Shared Lesson Plans - April 2011

An art teacher professional development was held on Friday, April 8th, 2011 at Sunset Ridge. It was a small crowd - only three of us were able to attend: Dede Daus, Mary Soule and me...Ms. G. "Staff development" is always a tough situation in our district because not every art teacher gets to come to our meetings. This has been a challenging issue since most of the time, the "development" hasn't pertained to us art teachers. For the past 6 years I have worked in our school district we have had various opportunities to gather and every meeting has allowed me to learn many things as well as share issues that pertain specifically to art teachers. My Principle has been so supportive of these opportunities and it makes life a lot easier! In order to make our meeting more beneficial to all art teachers, I have decided to blog about what we discussed. Please feel free to share your input!

Part One: Lessons shared by Dede Daus

Blue Dog art project

Dede brought a step by step drawing tutorial sheet along and explained some teaching strategies for describing each step. She has better results when having the students draw the nose by saying that it is "like a parenthesis". The bridge of the nose is "reverse parenthesis". Make the nose like a rectangle with rounded sides. Ears to at 10:00 and 2:00. The body is one head length long and the legs an additional head length. The last tip - to draw the leg, draw a bubble letter "L".

She has the students make their "Blue Dogs" in their choice of environment and says that she has amazing results! You can recommend the dog be colored in cool colors only and warm for the background if you are integrating a color concept into the lesson.

1st - 3rd Grade art books -

Dede used cardstock and pipecleaners to create mini bound books for grades 1-3. She said they are mini masterpieces and that each child is VERY enthusiastic to take them home. Some of the things that are in the books include:

Color Bursts (see image on right)- Fantastic and easy idea for teaching color theory. There can be "color bursts" created in warm, cool, primary, secondary, analagous, complementary, monochromatic color schemes.

Summertime Fun! - Glue resist with construction paper crayons. Dede had the students draw a border with pencil then sketch a "Summertime" design including items like a flower, surf board, sailboat, sun...you get the idea...

Once the drawing is complete, outline with glue. Once that's dry, the students color with construction paper crayons. She said that special emphasis should be paid to creating a fun border.

More posts to come.