Feelings and Color

In our art curriculum, we are required to talk about showing feeling through color. I love this concept! The kids really latch onto it and it makes sense to them. For this project, we had a conversation about how different colors can make you feel or how we associated different colors with different feelings. We made sure to talk about how people can think about colors differently and perhaps some colors can show more than one feeling. Then I showed them examples of paintings of musical instruments. We followed that up with some good old graphite drawing! Pictures of musical instruments were passed out and students picked one to use as inspiration for their drawing.

As you can see, we have some amazing artists in our fourth grade classes! Then we moved on to the part of the project that I think makes it so interesting and exciting for kids. The students had to pick out a song, any song as long as it was school appropriate. Then they listened to it and decided what feelings the song made them feel. I had the kids do this as homework, I didn't want to have to listen to all those songs!

The kids came back with songs and the feelings that those songs inspired and we worked through what colors they should use. They loved this process, they were so geeked to choose a song and decided how to represent the feelings with color.

We broke out the watercolor paints and got to work after a brief talk about where to place color so that they instrument didn't become part of the background and it was really the focal point, and stood out, etc...

Most students finished the background in the first class, some even finished the background and the instrument. For those that had both done, the next step was to highlight the instrument even more. We used oil pastels on the instrument only, to make it pop out of the background. We talked about many ways to do that (coloring it all in, using designs and patterns, outlining etc..) 

What I like most about the finished products is that the effects are so varied, but you can tell that there is real feeling behind the colors and the way these pieces were painted.

Grading and Showing Growth in the Art Room

Showing growth in our students has become a huge part of my job as a teacher. Sometimes in an art classroom environment, it's hard to show a student's growth. In other classes a before and after test is done, and I have done that in the past. It shows a student's understanding of concepts or facts, but it doesn't measure their growth in relation to the skills that they are learning. Another age-old debate is how to grade artwork, especially at an elementary level.

This year I decided to do things a little bit differently. Last year, I received a lot of confrontation from parents when grade cards came out. And because I didn't have specific documentation of how I graded the students artwork, I ran into some problems. So this year, I decided to be very specific and very proactive.

In order to show growth, I selected a sampling of students to monitor for the entire year. Basically I made a Digital Portfolio for each student, with images of each project they did throughout the year, in order. This way I can see if the student's skills are improving and if they're using more skills as they progress. To keep a Digital Portfolio for every single student I teach, would be just crazy. So I selected two students from each grade; a high performing student and a low performing student. Each student has a folder on my Google drive in which I keep their artwork photos, in order of completion. I photograph them immediately when they're done.

I also wanted to show growth in my student's thought process when it came to creating artwork. I decided to have my kids write artist or process statements for some of their work throughout the year. I'm only doing this with the upper grades (3-5). Again, I chose a high performer and low performer for each grade and I am documenting their progress by keep photographs of their writing and artwork that they are writing about. An example would look like this:

Lastly, I have to give grades for each student three times a year in their report cards. I give grades based on skills or concepts learned, participation and effort, and behavior in my classroom. The skills and concepts grade I give based on how I grade their artwork. I grade each piece of artwork using a little code that I made up; each student receives a number and then a letter code to remind me why I gave them that particular number. These grades are just for my records, I keep them in a spread sheet on Google docs. I don't publish them to parents, but they are there if I have a parent call and I need to back up the grade I gave their child. Here's the code I use:

1	Demonstrates complete understanding of concept, work is neat and completely finished.
2	Demonstrates partial understanding of concept/work is mostly neat and/or completely finished.
3	Does not demonstrate understanding of concept, and/or work is sloppy, and/or unfinished.
UF	Unfinished
S	Sloppy
ND	Not demonstrating concept
M	Misuse materials

To grade a student's participation and behavior, I use an online program called Class Charts. It's similar to Class Dojo, but it's free. Every day I log on and make a positive comment or a negative comment for each child's behavior for that class. Every couple of weeks, I read through the data and contact the parents of students that are getting a lot of negative marks. When I sit down to make report cards, this program is really nice because it provides you with graphs and charts to show you how a student's behavior has been through the term. Check it out here!

So that's what I'm doing this year, I like the amount of information I have to use. However, I think the system might be a bit clunky. I hope to streamline it in the years to come. I've looked into Artsonia, as a great way to keep digital portfolios for every student and show parents artwork as well. But I just don't have time to take everyone's picture right.

Does anyone else have a system they'd like to share? Ideas? Thoughts? I'd love to hear what you think!