (25)

Follow On Lessons

Visiting artist: Museum curator (28)

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Prior Lessons

SEQ. 1: Journals and sketchbooks: drawing (1) Mixture of drawing materials (2)

Using materials

Paint (encouraging mixing) (3) Scrap construction (5) Collage and cloth (6) Lessons from within Sequences 1&2

Illustration: Pen and ink, watercolor (8) Paint and clay (9) Scrap (10) SEQ. 2: Journals and sketchbooks: drawing (12, 14, 19, 22, 23) Mixture of drawing materials (13,17)

Materials are the voices through which pupils speak about what concerns them most. What kinds of learning experiences need to take place so that pupils will have the confidence they need to participate fully in Sequences 1 and 2? What kinds of experiences might grow out of this participation and how will these be calibrated to pupils’ own ideas and interests?

Collage, mixed drawing materials (15) Charcoal and graphite (18) Found materials and papier-mâché (20, 26) Photography (20)

Follow On Lessons

Writing: Statements, descriptions, accounts, stories (all lessons)

Note: See Appendix: Personal Worksheets, page 93, for a blank template to create your own Lessons in spirals.

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Part 6 Connecting Lessons Across the Curriculum

Paper sculpture: Three-dimensional design

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Connecting Lessons Across the Curriculum The study and practice of art is integrative by its very nature. Participation in art learning calls upon responses to all sorts of encounters and events in the everyday world. Practicing artists often find their ideas and inspiration in unsuspecting places and their studios become sites for investigation, experimentation and reaching out to others. In today’s society contemporary artists learn from everywhere, from technology, science, mathematics, literary narratives, history and from other disciplinary sources as these offer material for dealing with complex life questions through their work. This is a way of saying that contemporary art practices underline what thoughtful teachers do already as they stretch out to make important connections with other school disciplines. Equally other disciplines are profoundly enriched in scope and depth by the kinds of observational, investigative and imaginative abilities nurtured in the visual arts. Ideas, endowed with the aesthetic consideration of the arts have an extraordinary power to compel learning and engage the attention of others. However, if the visual arts are to become important components of young people’s learning experience across other subject disciplines, it must do more then merely serve those disciplines The integration of art learning with other subject disciplines involves dialogues among groups

of teachers about important ideas and how these can be thought about from multiple perspectives. The inspiration for this can come from many different sources both spontaneous and planned, for example: • Integration can arise spontaneously within the practice of one subject teacher who reaches out to her art colleagues. • A group of arts teachers might plan for a multi-arts event around an integrative question, theme or activity. • Pupils themselves might raise important issues for interdisciplinary consideration which they discuss with several different teachers inspiring them to work collaboratively. • A theme or concept might be explored by a group of teachers in which art learning is envisioned to play several distinguishing roles: Investigation, discovery, complex forming of ideas in visual form, displaying learning around the school, contextualizing learning through visits to cultural sites such as museums. • The art teacher might stretch out to disciplinary colleagues for learning that extends her curriculum in new directions. For instance, ideas about self-portraits and identity might be explored in history, science, social studies and literature.

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â&#x20AC;˘ A school faces a serious problem with antisocial behavior that might be addressed through several disciplines working together. Starting points for interdisciplinary teaching and learning can, quite literally come from anywhere. They may be sharply framed, as might be the case in an interdisciplinary study of atoms, to more far reaching considerations as in the investigation of the commercial and political manipulation of ideas in advertising. Whatever the source, however, art teachers must be centrally involved in the dialogues that set the scene for the learning from the beginning. Developing the ability to consider ideas from the distinctive perspectives of different disciplines, to harness imagination, critical inquiry and expressive capacities, involves much careful thought. Integrating the work of subject matter disciplines takes time and careful preparation so the learning is genuine and deepened by the play of multiple perspectives each can offer.

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In what follows we will return to our two lesson sequences and use them as examples of some possible interdisciplinary extensions and dialogues. We must imagine that the two sequences and the questions that propel them forward arose originally from intense discussion, the first sequence among visual arts, computer technology, science and mathematics teachers, the second sequence among visual arts, language and social studies teachers. What is included in the pages that follow are some indicators of how the other disciplines might address the learning expressed in the objectives and some clues to the kinds of dialogues that might set this in motion. Since each of the disciplines offer distinctive perspectives on the questions and learning objectives, a group dialogue among the pupils and the teachers should be held from time to time to encourage reflection on what has been learned and how young people are thinking and applying their knowledge. See Appendix: Personal Worksheets, page 93, for a blank template to create your own Extensions.

Extensions for Dialogue - Sequence 1 Connecting to Other Disciplines Extension A Math, Science - Consider how computers assist in the study of mathematics. - What programs exist? - Discuss new ways that students imagine computers could be used when learning and dealing with math.

Social Studies, History

The magic kingdom inside the computer screen What ideas might computers have inside them? Objective: Through observation and investigation of computer parts learn that while they usually function to bring information to us electronically, we can also use our own imaginations to suggest different kinds of information and ideas they might carry.

- Consider how information came to individuals before the advent of personal computers. - Discuss and investigate newspapers, printing presses through smoke signals.

1. Journal/sketchbook. Observation and investigation of bits/parts of old computers 2. Journal/sketchbook. Combining different drawing materials attach ideas to the various bits/parts Computer, Technology - Consider how computers work and the role of the internet. - Bring in a computer designer who will disassemble a computer and explain its construction and function.

3. Sustained practice: Choose one idea from above to make into a ‘non-rectangular’ painting based on “my idea inside the computer” 4. Invite an artist who combines digital technology with traditional media to visit the art classroom

Literature, Art - Consider reading Alice in Wonderland. - Discuss the importance of being beyond the looking glass. - How would that theme translate into students’ own lives?

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Extensions for Dialogue - Sequence 1 Connecting to Other Disciplines Extension B Math, Science - Consider the structure of simple arithmetic such as adding and subtracting. - Discuss ways in which existing math could be combined or reinvented to serve imaginary or magical purposes.

Social Studies, History

The magic kingdom inside the computer screen What new things can I do now? Objective: Students will learn that they can invent their own magical vehicles, which can do anything they desire, invented with parts from both known vehicles and parts from their imagination as they create something original.

- Consider an invention that came to be during the industrial revolution. - Build a time line that represents how that invention has changed and morphed over the last 100 years.

5. Scrap construction: My magic vehicle 6. Collage and cloth: What would I wear in my vehicle? 7. Illustrated story: My magic vehicle and I have an adventure Computer, Technology - Consider how computers work and the role of each of its parts. - Build a computer using an existing one/ with invented new parts. - Have students describe the new magical functions of the computer.

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8. Journal/sketchbook: Library investigation of different kinds of vehicles past and present

Literature, Art - Consider listening to a classical piece of music, then listen to a piece of contemporary rap music that samples the classical piece. - Discuss how music has been reimagined over the years and takes on new meaning.

Extensions for Dialogue - Sequence 1 Connecting to Other Disciplines Extension C Math, Science - Consider the kinds of scientific breakthroughs or changes that are needed to make the earth a better place. - Discuss what those changes would be and specifically the impact they would have. - Be sure to make cause and effect connections.

Social Studies, History

The magic kingdom inside the computer screen What parts of my world would I change? Objective: Students will learn that in and through art, while using our imaginations, we can test out and change things in our world.

- Consider the need to stay green. - Create a list of historical inventions that need to be updated as not to negatively impact the environment. - What would those changes mean for land, sea and air?

9. Sustained practice: What parts of my world would I change and what parts would I leave the same? Group work of two to four young people working in either painting or clay. 10. Sustained practice: Scrap construction based on “My magic computer.”

Computer, Technology - Consider the things that computers don’t yet do that we would like them to do. - Discuss with a computer designer what those things are and how they could be made possible.

11. Invite an illustrator of children’s stories to visit the class.

Literature, Art - Consider the fact that writers generally revise their work many times. - Bring in a playwright or journalist, with examples of re-writes and changes to show how work evolves over time.

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Extensions for Dialogue - Sequence 2 Connecting to Other Disciplines Extension D Math, Science - Consider things found in natureplants, trees, and flowers. - Dissect and discuss the relationship between the outside of organic matter and its internal workings. - Can you think of new and better ways for trees to be shaped? - What about their root system?

Social Studies, History

Turning insides out and outsides in Why are things that shape? Objective: Students will investigate the different kinds of relationships between forms of objects and their functions: broken mixers, machinery, TVs, shells, open book bags, clothing, tree, bark etc. (it is important that both insides and outsides can be seen simultaneously). They will also learn that the insides of objects (that which isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen) can play a variety of roles in their external form and function that might sometimes need to be imagined. 12. Journal work: From close observation, investigate and draw one object from at least 4 vantage points. 13. Journal work: Staying with the same object or swapping to a new one, carry out observational investigations exploring the effects of different kinds of drawing materials.

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- Consider the evolution of Man. How has his form changed over time? What can an upright person (homoerectus) do that couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be done before? - Discuss the imaginary ways in which the human form might evolve in the future to allow us to possess new abilities and functions.

Extension D (contâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d) Computer, Technology - Consider the mystery of computers. Outside they look like boxes but inside they are made up of 100s of bits and pieces. - With a computer tech/designer dissect and discuss the internal working of computers. What does each part do and how do they work together? - Can you conceive of a new external shape for computers?

Literature, Art

Turning insides out and outsides in 14. Group discussion, new perspectives: Relationships between insides and outsides from direct observation, and explorations in different materials. Group ideas and responses recorded in journals. 15. Create a personal object from imagination: Using the learning from the 3 prior sessions design an object in which collage materials and drawing materials are combined to explore the relationship between the inside and outside of an object that has particular function. This work could be any size, and should be photographed for inclusion in journals along with a written account of the nature /purpose of the relationship explored.

- Consider how art can have many looks and hold many secrets. - Look at and discuss Duchampâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. What is the relationship between the external and internal space and work? - Sketch your own imagined exteriors to create your own meaning.

16. Invite a designer to class to critique work and discuss how s/he approaches the challenge of creating something new.

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Extensions for Dialogue - Sequence 2 Connecting to Other Disciplines Extension E Math, Science - Consider the theory of Fight or Flight. How do certain situations bring about chemical reactions that allow us to act in extraordinary ways? - Look at a model of the human brain with a scientist/doctor. Discuss how the brain works and how chemical reactions occur.

Social Studies, History

Turning insides out and outsides in Do we all have an inner world; how do we know this? Objective: Through combining work in observation, investigation and imagination, students will learn that people have inner worlds of feelings that influence their external behavior: We catch glimpses of this as we learn to read physical characteristics and actions. 17. Journal work: Investigating people’s inner feelings and the different ways in which these are expressed. Using and combining different materials, create self-portrait/portrait drawings capturing the essential ‘character’ of the sitter; drawing a range of different facial expressions; draw from a skull and then make an imaginative reconstruction of how the brain works. 18. Journal work: Investigating why and how people hide. Using charcoal or graphite make quick/ sustained sketches of posed models hiding in various venues and composed in different physical attitudes.

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- Consider the life of early man. - Discuss the situations that he encountered, which made it necessary for him (and his family) to hide from external forces. - How did he handle this situation? - What ultimately was developed based upon those circumstances?

Extension E (cont’d) Computer, Technology - Consider computers before the advent of the PC or laptop. - Discuss with a computer expert the role of punch cards that programmed and commanded old computers to function. - Find out what happens when a punch card has an error on it. - How does the computer then work?

Literature, Art

Turning insides out and outsides in 19. Journal work: Discussion and observation of different kinds of masks in local museums or from an in-classroom slide presentation. 20. Using imagination create a personal cyborg or avatar: Using learning from three prior sessions construct a 3D figure combining papier-mâché and found materials. Explore the relationship between inner and outer worlds. Photograph work for journals and write or illustrate a story involving the invented creature. This might be a group activity.

- Consider reading as a group: The Diving-bell and the Butterfly. An (auto) biography about a paralyzed man, whose only form of movement and communication came from and through the blinking of his left eye. - Discuss the idea of what happens when the body is locked but the mind is still free. (Recommended for 8th grade and up). OR - Consider reading the Diary of Anne Frank and discuss how hiding, during WWII saved the lives of the family.

21. Visit a museum of science/tech or invite a local computer expert to visit the classroom to demo state of the art cyborgian technology.

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Extensions for Dialogue - Sequence 2 Connecting to Other Disciplines Extension F Math, Science - Consider why the sky is blue, why grass is green and what are clouds made of. - Discuss the scientific compositions that impact the look of our environment. - How could things be changed and what causes them to stay the same?

Social Studies, History

Turning insides out and outsides in What makes us curious? Objective: Students will learn that it is important to wonder about things, why they are the way they are and the often hidden reasons that make them so. 22. Journal work: What makes us curious, what is behind things? Discussion of some of the personal things that make pupils wonder and investigate some of the different avenues their wondering might lead them. 23. Journal work: Observation sketching in the neighborhood, focusing on different kinds of buildings: Shops, houses, churches, billboards, street furniture, graffiti, garbage, etc. 24. Journal work: Class discussion about what has been learned through drawing in the neighborhood from investigation, what more can we know and how?

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- Consider curiosities of people in the 1800â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and the discoveries that were made. - Create a personal doctrine featuring a single curiosity you have about society and how you think it could be changed or improved?

Extension F (cont’d) Computer, Technology - Consider ways of communication. - Discuss how phones work, looking at the difference between cell phones and land lines. - Do they allow for different types of communication because they work off of different technology? - Read about Thomas Edison.

Literature, Art

Turning insides out and outsides in 25. Discussion and talk with architects/town planners. 26. Create a personal cabinet of curiosities in which a viewer is inspired to wonder about how the objects were chosen and arranged. 27. Group work: Design a street of ‘curiosities” and create a road map and other explanatory materials that provides an ‘adventure’ for a visitor.

- Consider seemingly strange objects of art and how they were created. - Discuss how ships exist within bottles and hypothesize how that came to be. - Visit a glass factory, to learn about how glass is made and the different ways it is used including everyday things like glasses, windows, plates etc. to unusual things like works of art.

28. Invite a museum curator to critique the ‘street of curiosities’.

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Part 7 Integrating Assessment

The Challenge of Thinking About Assessment

Assessment in the arts must respect the nature of the discipline and be responsive to important ways of thinking and learning. It should also acknowledge that children and adolescents develop at different rates and allow for differences in accomplishments. Also, art teachers need to be sensitive to individual youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; desires to show excellence in practice through the use of materials and processes supported by their knowledge of different art forms and historical periods. Ideally, assessment should take account of the need of young people to have a voice in how their work is judged and how their learning is accomplished. In fact, pupils themselves are often more insightful in their appraisals of their own work than are their teachers and when they disagree with their teachersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; judgments they need to learn how to negotiate differences thoughtfully and openly. Assessment must also be detailed, varied, and comprehensive in scope to give teachers information about the interests and capacities of their pupils. Where possible assessment should involve groups or teams of teachers working together to design the instruments through which to review youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work. If appraisals of adult art work are amenable to divergent perspectives then this is not less true in relation to the artwork of children and adolescents. The virtue of teaming with one or two Paper sculpture: A man driving a tractor

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other teachers is that different opinions can be recognized and debated; this often leads to new insights for teachers and also, ultimately, a fairer appraisal for their pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work. In this way, teachers can explore a diversity of ideas incorporating those that give the best feedback so that assessment becomes part of the process of learning and not an extrinsic appendage. In the pages that follow, assessment is focused on ascertaining pupil progress and how this can impact the design of lessons and sequences of lessons. The various instruments suggested here are designed to respect differences in developmental timing and individual interests. It is suggested that assessments should be carried out as the school year unfolds, for this will give on-going feedback on how things are progressing (formative), and provide information for a final end of year appraisal (summative). Of course, different types of assessment offer different views of learning: some components are more informal and open-ended such as those based on observations and portfolio reviews while other procedures can be more precise such as benchmarks and tests that document specific learning outcomes related to instruction. Formative assessment is particularly useful both for keeping youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; learning on track and for modifying or changing instructional practices if need be. A summa-

tive assessment is usually asked for at the end of a semester or school year when art teachers are required to report on pupil progress. Thus, an on-going, thoughtful, and varied assessment process, closely integrated with instruction, will offer teachers a range of important information and insights about each pupilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s learning in practice from which they can document progress and pinpoint areas that need special attention.

Digital design

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Assessing pupil progress: Some useful instruments Observation and dialogue. This kind of assessment is quite informal and takes place in every lesson; it is embedded into the motivation dialogues designed to get youngsters thinking, reflecting and using their imaginations. In the flow of the conversations, the teacher can take account of an array of responses; diagnose when things have not been understood, and become insightful about the contexts shaping youngsters’ ideas as they emerge. In the flow of the dialogue, the teacher can keep ideas open for reflection and make sure youngsters do not make premature judgments; she can also help the group to be respectful of each other’s ideas, and can turn tension into serious and supportive debate. As the teacher follows up her motivation in the body of the lesson, learning can be reinforced, and youngsters’ own objectives for their work can come into play and be recognized. At the same time young people can learn how to appraise their own work and be thoughtfully sensitive in their responses to that of their peers. On-going reflective assessment here can offer teachers a great deal of informal and anecdotal material for instructional modification and improvement.

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Benchmarks along the way. Benchmarks are often though of in terms of statements that express exemplary learning used as reference points against which youngsters’ efforts can be judged. Thus, for example, at given points during a school year all second-, fifth-, eighth- and twelfthgraders might be assessed against a standard model of accomplishment determined for that grade. Art teachers, coordinators and even parents may work in teams to write the benchmarks and determine the times during the school year when they will be used as measures for learning. That said, teachers need to remember that artistic development proceeds at very different rates from individual to individual, and over time young people explore and develop a variety of different styles through which to communicate and express their ideas. Thus, benchmarks should be drawn with great care; they should not be so narrowly conceived that they mistake transitions in development and exploratory endeavors for failures to achieve pre-judged outcomes. Pupils themselves might also be brought into this process and invited to make suggestions for the benchmark assessment of their own works. Benchmarks should be designed with a variety of interpretations in mind, with an eye to encouraging personal development, and not function to standardize pupils’ artistic efforts across given age or grade groups.

Practice in portfolios. From time immemorial artists have kept portfolios, not simply as repositories of finished works but as recipients for ideas: ideas in the making, plans, sketches, copies and finished works. Student portfolios may also contain works in progress, collections of reproductions, writings on artists or critiques of their work, CDs videos and photo-documentation of interdisciplinary learning or work made outside of school. Portfolios can be of any size and shape—depending upon the availability of storage space—and, like sketchbooks, can be made to youngsters’ own design and specifications. Portfolios nowadays have become the sine-qua non of many subject matter disciplines since they allow teachers to review learning as it progresses over time. This is also true in the visual arts as the portfolio offers a more comprehensive view of youngsters’ artistic development, learning, and accomplishments than almost any other assessment component. Sketchbooks and journals. These are ideal vehicles for collecting reference materials and exploring ideas. Sketchbooks and journals can be of any shape or size, can be carried in pockets and bags and be handy for jotting notes, or repositories for collecting reproductions, scrap materials and so forth. If teachers can encourage pupils to make and use their

own sketchbooks and journals from Kindergarten onwards, the visual/ verbal note taking will become second nature. The very presence of the sketchbook/journal invites youngsters to become constantly sensitive to and curious about the visual appearances of their surroundings and their responses to it. Ideally, sketchbook work will include visual notes taken outside school and be integrated into in-school work and more complex and long-term idea making. Sketchbooks and journals are very useful as assessment instruments because they reveal youngsters’ own interests as they engage with their worlds and give clues to how they draw upon their in-school learning. Presentational assessments. Pupils naturally want to know how they are doing in any given subject and how their work relates to that of their peers. However, if assessments have been embedded into the lessons and done their work well, youngsters should have a healthy regard for an array of different accomplishments among their peers; they should also have developed broad sympathies in the application of their judgments. Showing the cumulative outcomes of their learning to the school community offers young people yet another chance to appraise and appreciate everyone’s accomplishments including their own. These

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might take the forms of organizing exhibitions, demonstrations or performances of art projects and practices and might even become occasions for inviting art teachers from other schools, or visiting artists and parents, to join a panel of appraisers. In the case of exhibitions, and where possible, all pupils should be included and help to select the work they wish to present. It is important to have youngsters accompany their visual works with artists’ statements or any other writings, such as narratives, critical essays or poems that offer insights into the works themselves. Complete portfolios might also be available should anyone wish to see more of an individual pupil’s work. Contributions to the community. Whenever possible, and if it can be arranged, pupils’ artistic learning should stretch beyond school into the local community. This might take the form of internships in local museums or cultural sites, having sales of work to support important causes, and taking responsibility for the aesthetic environment of the school. For older youngsters this might also include some work with preschool or elementary art teachers, apprenticing with visiting artists, participating in social activism through designing posters for events and festivals, creating functional ceramics for gifts, designing art-related ma-

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terials for special needs pupils, creating a community mural or installation, or arranging window displays for local shops or a special exhibition for a bank. The importance of extending art practice into the community is that it offers youngsters a wider “text” for their learning. It helps them to see that art practice can contribute to many and divergent social needs and that their participation opens new doors to their understanding of themselves and their worlds and how this might be expressed through their art. This work can be documented in sketches, photographs and critical writing, even becoming books that record responses in a play of images and poems. The outcome of this learning can become part of the portfolio and final exhibition. Tests. For many parochial reasons, teachers may be required to administer timed tests in the visual arts. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with tests, providing they are designed to respect the nature of learning within the discipline and it is acknowledged that they capture only one moment in time and from the restricted vantage point of whatever the test requires. Put differently, tests are not sensitive to youngsters of the same age at different development phases, or in transition from phase

to phase, nor are they sensitive to the fact that they only elicit a single aspect of youngsters’ abilities in art practice, say for instance in drawing, whereas their real artistic strength may be in ceramics. With careful thought, tests can be designed that do not fall into the fact-based, out of context, hierarchically ordered, schema of current high stakes practices. Even then, teachers and administrators must recognize that what test results offer will be, inevitably, a very incomplete picture of learning in practice. Thus, tests should not be the only context in which youngsters can demonstrate their learning, but should be part of a more comprehensive review process. Timing and the feedback loop Teachers are busy and usually disinclined to add further burdens to their already complex teaching lives. If assessment is not to become one of those additional burdens, then it needs to be embedded in the flow of art classroom life; in short, teaching, learning and assessment should be seamless. To accommodate to the needs of pupils to gain a clear view of what and how they are learning and help teachers to be sensitive to the impact of their teaching assessments should be ongoing and phased throughout the school year. Each assessment instrument included

above—informal, benchmarks, portfolio, tests, exhibitions, community action—is designed to offer a distinctive view of pupil progress and accomplishment as these develop over time during the school year. Taken together, these assessment instruments should offer a comprehensive profile of the many facets and phases that shape youngsters’ learning in practice. The participation of young people themselves in the process of assessment helps shape their sense of responsibility for their own learning and gives them a rich sense of what it takes to make thoughtful and informed judgments about an array of artistic practices. Youngsters should not have to wait until the end of the school year to know how they are progressing and what extra efforts need to be made. If pupils themselves have been involved in the assessment then feedback can be ongoing and automatic. Drawing on the different assessment instruments will help teachers prepare extensive and detailed feedback for pupils and their parents. This might take the form of a one-page narrative overview detailing progress including strengths and weaknesses. Teachers should be careful to make their reports easily understood by parents, accurate and fair and avoid technical jargon. If a progress report card is mandated by a school, one that requires the assignment of a grade, or a checklist of grades or marks, these need

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to be clearly related to the assessment criteria specific to the art program. Moreover, no single grade or mark should be assigned to pupil progress that is not underscored and understood in clear narrative terms. It may even be the case that art teachers accompany a progress report with a written narrative for parents. Of course much feedback can also be given to parents at conferences and meetings and in the context of all-school exhibitions. This should be offered in a way that both informs parents and also solicits their support for their childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artistic learning and for the importance of the art program to the school. Indeed, it is a fine idea for teachers to send home a letter at the beginning of each school year making clear their expectations, procedures, and requesting parental involvement and support.

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See Appendix: Personal Worksheets, page 93, for a blank template to create your own Assessments.

Assessments

Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

To assess pupil participation as individuals and as a group.

Informal: In-class observation and dialogues between teacher and pupils, pupils and pupils.

For pupils: - On-going feedback and support for their efforts, ideas and interpretations; identification of problems and need for more effort

- Involvement in dialogue - Range of responses and ideas - Sharing and supporting each other - Difficulties and problems of understanding and interpretation - Sustaining focus - Questions asked - Diversity of outcomes - Issues surfaced during critiques

Anecdotal notes Reflective journals

For teacher:

Works in progress

- Insights for re-thinking or modifying the content and language of the motivation dialogue - Interceding with help for individual children/group in instances of misunderstanding or skill development - Keeping track of how group critique sessions are informed by the learning of the lesson

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Assessments

Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

To assess individual work of pupils.

Single benchmark works selected by pupil and teacher together, at given points during the school year.

Insight into how individual youngsters interpret the learning of the lessonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; their seriousness of purpose, use of imagination, skill with materials, development of personal style, and ability to offer thoughtful and informed critiques.

- Identification and selection of salient benchmark works, chosen by each pupil as representing their best effort to date - Teacher and pupil design criteria for assessing the works through discussion and negotiation

Negotiated criteria might be based on: - Personal content - Imaginative interpretation - Use of sketchbook resources - Sustained attention - New skills attempted - Aesthetic decision making - Insightful critique of own work

- Feedback: offered individually, orally or in narrative - Pupils encouraged to write their own assessments using the general criteria, thus gaining fresh insights into their work - Teachers able to assess success of instruction for individual pupils, identify problems in motivation and learning.

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Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

To assess artistic development as it occurs in the work of individual children and adolescents over a semester or a year.

Works collected in portfolios including finished works, preparatory studies, sketchbooks, journals, CDs, reference materials, etc.

A more comprehensive view of youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; development and learning accomplishments as these unfold over time.

Criteria for assessment negotiated with students might be based on: - Personal content over time - Range of imaginative interpretations - Continuous use of sketchbook resources

- Appraisal of consistency in terms of ideas, imagination, investigation, emergence of style, focus of interest, etc. - Narrative feedback or a grade along with teacher parent pupil conferences.

- Sustained attention to work and completing work - New skills developed - Aesthetic decision making and development of personal style - Insightful critique of own work

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Assessments

Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

To assess childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s curiosity and awareness of the world about them, and their interest in exploring visual references and idea-making outside school, both visual and verbal.

Sketchbooks and journals

A more intimate insight into young peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; interests outside school. - Development of observational skills - Personal explorations of visual ideas - Plans for more sustained works - Collections of cultural references - Collections of intriguing materials for future works - Notes from journeys and travel

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Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

To assess overall instruction and its impact on pupil progress, at the conclusion of a period of schooling, i.e. at the end of a school year or at graduation.

Works selected by pupils for exhibitions, selected from portfolios, accompanied by an artist’s statement or other narratives.

A chance for the school community to celebrate youngsters’ artistic achievements.

Negotiated criteria for selection of works might be based on: - Personal content - Imaginative interpretation - Use of sketchbook resources - Demonstration of skills - Aesthetic decision making - Insightful understanding of and critique of own work Assessments made by teachers working together as a group and with other members of the school community.

- For teachers to appraise the effects of their teaching over time - For pupils to see their work through the eyes of an audience and consider their learning in terms of a ‘body of work’ that expresses their ideas, thoughts, feelings and opinions. Feedback to pupils through interviews or conferences, writing or grades. Opportunity to modify instruction in light of feedback.

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Assessment

Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

To assess youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ability to use their art constructively in different community settings.

Community projects: photographs, CDs, videos, sketchbooks, journals, murals, performances and other collaborative group works.

Understand the importance of art practice in a wider setting than school.

Testimonials from members of the community.

Opportunities to participate in the creation of culture. To observe how personal and group projects can help or educate others. - Enhance a community - Become a community resource - Become insightful about the lives, aspirations and problems of others - Feedback in conferences, narrative or grades.

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Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

To test youngstersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; abilities to perform within a restricted framework of time, and within a narrow set of challenges.

Standardized tests designed and graded by professionals outside their schools; sometimes by commercial publishing houses or university faculty.

To estimate how children and adolescents are able to marshal and apply what they know and are able to do so in a short time, and in response to a specific question or challenge. A standardized demonstration of learning or skill.

Tests designed and graded within a school; criteria narrowly defined.

Results expressed as grade or numerical marks supported by a more comprehensive representation of learning in narrative form.

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A Final Word We sometimes forget, that we are not born knowing how to get ideas into materials, or how materials can be manipulated to shape ideas and create meaning; these are constructs of the human senses and mind and this need to be nurtured in a thoughtful and disciplined way. We sometimes forget, in our anxiety to initiate children and adolescents into the norms and conventions of the culture, that it is only through the personal expressive endeavors of individuals, going beyond cultural norms, that we have a culture at all. We sometimes forget that it is through acting on materials to transform them, that ideas become form, that imagination is engaged to this end, and that form assumes particular aesthetic presence. We sometimes forget that through using materials children are simultaneously carving a niche for themselves in time and space and human culture, often learning to contest the status quo, becoming participants in an ancient ritual. We hope this small text will help teachers to enter into the learning lives of their pupils and together become participants in each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth and development.

Painting: Mixing colors

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Appendix Personal Worksheets

Personal Worksheet

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Lesson Focus:

Dynamic Activation:

Materials:

Objective:

Spark:

Exploring Ideas: (Questions to ask a class)

•

Recap Ideas:

Ideas into Materials: (Questions to ask a class)

•

Flow into Action:

Recap Ideas:

Reflection:

Personal Worksheet

Sequence Type of Lessons

Sequences

Related Spirals

Inquiry: Objective:

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Prior Lessons

Personal Worksheet

SEQ. 1:

Title: Sub Title:

Topics:

Lessons from within Sequences

Follow On Lessons

SEQ. 2:

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Prior Lessons

Personal Worksheet

SEQ. 1:

Title: Sub Title:

Lessons from within Sequences

Topics:

Follow On Lessons

SEQ. 2:

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Personal Worksheet

Extensions for Dialogue Connecting to Other Disciplines

Math, Science

Social Studies, History

Topic Question: Objective:

Lessons: 1. 2. Computer, Technology

3. 4.

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Literature, Art

Personal Worksheet

Extensions for Dialogue Connecting to Other Disciplines

Math, Science

Social Studies, History

Topic Question: Objective:

Lessons: 1. 2. Computer, Technology

Literature, Art

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Personal Worksheet Assessments

Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

For pupils:

For teacher:

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Personal Worksheet Assessments

Purpose

Instrument

Outcome

For pupils:

For teacher:

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About the Authors Dr. Judith M. Burton is Professor and Director of Art & Art Education at Columbia University Teachers College. Burton received her Ed. D. from Harvard University in 1980. Her research focuses on the artistic-aesthetic development of children, adolescents and young adults and the implications this has for teaching and learning and the culture in general. Dr, Burton is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in Great Britain, a Distinguished Fellow of the NAEA, and serves as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, China. Iris Bildstein is a native New Yorker. In college, she majored in art, focusing on painting, and received a BA from Queens College. In the nineties, Iris was the director of and an instructor for an Art Education program, which brought art programming to NYC schoolchildren, who would otherwise be without. In 2002, Iris received her EdM from Teachers College Columbia University and became the director of an Art Teacher Certification Program. She is now completing her doctorate at Teachers College in Art and Art Education, while supervising student teachers and working as an instructor for several art education programs.

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The Practices of Investigation The Program in Art and Art Education at Teachers College Columbia University is pleased to sponsor a series of publications under the general heading: “The Practices of Investigation,” in which the idea of practice is defined in terms of pedagogy, art and research, and investigation as an openness to discovery, systematic inquiry, and unveiling the hidden and unsuspected order of things. The series aims to make a contribution to the domain of art education in which knowledge and practice are in transition, open to question and subject to considerable contemporary debate.

Titles in Publication Dissertation Monographs: Volume 1 Dissertation Monographs: Volume 2 Dissertation Monographs: Volume 3 Adventures in Art History

Faculty and students, working separately and in collaboration, have contributed to each volume. Taken together, the series features a wide spectrum of practical investigative work with children and adolescents in studios, museum settings and out of school. Leaning more towards theory, the series also encompasses short synopses of the variety of dissertation topics undertaken by doctoral students in the Program. Other volumes advance thinking about classroom art practices at all levels of schooling, while others question the dominant aesthetic-artistic foundations underlying the various practices of art education itself. The series has been originated and edited by Dr. Judith M. Burton, Director of the Program in Art and Art Education. She gratefully acknowledges the participation and support of the art education faculty and students, and the Myers Foundations which has made publication and dissemination of this series possible.

Museum Interactions: Personal Responses & Educational Perspectives We ‘Heart’ Art Adolescent Adventures in Technology Mokarrameh Ghanbari and Darikandeh Village of Art You Have to Look at Art Sometimes Challenging Thinking: Possibilities and Potentials for Teaching and Learning in the Visual Arts Different Discourses: Investigations Through Surfaces

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