2015 district spring art show!

Tonight is the night! My school along with all of the other wonderful visual arts programs in our district get to show off the best of the best and all that they did this year. It's a night where our little ones all the way through to the high school level get to show off all of their accomplishments for the year! I'm so excited. I snapped a few pictures of my school's set up to share. 

You can see the BIG set up in the background. A lot of ground is covered with many school. Elementary is set up around the exterior of this giant room/center and all of our junior high and high school is gathered and displayed in the center. It is an amazing event and I am so excited for tonight. It is always an impressive event.

The end of the school year is always a big one for my visual arts program, so it is nice to check one item off of my to do list! CHECK! Next up, completing homeroom class silent auction art and setting up for my big gallery walk and family art lesson. Until then! 

2015 district-wide spring art show.

Howdy friends!

I am off on another adventure with my little artists. Many of my fellow art educators probably know the troubles of what I am about to talk about today: selecting artwork for district shows and displays. It's that time of year again where I try to rush my students to complete projects so I can choose the very best of the best to represent our school at our district visual art events. I'm required to select twelve (Only TWELVE!!) pieces of art. Do you know how many students I teach? Just around 800. Of those 800 students, each makes about 4-6 pieces of art during the school year. Calculate..calculate....Let's just say that it's a lot of artwork to choose from.

It's a very difficult process for me. PROCESS being the key word here. I'm a huge advocate for elementary artists to experience the importance of the process of creating a piece of art. The adventure and experience of getting to work with clay, paint, colored pencils, oil pastels, etc. while problem solving and making mistakes to get better and better each time they re-experience the medium. Often times I see majority of my students succeed, but other times I have upset and disappointed little artists. I find myself reminding them that elementary art is not always all about the outcome, but the process that my student artists get to experience.

Regardless, it is a requirement for me to select a total of 12 pieces of art. I go about my usual selection process of going by class and project and pulling artwork I feel best represents the quality here at our school. I'm really happy with my choices and outcome of my school's district display:

Fifth Grade

“Irish Chirp”

Papier-Mache 

Fifth Grade

“Spaingland”

Papier-Mache 

Fifth Grade

“Indigo Sunset”

Oil Pastel

Fifth Grade

“Heaven Skies”

Oil Pastel

Fourth Grade

“The Bully Reporter”

Digital Photography

Fourth Grade

“A Warm Embrace”

Digital Photography

Third Grade

“Mr. Nature”

Colored Pencil

Third Grade

“Mother Nature”

Colored Pencil

First Grade

“Rainbow King of the Jungle”

Mixed Medium

First Grade

“Roarbow Lion”

Mixed Medium

Kindergarten

“Three Little Cats”

Mixed Medium

Kindergarten

“The Cat's Meow”

Mixed Medium

I hope you all enjoyed this year's Spring Art Show selection! I am so very proud of each of my hard working artists and am so glad these select few get to experience what it is like to have their artwork in a matted gallery setting! These little artists even got to title their very own work! They are so creative with what they came up with!

Until next time (psst...it'll be all about my silent art auction pieces + my big FAMILY FINE ARTS NIGHT)!

elementary painting: organization + smooth sailing!

Hello again everyone! I wanted to talk about elementary painting and the little tricks and organizational skills I've picked up over my first 3 years of teaching art.

Painting in the elementary classroom can be very daunting, especially when you start thinking about painting with the little ones. Even the fifth graders can be scary to hand paint over to! You never know what they will do...or paint. I had a little kindergarten artist paint A WHOLE CHAIR yellow once and fifth graders paint "warrior paint" on their faces.

I try to be brave with my little artists and allow them to start experiencing painting at a young age. The younger you start them--the more experience they have with that specific medium--the better they are when they are older. I am noticing this with my little 1st graders. They are some of the best painters in my school because they are my little ones that I've trained in paint with my techniques since the beginning of their experience with art. I find my older ones harder to paint with.

I have a system. Often times I will have students gather to my carpet as I demonstrate what I'd like my students to do, even when painting. This keeps them focused on one thing at a time and to really understand the step I am wanting them to do. No playing with paint brushes, fussing with or touching the paint, and no mess--YET.

Me: We hold our paintbrushes...

Little Artists: LIKE A PENCIL!

Me: Do we scrub or stroke slowly through the paint?

Little Artists: STROKE SLOWLY!

Me: Do we make little strokes or long strokes?

Little Artists: LITTLE SHORT STROKES!

Me: How many colors do you want to see?

Little Artists: TWO OR MORE!

This is just an example of the dialog I use with my students before setting them loose to paint. It helps to reinforce what my expectations are for when they paint a specific step.

With my little ones I control the distribution of paintbrushes + paint in two separate ways depending on how we are painting:

1. Squirting paint colors directly from bottle onto the paper
2. placing little trays of paint in little lidded cups on tables

For my older students I provide them more ownership and responsibility with some verbal + visual guidance:

1. paint in little cups color coded to colored paper
2. different sized paintbrushes in containers
3. students are responsible for cleaning and returning brushes

I have by my sink a tray of different containers. This is primarily for my use. Clean a brush, place it into the proper container, right by the sink--super easy, organized, and little movement about the room. Although messy, it works for me. I love the different sized brushes I have, each for a different + specific purpose. I teach to my students large brushes for large areas and small paintbrushes for small areas or details!

Watercolors are a lot of fun for me, but I really prefer the thick tempera or acrylic paints over water color with students. It looks like a more quality product when we're finished. When I do use water colors I set up a tray:

1. For my little ones we use the big tempera cakes
2. My older kiddos use Prang Watercolor ovals

I really like to use trays to help keep things contained with a specific, visual boundary to help with messes. Although it doesn't always stay clean, I mean it's an art classroom, it sure does help.

If you have any suggestions or successes on painting in your classrooms please share! I'm always looking on ways to improve and make my little artists' painting experience a better one!

first grade: drawing sunflowers from life.

Today my little first grade artists learned a lesson all about Vincent Van Gogh and the different types of art he liked to make (landscapes, self-portraits, & still-life). They got the opportunity to draw a faux sunflower from life! We learned how to use our eyes to examine and see every single tiny detail. I also got to teach a brief lesson to some quick drawers about value and shading (a.k.a. coloring with your pencil--darks and lights).

"Draw exactly what you see, not what you think you see."

"That's 'cause I'm a fancy drawer, guys!"

I am so, so proud of the quality the end up drawing with. I complimented a little artist today and told him he was an amazing life drawer. The highlight of my day and favorite thing to hear was when that same little boy (who isn't always excited about art) begged to stay so he could finish his sunflower! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Wednesday. On to the tail end of the week! We have a whole school planning session tomorrow after school from 4:00-7:00!

fourth grade: anti-bullying campaign.

I've been wanting to incorporate a type of digital or photography lesson into my curriculum for some time, but due to lack of technology for a full class-size, I have always stuck to tradition means of making art. This year, my school purchased a set of 10 iPADs that can be checked out by a teacher and be used by the students. I used this to my advantage and being inspired by a blog post I saw and the artist Barbara Krugar, I had my fourth graders band together and create an ANTI-BULLYING CAMPAIGN POSTER! The wall is an inspiration and so many fourth grade artists are proud of their work. Many people have stopped in their tracks to look at the wonderful wall of inspiring and positive ways to prevent and put a STOP to BULLYING. They have the whole school talking about these incredible compositions.

my fourth graders:

1. came up with a short, inspiring, and positive anti-bullying slogan
2. designed several different thumbnail sketch compositions for their photo idea
3. used props or models in their photograph and took it with an iPAD
4. learned about cropping + filters and chose their favorite B+W filter for their photo
5. glued their red-text slogan to their B+W photo

Here are a couple of their fantastic ideas and masterpieces!

first grade: impressionistic backgrounds.

Today my first graders continued learning about our good friend, Mr. Vincent Van Gogh and his post-impressionistic painting style. They got to experience it on their own! Three paints were set out and students were to dip their brush (not swirl) and paint short, little strokes about their papers to create a sense of movement for their tables and backgrounds! I was so impressed with the outcomes I broke out the iPAD and snapped a few pictures to share. I'm so proud of my little artists! I of course got bizarre remarks about why I was taking pictures of them, but I ignored and snapped away!

You've probably guessed it by now! My little first grade artists are creating their very own version of Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers!

fifth grade: cultural heritage masks.

For the past two years I've been developing a project for my fifth graders to help them get in touch with their family's ancestry and history. I talk to them about the importance of masks throughout history and how each culture would use a mask for a specific purpose. The masks my fifth graders create are inspired by their family's cultural background. They use a culture from their family and create a mask inspired by the facts they discovered during their research at home. The project is lengthy, but fun and informative. The important thing is what the artist takes away at the end of growing and gaining knowledge of their family and it's history. I love that my little artists get the opportunity to talk with their parents or grandparents about where they came from as a family. I feel the importance of this is so full of value. Living in the U.S.A. as a large melting pot brings together so many different people from around the world. It's so neat for my students to get to see that.

My cultural mask lesson is a papier-mache project. I took on papier-mache in my first year of teaching. Some called me crazy, but because I did this I was able to work out kinks and dysfunctional moments and create a flowing system that allows my students the most of their 50 minute art lesson.

My students go through a five step process to make their mask:

1. creating the mold or structure of their mask with newspaper strips and a gallon milk jug
2. constructing and building 3-D forms with news paper, paper towel tubes, and tape to make eyes, nose, snouts, ears, horns, etc.
3. adding paper-towel or white paper layers to preserve the new structures they built
4. drawing the design + painting the mask with cultural references (color, designs, etc.)
5. (optional) choosing to add extra material to the mask with reference to the culture

                                       (step one)                                                      (step two)

(step three)

                               (step four)                                                                    (step four)

(step five)

-teacher example-

I feel my students really enjoy this project and even though it is messy and lengthy, it is well worth all the effort to let my little artists experience a type of sculptural art. This project saves the art budget a lot of money as well since this is a recyclable materials project (milk jugs, newspapers, paper-towel tubes, etc.). It's a lot of fun to watch the vast majority of them succeed and grow while making a cultural mask in three-dimensional form.

art classroom behavior management.

The art classroom is a wonderful place to relax, enjoy, learn, and explore art. It can be a very fun place, too. Unfortunately, like all areas of our world, the art classroom has some special expectations and guidelines (otherwise known as RULES) to help it run smoothly! Remember: we're talking paint, papier-mache, chalk + oil pastel, MESSES, and clean up all while 25 little artists are trying to make beautiful, quality pieces of art. To help my art classroom run smoothly and to allow my students to be successful and the absolute best they can be in this part of their world I have a few expectations and guidelines in place.

I'll go into better specifics about my specific rules in a later post, but this post is going to be all about managing the wonderful and artistic chaos of 20-25 students at a time, 35 Kindergarten-fifth grade classes, equaling about 800 students total.

This is what has been successful for me so far during the 2 & 3/4 years that I have been teaching. I have a behavior section in my classroom. As you can see in the image above I have a CLASS behavior management system and a STUDENT behavior management system in place.

whole class management: The golden coins help me monitor whole class behavior. When the class as a whole is talking too loud, choosing to talk during a teacher guided lesson, or choosing to not meet expectations they get a golden coin flipped around to show warning #1, warning #2, warning #3, and VOICE LEVEL 0. These golden coins can be rewarded back. When a class has 3-4 gold coins at the end of class they earn a daily coin (10 total) for a whole class reward day or ART PARTY!

student management: Now I know that disciplining as a group all the time is unfair to those individuals always doing the right thing, so I also have a student plate system that helps visually show myself and the student how many times I've had to redirect or talk with them. The student will receive two verbal warnings from me and will move their clip down. The third time I redirect the student moves their clip down to the red plate/MARK plate. It is always so hard to recognize those students doing the right thing, so for positive reinforcement I have added a S.O.A.R. plate to allow those kiddos to raise their clip to the top plate for recognition. These students earn a S.O.A.R. ticket (school student money to cash in for special prizes) at the end of my class.

Beside my student monitor system is my personal art behavior binder. In this binder I have all of my classes listed and spaces to allow me to write down any marks given out during that specific day of class. This is where I document grades and marks for each of my students.

You will also see in this photograph my art room voice level chart. This is a system we use all over our school, which is really nice since the expectation is wide spread. My classroom is generally around a quiet voice level 2 (low flow/table talk). Beneath the voice level chart is my Mona Lisa. I use Mona Lisa for my little ones to teach them my expectations for sitting in my classroom; mouth closed, voice level 0, hands still, eyes on teacher.

I know this is a boring post to start off with, but I think it is very important and one of my favorite things to figure out in my classroom. Once you have behavior and expectations set in place you can have a well oiled classroom in beautifully working condition (with a few hiccups every once and again of course).

little artists. BIG world: The Beginning.

hello everyone and welcome! This is my first post to my new blog. I have been wanting to create a blog to share my little artists' classroom experiences with the BIG world! Sadly, like almost all things, I just couldn't find the time. Thank you to my amazing principal who came up with a neat motivator for our teachers here at my school, I have been motivated to kick start my little art blog and start sharing with the world!

My name is Miss Cerk and I teach visual arts to the elementary level, Kindergarten to Fifth, at a Title 1 school in the Houston, TX area to about 800 AMAZING little artists. Each student that walks through my classroom door enters a real art studio that we all get to share while entering a world of imagination, magic, wonderment, and exploration. Whether these little artists know it or not, they are going on a journey through time as they explore the BIG world we live in through the wonderful world of art.

I am hoping to post an arrangement of things to my blog including, but not limited to, grade level art projects, visual art programs and activities, classroom management, along with tips and tricks of the trade! It will be a work in progress and a learning experience as I continue to grow this little blog and join the wonderful community that comes with it.

For anyone interested, this is what our "Watch Us Grow: Tic-Tac-Toe" teacher worksheet looked like: 

Maybe pick a few and try some out for yourself! This is what really helped kickstart the blog I've always wanted to have. You never know what could spark a bit of passion and make you more devoted to what you love.