Art on the Street

i have finished  my new student teaching placement! i am not writing any of my own lesson plans (sad) but i am very excited about what we are doing. our art classes (grades 6-8) always work together with their music class. they have done rhythm lessons together, commercial lessons (writing jingles and making the product) and now they are studying hip hop movements in music and art. for music, the students are learning DJ skills. in art class, we are making street art based in graffiti.

i really like that all grades are doing the same project because it really allows the teacher to fully use the room as a teaching tool. the tables are numbered and labeled with city names from New York, there are graffiti boards set up, information about different street artists and examples up.

for their first project, the students are making a mini masterpiece, which is a form of graffiti art. we talked about the different kinds (tagging, masterpiece, throw up etc.) and also talked about the English artist Banksy. here are some examples of the students' works. they had to include a word that meant something to them, make it 3D, use fading techniques with paint, use a personal symbol (yay standards), and include graffiti marks (stars, halos, drips, arrows etc.) we were also able to discuss color schemes, unity and variety with these. these art works are made on cardboard (yay recycled) with paint pens, sharpies, gel pens and metallic markers.

also, here is a video combining 6th grade's artworks and the songs they made in their DJ class. i was pretty impressed.

these are a few more examples of the first and second projects, I didn't get as many pictures as i wanted! also, i will be posting more videos later! 

again, thanks so much to my wonderful host teachers and the entire exploratory staff at SMS! can't wait to get started on my own!