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This project is finished. But read my responses to the questions of other users in the Recent topics area.
Students are huddled in table groups pouring over art prints having heated discussions about the quality of the work. Their passion is focused with a peppering of the visual arts vocabulary in elements and principles of design. They are ten-year-old art critics in a public school fourth grade classroom.
This event happened in my classroom with mixed ability groupings of students the year the California Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards arrived. The inclusion of the arts in our class's day was always a source of pride since I had worked as a professional painter/sculptor for a number of years prior to my return to teaching. However, my awareness level of the vocabulary and foundational academics of teaching the subject matter was a blurry comparison to what I could now use with the standards as a guiding planning document. Like most of us, I found that planning time so limited in all subjects, I fell back on what I was most familiar with in visual art and, as a result, didn't always see the big picture. After all, I knew what good art looked like...but I forgot to make sure my students did too!
Building that academic language up in visual art as I did for other subjects in the classroom allowed students to talk about their work and progress in learning in a deeper, more meaningful way. The standards have truly made a difference!
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