Submitted by: Alison Owens
Collaborators: Joy McDonald, ITRT
School: Hungary Creek Middle

Summary

Students will learn about how digital cartoons and animated films are made. Students will explore available programs, tutorials, and technological tools for making an animated “film” of their own. Students will create a 30-60 minute animation and present it to the class. Students will use a blog to share ideas and discuss what they have learned and their thoughts on graphic design, animation, and/or illustration as a career. Students will learn from each other by posting successes on the project blog or collaborating during class.

Submitted by: Deana Miller and Andrea Gooch
Collaborators: Katherine Kier
School: The Academy at Virginia Randolph

Summary

The Bizarre Bazaar Christmas Collection Craft Show is looking for fresh new vendors this year!  Students are asked to come up with a fresh, new, innovative, crafty, idea that could hypothetically be sold at The Annual Bizzare Bazaar Christmas Collection Craft Show.  Students will come up with a craft and collaborate with peers to create a presentation on how to create the craft.  The student groups will be composed of at least one English student and one Art student.  The students may choose any craft they want.  The group will be responsible for mastering the craft and then decide on a way to share their instructions to an audience in a fun, easy-to-follow, accurate, how-to presentation.

Submitted by: Michael O’Neal, Kelly Nixon (Student Teacher)
School: Hermitage High School

Summary

The purpose of this lesson is to provide students with experience in digital manipulation techniques. Students will discover how to seamlessly blend images. Blending images is a skill that is invaluable in editing personal and professional images. Students will create a hybrid animal using Adobe Photoshop techniques and photo manipulation to merge different animal images and textures into a new, original animal. The hybrid should include at least two animals, one texture, and should show evidence of different tools being used to combine them. Students will create a focal point in their image.

Submitted by: Vicki Kolar
School: Holman Middle School

Summary

The Art Exchange Enrichment project is a semester to year-long lesson designed to empower Art students to exchange various forms of visual communication with an emphasis on innovation and creativity. Students are not given a list of directions or exchange partner choices but instead collaborate on what an exchange is and how it affects/effects how a (student) artists thinks/works/feels. Students choose to work as groups and/or individuals and problem solve to decide who to have an exchange with; locally, nationally, or internationally. With the teacher as facilitator, students are responsible for researching how to contact their chosen Art exchange partner, what type of art will be exchanged, how often, how it will travel, and reflect on the purpose and/or why to have the exchange at all. The Art exchange could include finished works needing to be critiqued or ongoing works where both partners add to on a recurring basis. With personal reflection in mind, students are also challenged to create the overall project rubric which will be based more on process not product and/or artifact.

Submitted by: Diana Hundley
Collaborators: Kadie English-Student Teacher, Merle James- Art, Kathy Vick- Librarian, Jessica DelMonte-ITRT, Parent Volunteers
School: Echo Lake Elementary

Summary

The students will work collaboratively in 5 groups that they have chosen and will be in charge of one of Virginia’s 5 regions of Virginia. Directly prior to today’s culminating lesson, the students’ developed questions the would like to find out about each region as well as what they wanted to learn about the moon. The students each used a graphic organizer and chose from three web-sites to research information about all five regions in class. They also utilized the library in a lesson about searching the web. (Kids Link) They were able to add to their research with this information. The art teacher worked with the students to paint white t-shirts with the map of Virginia for us to wear as Jr. Virginia Trekkers. Today, I will video-conference with the students from the “moon” (to bring in our school-wide theme of “Echo Lake is Out of his World”) and to tell them they have got to visit the moon with me! I will let them know I am on my way back to pick them up so we can compare the physical characteristics of the regions of Virginia to that of the moon. However, we will need to each bring a few things with us about the regions.

Submitted by: Kate Duffy
School: Glen Allen High School

Summary

Students will demonstrate a comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of the relief printing process through the creation of an original 2 color reduction print depicting a historical figure that has advocated or was engaged in positive change. Before starting print making process, students will study artist and print maker, Käthe Kollwitz, an advocate for social justice who lived during the 20th c. in Germany. Students will look at examples of Kollwitz’s artwork identifying key components of composition and discussing the work’s ability to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. Next, students will brainstorm a list of characteristics and compose a class list of criteria (using activeengage-vote) to use when identifying and researching a rebel, radical, or revolutionary. The individuals that are identified and research will become the subject of the students’ original 2 color reduction print. Students will conclude the printmaking project by completing both a self and peer evaluation and participating in a student directed class critique.

Submitted by: Cheryl Corbin
Collaborators: Suzanna Panter, Jessica DelMonte
School: Dumbarton Elementary

Summary

Students explored and understood the life cycle of a pumpkin through a wide variety of media. Students researched our topic with Mrs. Panter, our librarian. During several trips to the library, students asked questions and predicted they might experience on our pumpkin patch field trip. Students discussed finding the answers to these questions through the use of song, “Plan, Do, and Review”, a process to use to gather our data. Students found answers collaboratively through discussion, books, databases, and videos. Research ended by sampling the wide variety of foods made out of pumpkins (ice cream, bread, muffins, roasted pumpkin seeds, pie). The field trip was recorded through the use of an iPad and a flip camera by students. Students returned with pumpkins, the following day, students actively participated in 8 rotation centers throughout the week. Centers allowed students to work collaboratively and think critically to apply what they learned through their research to activities that consisted of phonics, computer, Promethean board activities, reading, writing, home living, math, science, and listening.

Submitted by: Mary Taylor Baker-Neal
School: Freeman High School

Summary

The student will be able to create a montage composition with a single subject. The composition will be made using various mediums which include drawing, painting, and collage recyclable materials and techniques. Students will explain how experiences and values affect aesthetic responses to works of art keeping in mind the viewer of their images and getting across the information they intend through color, size, placement, texture, etc.. using endangered species as their unifying theme. Students work will be shared and critiqued through a class blog, http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/mbneal/ accessed by students and community members. Additionally, the final products will be displayed on an electronic billboard on Interstate 95.

Submitted by: Jordan Flower
School: Harvie Elementary

Summary

In this lesson, 4th grade students at Harvie Elementary school were introduced to the art of Kenny Random, an Italian street artist who creates silhouette style men making merriment on the streets in Padova, Italy. These 4th graders discussed his art, street art in general, and more specifically grafitti, its positive and negative attributes, and finally, how they would pay homage to Kenny Random’s work.

Submitted by: Amy Bristow
Collaborators: Michael Price
School: Skipwith Elementary

Summary

This lesson is a four art period exploration of the artwork of Keith Haring.  First, the students drew Keith Haring style dancing characters.  These were then photographed and used as avatars on VoiceThread.  Using these student created avatars the students then comment on many of the iconic Keith Haring compositions.

The students were given images of the artwork before they went to the computer station to comment.  The studnets were also encouraged to talk with other studnets and review the website www.haringkids.com.

Using VoiceThread students could look at the artwork and  either:

1. Tell a story and start with “once upon a time

2. Answer the question under the picture with a complete sentence

3. Describe what you see. “I see…”

This lesson forced students to interpret and analyze works of art and to defend their interpretations using appropriate art vocabulary.