2016 Quarter 3 Welcome Letter and Syllabus

While teachers (and students) look forward to our Christmas break, honestly I am anxious to get back to school after the first week off.  Meeting new students and seeing old ones, planning new and fun art projects, just thinking about getting back into the schedule excites me.  And with the New Year, starts a new Quarter!  Quarter 3!!  

I have 4 General Art classes and 1 Ceramics 8th grade class.  I am really excited about what we have planned!  Some drawing, painting, sculpture, sgraffito and finally installing our Cafe Exhibit!  

With the beginning of a new Quarter, I have refreshed my syllabus, curriculum and welcome letter!  Told ya I couldn't wait!!!  :)  I am posting the Welcome Letter and Syllabus below, just in case.  I will be sharing our artworks and ideas here as we progress through the Quarter.  Program Review updates will be here, Instagram will be here and class website will be here.  

Welcome Letter to Parent/Guardians:

Hello!

My name is Ashley Baker and I am the Art Teacher at Jessie Clark Middle School.  I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself.  Like any good art teacher, I love to draw, paint and take photographs!  I also love Pinterest, DIY projects, and running.  I am a Tough Mudder Legionnaire and participate in half marathons.  I have 2 kids, 2 dogs, and 1 husband (so really 5 kids).  

This quarter in art class, your student will be doing all sorts of amazing things.  We’ll learn about color theory, drawing techniques and art criticism.  We’ll also explore different media such as drawing, painting and sculpture and learn how to write an artist statement.  All the while, I’ll be putting some math, language arts and social studies connections for some sneaky cross-curricular connections.  It is my goal that all students will leave art with a strong capacity to solve problems creatively, which is a highly sought after skill in today’s world.  There is a $5.00 art fee for supplies and materials.  Cash or check to JCMS.  Students will also need a folder to keep starters and sketches.  

The class expectations are below.  Please review and talk about them with your students.

A - always do your best. Think outside the box, imagine, create and have fun with it!

R - respect yourself, others, other artwork and classroom space and materials.  

T - tools are treated properly while in use, they are cleaned and put away in their homes.  

Our JCMS school-wide Behavior Mark System is applied in the art room, as well as the Positive Reward System.  I like Positives more than the Mark system!  

If students are having significant trouble following the expectations, I will be sure to let you know so that we can work on a solution together.  

I believe that for students to be successful at school, we need to work as a team.  Please feel free to contact me at any time with concerns or questions about your child’s art education.  My hope is that your child will have the best art class experience possible and gain new skills and confidence throughout the Quarter.  If there’s anything specific I can do to help make this happen, please let me know.  My email is ashley.baker@fayette.kyschools.us

Thank you so much for reading!  I look forward to the upcoming projects, ideas and seeing what everyone creates!  You can stay up to date by checking out our class website, our instagram account or my blog.

Website:  https://ischool.fcps.net/course/view.php?id=781

Instagram:  @jcmsartstudio

Blog:  http://abaker0312.blogspot.com

Artfully Yours,

Ashley Baker

Value Scale Pop Cans

Quarter 2 Drawing Artwork, a little less Simon Says and Follow my lead, but still having students practice skill and technique.  We loved this one!!  Students were challenged and engaged, I was able to create one with them and show my example with my Lady Bug and technology in the classroom.  My mom and I saved pop cans for a few months (we don't drink that much pop!) and students learned about the different values in pencils (2H, HB, 2B, 4B, 6B).

We started with a regular pop can for the first drawing, then we squeezed it for drawing #2, then crushed it for drawing #3.  One thing I learned, and I struggled with this as a grade student as well, was that students are so intimidated to go dark!  They are so afraid of those 4B and 6B shades and making it "too dark".  I remember my high school art teacher making such dark shadows on my artwork and then forcing me to "shade backwards" to make it work.  I didn't mark up my kiddos artworks, but I did take a picture of their pop can and then change the filter, to black and white so that they could see (one) how their technology could support their artwork and (two) to show how dark that pepsi blue is!!

All in all, it was a success and definitely going to try that one again!

Here are some student examples as well as my demo.  Enjoy!!

My demo example

Zentangle Still Lifes

For our Drawing Artwork in Quarter 1, we created Still Lifes with soft pastels, sharpie and zentangle designs in the background with markers.  They all look the same because we drew them with pencil first following my lead, then we added the soft pastels to the fruit while adding a light source.  Some added stippling for extra value and shading.  We also learned about line, movement, pattern and rhythm with the zentangles in the background.

Some students appreciate the Follow Me and Simon Says activities because they feel "accomplished" and able to "do it right".  However, some students would like the freedom to "do whatever" and make their own creation.  As an art teacher, I'm torn sometimes between the ones that want to follow and build confidence versus encouraging the "process, not the product" and fostering creativity, not "do as I do" artworks.  I know parents also want to see a nice product in the end, but doesn't our world need creative and innovative thinkers?  Not lemmings?

As I reflect on this, I ponder changing my curriculum (yet again) to encourage, build skill and technique and let little artists be little artists.  Yes, in the grand scheme of things, 8th graders are still little artists.  I'm 35 and still think of myself as a little artist.  Grand scheme people, grand scheme.

Here are some of our Still Life artworks.  Enjoy!

Elements and Principles Puzzle Pieces

At the beginning of the Quarter, I always review the elements and principles with students to make sure we have a good understanding of the vocabulary that we will use for the next 9 weeks.   I try to find things that one, are interesting to the students, two, are interesting to me and three, something for a display.  

For this Quarter, I was going through some letters and font that our librarian sent out as options for display letters and I came across a puzzle piece alphabet.  It was perfect!!  I printed a puzzle piece template and we did elements one day, principles the next day and we were good!  The above image is a display our librarian put together with the puzzle pieces also featuring Masterpieces of Literature!  

Literacy Pumpkins

Chi's Sweet Home

Quarter 2 started a few weeks ago and it was really close to Halloween and I really wanted students to get a chance to paint pumpkins!  So, our school librarian and I came up with an idea to display Literacy Pumpkins in the library!  I had all of my classes (except 4th hour) work on illustrating their favorite book.  We learned our Painting Vocabulary with elements and principles and then painted our pumpkins!  

It was a success!  Students really enjoyed it and had a fun time!  I think the only drawbacks/concerns I would have for next time is one, my room looked like a pumpkin patch for a couple weeks!  There were pumpkins everywhere!  So make sure you have enough storage, thankfully I had lots of shelves! And two, the yellow paint dried and chipped off.  I did not know it would do that, so there were several Simpson's and Spongebob's that crackled and fell apart.  

All in all, students were engaged, we have a nice display and it was really neat seeing the books that the students are into!

Totem Spoons

Quarter 1 students created Totem Spoons for our Clay Unit.  They really enjoyed this activity!  We learned specific elements and principles vocabulary and all the detailed info that comes with clay!  We looked at examples and determined what we wanted to do with our artworks.  It took 1-2 days for vocabulary, 2-3 for working on our spoons, then it was time to air dry.  During the air dry time, we started our next unit, or you can try and time it for a long weekend (hint: Thanksgiving and all those 3 day weekends)

One of the biggest challenges was the importance to slip and score, wrapping the clay in plastic bags to 86 air flow and NOT glazing the bottom!  I think next time, I need to spend a full day on writing your name on the bottom and give every table buckets and sponges and making sure they wipe the glaze off the bottom!

All students made a spoon and then created objects representing their interests!  We had sports, video games, palm trees, UK (Go Cats!), school items like instruments and paintbrushes!  It was really fun to see all their interests!  This was great for all grades (6,7,8) and really kept them all engaged!

Here are some pics!

Painting with a Twist at SECC

I had the opportunity to lead a painting activity with our Youth group at church!  We had a great time and everyone left with smiles and a covered canvas.  :)