Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Cross-Curricular

      If you are like me, you are always looking for ways to connect art to the common core standards.  Yes, we do this indirectly with almost any lesson we teach.  But, how can we teach directly to implement the skills and strategies that our students NEED to know in an art lesson?  One way is through writing.  Our school has focus words that will prepare our students for the standardized test in the Spring.  This month, we are focusing on Summarizing.  So, I decided to have the students summarize the life and work of Andy Warhol.  First, we watched this fabulous video about Andy Warhol from the creators of "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists."


(This is a short preview of the video from You Tube.  I have the full version on DVD.)

      Next, the students wrote a summary about the life and work of Andy Warhol.  I gave them ideas such as, who was he, what did he do, what kind of art did he make, and so on.

Their summaries were pretty interesting!
Here's a good one:

Here is how I displayed the writing and the artwork together:



      For the art portion of the lesson, we created flower prints using tissue paper and water.  I had the students cut out the flower shape, trace it on the paper, moisten the flower shape on the paper, and then lay the tissue paper flower onto the wet paper.  They were amazed how the color can transfer from the flower to the paper just using water!  For the background, we used pieces of tagboard dipped in black, yellow, & green paint to stamp the texture around the flower shapes.  Here is the inspiration artwork by Andy Warhol that we looked at before we began our artwork:


4 comments :

  1. Boy I love that Warhol video, I get such a kick out of hearing him say "terrific, yeah." we are doing Pop right now too, and I've been using a DVD you might like called Who is the artist? Which compares Warhol with Thiebaud and Lichtenstein. Will post soon. Yours look great!

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  2. Great to tie in literacy, good job. Mary Jane is obviously very impressed with Andy Warhol, I think you have a convert!

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  3. Okay, let me preface this comment by saying that I am an old dog-not literally, but have been teaching art for 37 years. I have tried my best to stay current with best practices(I can't believe I'm using that terminology....)and I have a kick-#*s art program. I have consistently linked my art teaching to math, science, social studies and geography so that my students will learn to think globally and not just locally. Our district, like yours, is determined to improve our teaching of Common Core principles. Your use of Summarization in tandem with the Warhol(e):) lesson is spot on. The writing component is the one that I struggle with because I want to correct the kiddo's spelling, punctuation etc. I'm a LOT OCD when it comes to that kind of editing. How do you get past that and hang up their writing without editing?

    :)Pat

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  4. I came across your blog from re-pinning 4 of your projects on my Pinterest. Love your blog! Great project ideas! Glad to add you to my "blog list"!

    Cathy Robey

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