Art teachers celebrate student success through a variety of collaborative and group-focused assignments. Two educators forge a partnership to teach students about African arts and culture, while another educator creates an opportunity for students to paint with their feet. Students also work together in small groups to complete table-sized craft paper drawings; team up with a Chicago muralist to complete an outdoor mural; participate in a school library sculpture challenge; and more.
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Student collaboration through art comes in many forms, and our summer articles share a wide variety of approaches. These include student-curated art installations (“Installed with Purpose”), pairing students from one class with those from another level (“A Winning Arts Partnership”), working together in a small group (“Tabletop Drawings”), and creating a mural in collaboration with an artist (“Making History with a Mural”).
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Symmetry is a natural balance that occurs all around us—in the autumn leaves, the stylish petals of spring flowers, the crystallized designs of snowflakes, and the rays of the summer sun. It was while admiring autumn foliage that I was inspired with a theme for teaching symmetry to my kindergarten and first-grade students.
Last summer, I tried something different with my art camp students: we painted with our feet! This journey mapping activity was inspired by art educator Alexandra Lasczik and the incredible work she was doing with her preservice teachers. In an article she co-authored, “Moments of (aha!) Walking and Encounter: Fluid Intersections with Place,” she discusses the importance of movement mapping and documenting your personal journey authentically.
Collaboration is mentioned at least seven times in the National Standards. It’s also one of the four Cs of 21st Century Skills needed by every student. Collaboration is a skill that students must practice regularly because it attaches them to their learning. I want to share a collaborative activity I facilitated with fourth-grade students, based on an activity in which I participated through the VAST Program at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
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Last spring, I began a semester-long project to create an outdoor mural on our school building. The activities were scheduled after school so students in grades five through eight could volunteer together. The result was an enthusiastic group of twenty-five students with varying levels of art experience. My son Ken, a professional Chicago muralist, agreed to assist us.
I presented students with a unique art assignment that takes something we all consider to be a new normal (face masks) and makes them fun and personal. Face masks are now considered a fashion statement as well as a necessary preventative measure to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
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The structure of all my Media Arts projects begins with a foundation of one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. The Optical Art Movement is one of my favorites to share with my students. Come on—art that makes your eyeballs all twisty-turny and your brain go, Whaaaaat? Yes, Please!
As part of a project-based learning exploration, I coordinated with our librarian for a list of major topics represented in our book collections. My idea was to have students create sculptures from plastic wrap and tape, inspired by the Work of artist Mark Jenkins, to display on top of the shelves and represent the genre of books housed there.
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The goal of both Maria’s lesson plans about bogolan (the mudcloth they studied) and Crocodile River Music’s teaching approach is to show students that African art requires dedicated study. Like other art forms, West African art is ruled by socially meaningful principles. “We want all of our encounters with students to communicate that African art deserves to be studied and experienced in its own rights, for its own merits, not merely in comparison to other popular art traditions.”
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Hazel Ang creates narrative paintings, drawings, and illustrations that combine elements of surrealism, photo-realism, fantasy, and portraiture inspired by her personal beliefs, experiences, and background. Her art explores, as she explains, the “surreal reflections rooted in the natural world with hopes of conveying the essence of our existence.” Her work is inspired by folklore—especially stories of archetypal strong women, personal stories, and the natural world, including flora and fauna.
