A Collage Introduction to the Science Curriculum

Science 6 and 7

Science Teacher Adam Fox wanted his students to get an overview of what they would be learning about throughout the year, and he also had some bare walls to fill. He introduced the unit topics, broke the classes into groups, and pulled out a pile of science magazines. The job was to create a collage summarizing what would be studied in each unit, and to come up with an image that would symbolize what that unit was about. The finished collages hang throughout the room, and serve as a reminder to students of what they have studied, and what is to come. They also helped Adam to check their understanding of what each of the topics is about, and help to create a more aesthetic teaching environment.

Adam introduced some collage craftsmanship tips, such as cutting neatly around the outlines of figures, rather than pasting down rectangular picture boxes, and considering the interaction of foreground figure and background image when arranging the photos.

Illustrating Poetry: Being Figurative

Language Arts 8

8th grade students were required to write a series of poems as part of their poetry unity. Their teacher, Pat Ludwig, wanted them to produce an illustrated book of their poems. We saw this as an opportunity to extend their thinking about what purpose an illustration serves. They had been working with metaphor, irony, and figurative language in class, and we wanted them to transfer those skills from the realm of language to that of imagery. This is what meaningful arts integration is all about: not merely showering kids with art projects, but using the arts as a vehicle to help them think and communicate in different ways; to understand that each of the arts can come at the same concepts from different angles.

In the slideshows below, you can see the steps we led the students through to reach an understanding of how they could be figurative in their approach to illustrating their poems, followed by examples from their final poetry books. The books were produced using Blurb, and the students were given the option of finding images in royalty-free image databases, or creating their own original artworks. Please note that you may pause the slideshows, or click on them to view a full-sized version.

Memorials, Monuments, Museums

Social Studies 8

This is an 8th grade Arts Integration Social Studies unit, which looks at societal values, beliefs, and ideals, and how they are enshrined through architecture and the built environment. Students look at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and other sites they will visit during their class trip to Washington and New York, with attention to what meaning is conveyed through the design of these forms and spaces. The students design a memorial, monument, or museum for their simulation country, and watch a presentation by a local architect. The first slideshow below takes you through the lesson sequence leading into their final design work. Please note that you may pause the slideshow.

Here are three example pieces from start to finish: a museum, a monument, and a memorial. For each piece, you can view the student's process journal, model, and graphic presentation. The students were required to keep a process journal to record their creative thought process through sketches, notes, and photographs. They were also required to write a statement and create a visual graphic to present their final design. Click on the slideshow to view full-sized images in Picasa. Photos of other final models are included in the slideshow as well.

Cuentos de Octavo

Native Spanish 8

8th grade Native Spanish classes wrote their own short stories. We created illustrations for them and published an online book with Blurb.

Human Map

Social Studies 6

Social Studies 6 Teachers Michael and Kat Stein-Ross combined their classes and used movement to build "human maps" of the region surrounding Ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush. Students played the roles of the geographical features that influenced human settlement (Mediterranean Sea, Nile River, various Deserts, Lebanon Mountains) as well as the roles of settlers who were choosing a spot to build their community. The geographical features had to act out certain attributes: the Deserts whispered "hot and dry, hot and dry" and the Nile students showed the flow of the river by moving their arms from South to North. Here is a snippet of the activity they caught on video:

Art Through a Microscope

Science 6

As part of their Cell Biology unit, sixth-grade students work with the microscope to study cells and microscopic organisms. Science Teachers Adam Fox, Abram Cosby, and I developed and taught a short lesson sequence that would teach the students observational drawing skills (which aids their ability to observe and record what they see in the microscope), and also help them to see that the relationship between art and science is a two-way street. Art does not only serve a functional purpose in the scientific process. The observations and understandings derived from the scientific process in turn become inspiration for artists and their work.

The slideshow below gives you a guided tour through the lesson sequence and examples of student work.

Creating Infographics: What is History?

Social Studies 8

Michael Stein-Ross, our Social Studies 8 Teacher, came to me with the idea of having his students create infographics. He was having them devise their own definition of history, and wanted them to be able to give visual form to these ideas. Infographics have become a natural outgrowth of both the information revolution and the increasingly visual nature of our ever-expanding media universe. They vary in quality and eloquence, but the act of creating one provided a nice vehicle for exploring how to communicate an idea or message visually.

 Below is a slideshow that walks you through our lesson sequence, and here are a couple of great resources we found along the way:

"Teaching with Infographics: Places to Start" from the New York Times Learning Network

"A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods" from visual-literacy.org.

The Outsiders Graffiti Wall

Language Arts 7

Students created a graffiti wall in the classroom of Language Arts Teacher Bill Kartechner, centered around their study of The Outsiders. The classes viewed clips from Style Wars, a documentary film that follows a group of graffiti artists in 1980's New York. There are uncanny parallels between the characters in The Outsiders and the artists portrayed in the film, which lead to rich discussions on group culture, loyalty, identity, slang, and conflict.

Students were shown examples of graffiti. They identified the characteristics of graffiti-style letterforms, and practiced creating their own. Further discussion on The Outsiders identified the key themes, ideas, images, and symbols from the book. After determining which words and ideas should be emphasized on the wall, students began working individually and in pairs on their final designs.

The project allowed students to make parallels between the world of the Outsiders characters, and that of other groups on the margins of society. It required them to recognize, analyze, and evaluate the importance of themes and ideas in the book, while coming to collaborative agreement on visual considerations, such as size, placement, color, and style.