Saturday, January 25, 2014

Have You Tried A Choice Based Art Lesson?

I'm always up for trying new things and I've been wanting to do a choice based art lesson for as long as I can remember. Whats held me back? The structuring of it! I just couldn't get my mind around how it would work....for the students and for me, the teacher.

So I feel like I finally organized a lesson in such a way that it will work for both parties. I'm doing a choice based Portrait lesson with my 4th grade and have just begun the process. I decided to use a restaurant theme and made a menu that outlines this process.

We began last week with a "Tasting" An art medium tasting that is. Students rotated through 3 tasting tables to simply explore 3 possible materials; printmaking, tempera paint and collage. I also had 3 examples of art made using these materials so they had some idea of the possibilities.


Table 3 was printmaking. Students used pre made cards that had various materials you could use when making prints....yarn, foil, cardboard, foam, bubble wrap, etc....


Table 1 was Tempera Paint. At this stop, students followed a recipe to create skin color. They made both a light and a dark flesh tone sample card.


At Table 2 students make a sample card of a few different paper options when creating a collage.

To culminate our tasting students gathered with their sample cards and decided what medium suited them for creating their portrait masterpiece. I was thrilled to have students from each class fill all 3 mediums.

When asked about their thoughts on the Art Medium Tasting event students said they LOVED the experience! Next week we will have our Appetizer event: Sketchersice. Students will rotate through 3 tables to discover 3 ways to sketch a portrait.

Check in next week to learn how it all went.

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