My students have spent the last month designing and creating board games. They had to come up with c concept, use Adobe Illustrator to create it and Tinker cad to create dice. Today we tested out the games!

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EQ: Where do artists gather inspiration

I’m not going to lie. Watercolors are deceptively difficult.

Over the years I’ve learned I really need to teach watercolors as a whole unit.

We begin with the very basics. How to get the colors ready, how to use the palette, how to use the brush, not holding the palette sideways when putting away!

Then we move into mixing colors with a color wheel.  My students make a color wheel for each new medium. Then we explored various techniques through a guided step by step painting where we all painted the same thing.

Then the students were ready and able to pick their own subjects.

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EQ: What makes Surrealism so Surreal?

TSWAT identify a piece of surreal art.
TSWBAT analyze, evaluate, and interpret a Surrealist Art Piece.
TSWBAT modify, tranform, scale, and distort a pencil to fit the contour of a selected image.

Scale: Changing an object’s scale, or relative size.

Levitation:Floating objects that don’t normally float

Juxtaposition:Joining two images together in  impossible combinations

Dislocation:Taking an object form its usual environment and placing it in an unfamiliar one

Transparency:Making objects transparent that are  not usually transparent

Metamorphosis:Changing objects in unusual way

Natural Laws Reversed: The laws of nature are reversed as in people walking dogs.

Repetition: An object repeated multiple times.

After learning about the surrealist art movement, students used two of the key ideas of Surrealism (transformation and repetition) to create their own spin on surrealism using a No. 2 pencil.

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Students will work together to describe, analyze, evaluate, and judge a piece of art from the Arts and Craft period. We have previously gone over the movement and talked about the key identifying features.

Each student is given a copy of a Google Slide using Google Classroom.
They will be given a piece of art to reserach and will work togetehr to fill out the information on the Slides.

1. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/69.91.2/
2. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/69.150/

3. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1985.261/

4. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1991.311.1/

6. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1991.145/4.

7. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/52.43.1/

8. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/52.43.2/

9. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/52.43.3/

10. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1976.389.1/

11. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1986.445/

12. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1992.127/

13. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1983.26/

14. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2004.334/

15. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2005.464/

16. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1972.20.2/

17. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1972.60.1/

18. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1989.129/

19. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2000.31/

20. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1990.49/

LearningTargets:
The student will: 
– Identify and create artwork based on the elements of art and on the principles of art. 
– Demonstrate through their artwork how to use the elements of art to show movement and express feelings. 
– Recognize, compare and use different media to create their artwork. 
– Develop a respect and appreciation for the artwork of artists, including classmates’ art. 
– Recognize and compare differences in several art mediums. 
– Create representational and abstract art. 
– Learn to create proper shading and blending. 
– Communicate thoughts, feelings and experiences to others through art. 
– Understand terms that are basic to art media, procedures and techniques, as well as art appreciation. 

Enduring Understandings:
6th Grade students will develop an understanding of how generating ideas and planning can lead to expressive creations. Students will also have a better understanding of how color theory influences artists. Artists will communicate meaning through the visual arts. 

Essential Questions:? 

How did Op Art change the Art world?
What is composition?
What are the elements and principles of design?
How can artists use the Line and pattern to create kinetic art?

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I changed things up today and I read the story Where the Wild Things are by Maurice Sendak. It was after lunch so I think the students enjoyed taking a break for a few minutes and listening to a story. Then we reread the book through the eyes of an illustrator and noted all the rich textures. I had my student’s fill out a worksheet with some of the various textures they saw.

Then we created our own monsters. Today the kids created their first monster with no texture. Tomorrow they will be reproducing their monsters 4 times and applying a different texture to each one. I will be out tomorrow for a professional deveopment so I’m leaving a video of the next steps for them to follow with the Guest Teacher.

The above examples were made by my 12 week exploratory class.

I had the wonderful opportunity to present with our CTE team at the Educating for Careers Conference in Sacramento. We discussed how we grew our wonderful CTE middle school program from 1 CTE course to 5. We now offer courses in Robotics, Coding, Health, Engineering, and may favorite Digital Design.

I also had the opportunity to attend some amazing sessions, meet other educators, and even pick up some swag. I should be good in the pen department until the end of the school year.

I had the wonderful opportunity to present with our CTE team at the Educating for Careers Conference in Sacramento. We discussed how we grew our wonderful CTE middleschool program from 1 CTE course to 5. We now offer cources in Robotics, Coding, Health, and

After looking at professional logo designs that used words to create an image, students chose nouns to turn into literal word art.
Students began first with an exploration of thumbnails. They collaborated together to refine, modify and edit their designs. Students took photos of their designs using Photo Booth, imported it into Adobe AI, placed it on it’s own layer with a transparency of 50% They then created a new layer and used the pen tool and pathfinder tool to create their words. 

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One of the very first things we do in our Graphic Design class after becoming familiar with Photoshop and how to import and download images is create a Dream Bedroom. What’s nice about this project is that the students already have a previous understanding of how to create perspective from their beginning art course. 

This lesson focused on: Importing a photo, creating layers, creating a layer mask, using the trasform, warp, and perspective tool.

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