Art teachers integrate additional disciplines into their lessons to encourage experimentation, collaboration, and creativity. Middle-school students explore the microscopic world of bacteria and render oil pastel drawings of their findings, young students create low-relief jellyfish sculptures in a marine biology and paleontology-fueled lesson, elementary students experiment with acids and bases to dye and print on fabric, high-school students study the field of medical illustration, and more.
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Around this time every year, I had a skeleton in my elementary art room. Our school’s science lab had a full-sized replica skeleton that no one seemed to use except me, so I would borrow it for the months of October and November (no one ever came looking for it).
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One of the most popular lessons in my art room is STEAMed Jellyfish. This lesson consistently yields a high rate of student engagement and success. I was elated when it also proved popular with my colleagues at the Art Educators of New Jersey conference. The artworks consist of low-relief textile jellyfish sculptures fashioned from brightly colored, halved coffee filters, adrift upon a sea of oil pastel and watercolor.
Wouldn’t it be great if…” is exactly how my conversation with Meg Warburton started at a Halloween Party in 2018. Meg is an educator with the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Rhode Island, and I’m an elementary art educator teaching just outside of Boston.
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I’m an art teacher at a STEAM-based elementary school, so I’m always looking for new lessons that integrate art and science in fun and exciting ways. This year, a favorite lesson of my third-graders was one that combined the science of acids and bases with the art of printmaking.
How can we see relationships in nature and in the subjects we teach every day at school? How can commonalities motivate students and aid in the understanding of both scientific and artistic concepts? I believe an integrated lesson I call Microscopic Worlds can meet these objectives.
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Middle-school students are consumed with their perceptions of identity, probably because they are still discovering their own! Therefore, personalized learning activities and projects that are central to the individual student are very popular.
When it’s time to teach about careers in art, the obvious ones come to mind—animation, fashion, photography, and graphic design. These are often the first career choices to be taught, but let’s not overlook the importance of medical illustration for the purpose of educating and instructing.
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Tessellations have great connections to math and geometry, and they can be fun, but they can also become tedious and mechanical. By going beyond the basic square and rudimentary gridding techniques, students can breathe new life into tessellations and even find opportunities for self-expression.
During the time of remote teaching brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, art educators willingly took action to provide exceptional learning experiences for their K–12 and post-secondary students. In a completely unplanned teaching and learning environment, art teachers quickly switched from traditional face-to-face classroom instruction to unfamiliar remote educational practices.
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At first glance, Alice Beasley’s figurative and portrait quilts may look more like realistic paintings or illustrations than textiles. Self-taught, she is part of the contemporary “art quilt” movement, and she explores new ways of incorporating household and commercial fabrics into unique compositions.
