Share Your Talent, Get Published!

For me, one of the most exciting events of the NAEA's Conference in New York City last month was meeting up with the people from Davis Publishing. They are the company that publishes School Arts Magazine. And since I have written some articles and Clip Cards for the magazine I was invited to an Author's Reception.

 

I was able to visit with my buddy, Nancy Walkup, Editor-in-Chief for School Arts. I have known Nancy since meeting her at a Teacher's Workshop that School Arts runs over the summer in Santa Fe. Read about it here. Nancy is responsible for getting me involved the NAEA and the FAEA and writing this blog! I will be forever grateful to her for inspiring me to be more involved.

I met the publisher of School Arts, Julian Wade. What a really nice guy! We talked for quite a bit. He is so passionate about his company and how important the Arts are for students.

Here is a photo of all the authors in attendance as well as the crew from Davis Publishing.

Now what does it take to share your talent? Let's start by looking at my two most recent clip cards that were published.
Rainbow Fish was published in the January 2017 issue. And Textured Flowers was published in the April 2017 issue.

 Let's look at each section.
The Title of the Clip Card: I use the title I give the lesson when writing lesson plans.

The Essential Question: Basically it's what relates to your standards and what you are teaching. And most of us are already writing them.

Objectives: What your learning goal is for the students. Pretty much the "I can" statement.

Materials: Back in the day when I started writing lesson plans I always wrote a list of what I would need to do the lesson. Just start doing it in your head and think of the different steps and what you would need. Which leads us to.......

Procedures: Which is where you write down those steps! Keep it simple 5-7 steps. You know you can do this, because you have had to write sub plans with step by step directions.

Assessment: How did you assess your students when they finished? Sum it up in one sentence.

Really Important! As you are going around the room assessing student work, take photos to submit with your soon to be published Clip Card....... Okay, it doesn't happen overnight, but I did find out that Clip Cards are the most popular section of the magazine. Oh, and did I mention you get paid for writing them?

So next time you go through your lesson plans, think about what you can share. Clip Cards are written for the following categories: Early Childhood, Elementary, Middle School and High School.

Click here for the link to guidelines and submission info.

I hope to be reading one of your Clip Cards or Articles in School Arts Magazine real soon!!

I know I've been gathering up photos of student work to write up some Clip Cards this summer. It really is this easy!

Thanks for Reading!!!

No Snow Days for Me!

 

When I lived up north I LOVED doing snowmen with my students in January. Now that I live in Florida and it actually DOES get cold (waking up to 29°) where I am, so I still do snowmen in January.  And what a perfect week to be finishing them up with everyone up north getting snow days!

This lesson starts off week one with the book The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler.

We talk about the different sized snowballs that make up the snowman and I modeled ripping the paper to create texture around the edges of the snowballs. They are given a copy of the paper below, which is just paper with traced circles. You could have students trace their own circles, but it just adds too much time to the project. After ripping out the circles students glue them onto construction paper.

 

   

I'm really proud that my students are finally getting the concept of not using Too Much Glue, they still remember my 2014 costume, find it here.

The second week I read Snowmen at Night by Caralyn-Buehner which can be found here. The book has snowmen wearing different hats and other outfits that are inspiring.

 

I have a poster of hat designs, that I made, based on some of the hats that my Potato Heads have. (Don't ask....) I have used it to inspire many different lessons. A few of the styles have tracers for the kids, some I help them to figure out. 

I also have a stash of beautifully painted paper (made from the tools on the left) from about 9 years ago. I made these with students, from leftover bulletin board paper that teachers used to cover their walls during testing. The paper is older than the students using it........ anyway.

Now if you want to know more about projects with painted paper check out the blog Painted Paper.

   

Children decorate their snowmen, they learn how to use a hole punch to make eyes, mouths and buttons.  They all make arms and a nose along with dressing their snowmen.

 

Interesting story on the snowman below. Student got really frustrated ripping out the circles and he crinkled up his paper. As I was opening it up I realized that by crinkling it, he created a more accurate texture for snow, because now it had all these sharp edges, like freshly plowed snow. The next class was encouraged to crinkle the paper if they wanted to show more texture.

My grandson attends my school and helps me out on occasion to earn snack money. Below he is removing the snowmen, from the previous day, from the drying rack. And while I usually quickly take them out, barely looking at them, he chose to look at each one and comment about them. AND couldn't wait to come back and finish his.

Here are some finished ones. Students also had the opportunity to stamp snowflakes on their paper.

 

 

So it's the middle of the winter and I gotta tell you I am starting to think about the summer...... AND my favorite part of summer is the fun places to travel to for professional development.

Some of the ones that I have done in the past are starting to advertise for the upcoming summer. You just might want to check them out!

SchoolArts and Crizmac have workshops in both Santa Fe, New Mexico and Oaxaca, Mexico check it out here.  Blogged about it here.

The National Gallery of Art has sent out info on their Teacher's Institute find it here.   I mention my experience here.     Summer Vision DC  here.

I am very excited and extremely grateful to announce that I am a  

Rising Star Finalist in the Art of Ed Blog Contest for 2015. 

I have PROUDLY displayed my badge on the right side of this blog. To check out all the amazing winners and finalists for 2015 click here!

THANK-YOU to all of you that nominated and voted for me and especially to all of you that continue to read my blog.

THANKS for Reading!!

Getting Published

 Getting published is EXCITING!! I know I shared recently that I had Clip Cards published in School Arts Magazine in November and December. WELL, I also had one published in this month's issue.

 

I thought I would share that lesson.
Reading a book always works for me to motivate my students. In this case when it comes to rainbows I have two different books I like to share.

 

A Rainbow of My Own can be purchased from Amazon click here.
Pete's Rainbow I purchased at a museum gift shop when I was in Ireland. I did find it at Amazon.co.uk  here.

After reading the book, I modeled the steps for them and stated my expectations.

 

It's not a lesson that should take a long time. And it would make a good lesson to leave with a substitute teacher. They did a really nice job!

   

I love when a lesson combines concepts. And I really like doing pattern related lessons with them. Adding patterns to art work adds interest and depth to the work. I guess that's why my other two clip cards also involved patterns.

 

 

Anyway, in reviewing the EOC's my students took at the end of the last school year I noticed I didn't focus as much on comparing differences and similarities across various cultures. I have included a resource from Nancy Walkup, editor of School Arts Magazine that would be wonderful in teaching patterns. Even if all you share are the magnificent photographs. I believe this lesson would also be very valuable in opening up a dialog about how different cultures can be compared and contrasted.

The article is from SCHOOLARTSROOM.COM Understanding the Art of Islam.

Oh and since I'm sharing my published articles, the first article I had published was in the October 2007 issue of School Arts Magazine.

 Then in October 2010, under Managing the Art Room.

And December 2010.

 The links will get you to the magazine and the table of contents will get you to the articles. Really need to find time to do MORE articles. And remember School Arts Magazine is always looking for articles from us art teachers. Click here for their guidelines.

I am curious as to whether any of you out there has a lesson you were like to get published? Please feel free to bounce those ideas off me!

Thanks for reading!

Light to Dark Values

Pinterest has inspired art teachers around the world and I am no exception. (Unfortunately I have no idea who originated this lesson, but I am grateful to them.) I really enjoy looking at the value paintings that start from a circle somewhere on the paper and then by adding white and then black you get all these great tints and shades in between. Sooooo I thought I would do them with my 3rd graders. This is what they were doing while other students were doing the Halloween art.

Now I've done value painting with my students before. But I was rather controlling about the whole thing. Students used the color assigned to the table and had to wait to mix up colors until everyone at the table was ready. Also, 2nd graders added black and white only once to their assigned color. While the older ones added black and white twice. It was crazy. Below are samples from what I did before.

   

This time to be able to give students a choice of color I did things differently. I bought small paper plates and set up each plate with black and white paint, then I called up students by announcing the color I would be adding to the plate.

For the actual lesson I started off by modeling, I traced a circle somewhere towards the top of the page and filled in that circle (the moon) with white paint. Then I gradually added color to the white and continued to paint around the moon. At some point I stopped adding white and painted with the color straight from the bottle, then started adding black for a few rounds. My samples are at the top.

 

Since my third graders are my last class, they left their paintings to dry overnight.

 

The following week they used Sharpies to add silhouettes to their paintings. At first I was going to have students do trees, like in one of my samples at the top. But, they had their own ideas. Which in my opinion is a good thing!

Here are some finished paintings. Some appear to have a holiday theme. It's all good! Oh and I also brought in the concept of positive and negative space. Which was fun.....

   

 One of my nieces spotted some paintings I did for my daughter and decided to buy me canvas to make her some paintings. She is very athletic and was hoping for silhouettes in the poses of the sports she likes to do. I had so much fun doing the lesson above. Check out the paintings I did for her. (She will be crocheting some ear warmers for me.)

 

 Oh and this month when my School Arts Magazine came I checked it out and saw that I was published again! It's exciting! Makes me want to write some more!! YEAH!

 

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break. As you can see I had some fun painting, I also did some sewing and rearranged furniture. My husband said it's time for me to go back to work! Hahaha, but I will be off again in 3 weeks!!

Thanks for reading!