Starry Night

Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is a perennial favorite in our classroom, so it wasn’t by chance that we decided to name our class the “Star” class. The painting was hanging on the wall since the start of school, along with Van Gogh’s quote, “…and what is done in love is done well.”

Starry-Night

 

 

 

 

Poster of “Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh

Recently, we had the children sketch their observations of “Starry Night” and write about them. A couple of students noticed the brush strokes:

Harper-swirls

Others interpreted the content:

Brady-observation-Starry-Night

We talked to the children about Van Gogh and his techniques, such as using short brush strokes and outlining some things in black. We also told them that he used a thick application of paint called “impasto”. We thickened the preschool tempera with some shaving cream, and the children painted in the style of Van Gogh.

This sparked additional conversations and journal entries about stars and space. The children brainstormed what they know about stars and/or the sun. We noticed that some of the students made statements such as “The sun is the hottest star” and “The biggest star is the sun”. We translated some of these statements into questions for the class: “Is the sun the hottest star?” and “Is the biggest star the sun?” The children made tally marks to answer these yes/no questions. We set out to debunk these myths by asking Google through the computer microphone. The children loved hearing what “she” has to say! We hung the tallied questions up, along with writing that explains the answer.

Is-the-sun-bigger-then-the-earthIs-the-sun-the-hottest-star

Next, we found about a half dozen library books about stars and the sun. The children paired up and read through a book together. We taught them how to use small post-it notes to mark the pages that interested them. They then took turns sharing what they found with the class, and we helped them read some new facts. As we move on with our star study, we will be turning our attention to our next British artist, John Hoyland, an abstract painter who sometimes depicted space.

 

 

 

Primarily Mondrian

Hallie Cirino, 5’s Teacher, CHT Preschool, Westport, CT

My co-teacher, Sylvia Grannan, and I were a bit surprised that some of our students were still unsure of shape names by this time in the school year. A geometry unit was in order, and immediately Sylvia thought of Piet Mondrian. After displaying some of his paintings, the children made observations of Mondrian’s work:

Untitled

Sadie, who has lived in NYC remarked, “It looks like apartment buildings and elevators.” Most of the other children noticed the concrete elements: colors, shapes, and lines. In truth, as we set out to find biographical information on Mondrian, we found that both he and the analysis of his work are so esoteric that it’s difficult to teach the children about the artist. However, we seized the opportunity to emphasize primary colors.

One day, Sylvia had the children close their eyes and said, “Imagine red. Just think about red.” The room was more or less silent for a minute or so, as our 5-year-olds pondered red. Sylvia gave the children a blank sheet of white paper and asked them to illustrate what they saw, and then write about it.

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The children shared their results at circle time and then decided to put it all together into a class poem:

Red Is:

By the Unicorn Class, March 2014

Red is a face,

Red is a volcano erupting,

Red is anger,

Red is a zipper,

Red is butterflies,

Red is fire,

Red is our class color,

Red is a ladder,

Red is a sun,

Red is a meteor.

It was such a successful process; we did the same for yellow and blue. In addition, at the art center, we put out black electrical tape, and tempera paints in the primary colors. We found small, stiff canvasses, and the children went to town, taping their canvasses with vertical and horizontal lines and painting the resulting quadrangles. Here’s a display of several together:

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How-To: Use the Online Collection

The Yale Center for British Art’s vast online collection is a great resource to use in the classroom. Here are step-by-step instructions with images to walk you through a topical search of the online collection.

Step 1: Go to the Yale Center for British Art website. You can click here, or type in http://britishart.yale.edu/ into your web browser.

Step 2: Under “Collections,” select “Search.” You can also click on “Highlights,” “Using the Collection,” and “Related Resources” to find other materials and information that can help you in the classroom. Step 2_Collections and Search

Step 3: After clicking on “Search,” the “Search All Collections” webpage will come up. You might use this search if you are looking for a specific painting or various works by one artist. Searching all collections will give you artwork and literature across all mediums. To narrow your search, look to the right hand column and decide what you are looking for.

Step 3_The search page

Step 4: For this example, we will search the “Paintings and Sculptures.” Selecting this will send us to the “Paintings and Sculptures,” search page. As you can see, selecting a medium will allow for even more options to narrow your search and find exactly what you are looking for.

Step 3_seaching paintings and sculpture

Step 5: Search for the paintings and sculptures that you want to see. By clicking on the “Classification” or “Genre” options, a dropbox menu will appear with various options that have already by pre-selected. These can be helpful in coming up with ideas, or you can choose to type in your own original search. For this example, we will look for Animals in Art. We can see that there is an option for “animal art” in the “Genre” menu.
Step 5_Selecting a genre

Step 6: After selecting “animal art” and clicking on Find, we are sent to a page with all of the paintings and sculptures that are categorized under the “animal art” genre. Remember, you can narrow down your search even further by providing more information in the search page. You can also narrow down your search using the various options on the right side of the Search Results page.

Step 6_search results

Step 7: Select an image from the Search Results page to learn more about the artwork. Many of the pieces that are part of the Permanent Collection here at the British Art Center have images that can be downloaded and used for your use in the classroom. Simply click on the “Download” option underneath the image, and select how you would like to download the image. Images that the British Art Center does not have rights to will not be available to download.

Step 8_Selecting an Image

The online collection is a valuable resource that the Yale Center for British Art provides and understanding how to search the collection is necessary in utilizing this resource. Please feel free to comment with any questions about the online collection and how to use it.

Inviting the Writing: The Path Between Drawing and Writing

“We just had the greatest class discussion! The vocabulary, the ideas, the connections…BUT, when it came to writing it down, they fell apart.” Does this sound familiar? We’ve all seen how easy it is to lose the magic when they face the blank page. How we handle the delicate transition to writing is the key to getting students to transfer their spoken language to the paper.

We often over-structure this transition, offering sentence starters and writing prompts which only serve to limit the children. Just as often, we give too much freedom, trusting that their enthusiasm for the painting will spill onto their paper. Both approaches usually result in blank pages. Offering the right balance of support is key. Here are two steps that ease the path to writing:

1. Allow time for drawing. With limited time in our schedules, I know it is tempting to jump to the writing. But I can’t overstate the value of taking the time to draw first. Drawing helps them – and us – see what they want to say. After discussing a painting, ask them to copy all or part of it, or they can draw something that the painting made them think of from their own lives. This helps them find their own writing voices.

Below, a third grade student has copied a painting from a postcard.

Garrowby Hill by David Hockney
kaylens-hockney
Third grader’s copy of Hockney’s Garrowby Hill

 

 

2. Provide Writing Invitations. These are key to helping students transfer their ideas to writing. Below are some Writing Invitations that I have used to guide students, while still allowing them enough choice to use their own voices. I always give at least two invitations, and I always “Your choice” (the child who chooses that one has thought of something I haven’t – and I am usually pleasantly surprised).

Sample Writing Invitations:

– Imagine yourself into your picture. What happens around you? Use all your senses to write a description or a story. (Other ways to say this: “Press play as if this painting is a video. What happens when it starts?” Or, “Start by telling what you smell, hear, see, or feel. Be detailed so I can imagine exactly what it’s like.”)

– Describe this painting. Be as detailed and descriptive as you can, and surprise me. (This is where metaphors and similes begin to show up).

– Write about what you were thinking as you drew. Where did your mind take you? What did you wonder and notice? What was easy or hard about drawing this picture? What surprised you?

– (for masks, statues, or portraits) Can you become this person for a while and write about your day?

– Does this picture/art piece make you think of a real place you’ve been, or a moment in your life? Include the sounds, the smells, the feeling of your memory.

– Your choice

There are unlimited Writing Invitations. You will think of what fits the needs of your class. For young children, sentence starters are not the enemy! Giving them the first few words can kick-start things for them (stick to something open-ended such as “I see/smell/feel/hear….” rather than something more constraining like, “I like this painting because…”).

After copying Hockney’s painting, this third grader reacted to the second invitation from above. She wrote:

“There is a squiggly purple road heading south. On the left there is a crowded tree place with one humpy hill. On the right of the road there is a grassy place with a garden. Down south the road leads to a rural kind of place which looks like precious glass.”

For teachers: Copy a painting into your journal, and use an invitation to write about it. What was your process like? What was surprising? Share your experience with your class – and with us!

 

Seeing Perspective

Here’s a classroom activity using Reg Bulter’s Man (early 1960s) from the online collection.

Lesson: Explore the value of location, view-point, and narration.

Activity: class drawing, reading, and writing

Process:  Use all three images from the online collection

Draw image (10 min) whole or detail.  Respond in writing to the following questions (5 min).  What is the mood? What is the story?

 

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Draw second image (10 min) whole or detail.  Respond in writing to the following questions (5 min): What is the mood from this perspective? What is the story?

 

 

Draw third image (10 min) whole or detail. Respond in writing to the following questions (5 min): What is the mood from this perspective? What is the story?

 

 

Reflection and follow up:  If you had only seen one of these images what would you know in terms of mood and story?

In what ways might we use our classwork today towards understanding the effect of location, view-point, and mood when we read literature? When viewing works online? When reading a news story?

 

Example: Although I generated the lesson for the students and their needs, I too benefit from ‘seeing perspective’ and participating with them. Here’s a clip from my journal covering two of the steps.

seeing perspective example1

 

Place in the Classroom

The activity generated quite a bit of conversation in the classroom the following day. Students gained perspective on a range of skills and frameworks — from seeing perspective to the role of location in story telling.

–James Shivers

DRAWING A PASSAGE

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What if? The Odyssey, Bk 5

Poetry is one of our oldest image-makers.  Words paint.  Readers imagine the world of the text.  What if we tapped into this visual process and redirected the output?  What if we began asking readers to ‘give us a picture’ of what they ‘see’ as they read?

What do these words see?  And later, how might words show a place or an emotion?

Crazy how the gods are getting blamed for all this
Crazy how the gods are getting blamed for all this

Poetry attempts to alter our perception through words. By asking students to draw what they see in a passage or a chapter we bring them into the poetic process. Creating a classroom where these drawings are shared and discussed situates each member of the class as an image-maker. By establishing various drawing activities within the study of the language arts we encourage students to explore other versions of ‘image-making’.  The imagination has another platform.  Students have access and place to continue the conversation.

A Map of Reading
A Map of Reading

In class students discussed their planning (“pre-writing”) for their design as well as their hopes (the effect on the audience).  Everyone had words to add.  Later in writing they pursued this question:  In what ways did the activity alter or enhance your understanding of the passage or reading itself? You may discuss your own work or work of your peers.

Choices
Choices
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Which strengths?
The Underworld
The Underworld

For the assignment the students chose a passage from their reading to draw and provide  ‘a visual reading of the passage’.  The examples below are from three different sections of the text we were reading at the time (The Odyssey).  One student wrote later that the assignment was the most difficult of the unit “because we had to draw a picture of what was going on in the chapter and I didn’t really have a good understanding of the chapter that we had to draw which made it tough.”

–James Shivers

 

But I Hate Reading & Writing

After many years in education, it has finally occurred to me that I really need to market the idea of reading and writing to my remedial reading 
students. Reading and writing has always been difficult for them and at the ripe old age of 9, they don't choose either as  free time activities. 
Despite my encouragement of, “practice will make you better” or my pleas:“you’d never say this to your football (basketball/soccer/dance etc) coach," reading and writing remain on the NOT TO DO list for these children. 

So, I decided that I would bring sketch books back to the reading room this year. My goal: Let the kids discover for themselves that they ARE creative and DO have great powers of observation and ideas. For the first 15 minutes of each reading class, the students sketch, write and share ideas. 

 

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Guess what??? They LIKE it! They are beginning to buy into the idea that they are smart…just in a different way from some of their peers.

Very quickly, after the first 3 sessions, I had students requesting sketching/writing time. In the beginning, I collected images from the YCBA collection, book illustrations, and online images from various art museums. I am storing them in what is becoming a rather large power point. Each slide is an image with several writing invitations.

 

Van Gogh: Shoes 1888

Students sketch and write for equal amounts of time.

JWMTurner; The Morning After Deluge 1843

 

Two important observations over the past month:

1) Kids get right to the writing. Not one student (grade 3-5) has uttered the dreaded words, “I don’t know what to write.” Or better yet, “How many sentences does this have to be?”

2) The kids are starting to notice that their writing is getting longer and more detailed. There is pride in their voices when they share. They are excited with the language they are using and making links to literature. They are applying figurative language and making inferences (and actually know what both of those terms mean now!)

Teacher note:

This takes very little planning. Just give students time and opportunity and they will amaze you and, more importantly, amaze themselves.

I sketch and write with my students to model and practice what I preach.

Sky Lessons: Using Paintings to Teach Setting

CloudDance

Illustration from Cloud Dance by Thomas Locker

 

“The sky settles everything – not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful.”

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

The background of a painting is much like a setting in writing: it pulls you in, and puts you somewhere specific. We tell our students that “setting” is the time and place in a piece of writing. But it is more than that: it is an anchor for the reader. I like teaching setting by focusing on the sky. The sky is a great equalizer: we all see it, at all times of day and night, in all kinds of weather. It affects our moods and our actions. The collection of  paintings selected by Sara Torkelson in this pinterest board are a perfect way to show students of all ages how powerful the sky can be.

Continue reading Sky Lessons: Using Paintings to Teach Setting

We abstract from letters, worlds.

A salient feature of strong reading is ‘picturing’, a fostering of words to create a visual terrain in our heads.  We stroll along in a story, adding detail after detail, slowly shaping, ‘drawing’, or seeing a room, a chair, and conversation. We hear the words in what we imagine. We abstract from letters, worlds.  A process in time. A skill in need of practice.  As teachers we want to cultivate this participation, this move from letters on the page to figures in our minds.

How might a visual activity bring to light the power of words, the power of participation? Even in the 19th Century in our School Readers and Primers we wove together words and images, picturing and story, seeing and telling. Here’s one example from a Appletons’ School Readers Third Primer (1887).

 

IMG_2049 Third Reader

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Continue reading We abstract from letters, worlds.

Clouds and Skies

 

“Blue needs sun,

Without it,

Blue hides.

Then,

suddenly,

sparkling spring sky!”

-Joyce Sidman, Excerpt from Red Sings from Treetops, A Year in Colors

 

Check out our newest Pinterest post about Clouds and Skies here! This is just a small sample of the many works that showcase the natural world around us. Check out the clouds and skies using our online collection here and here. There are various options for using these works in the classroom; stay tuned to our blog to see how other teachers have used our collection of clouds and skies at the YCBA in their classrooms. How will you use these artistic expressions of nature? Share with us your own ideas about Clouds and Skies in the classroom.

 

Here are some books for all ages that can easily accompany one of the Pinterest posts:

Birds, Kevin Henkes. Illustrated by Laura Dronzek.

Little Cloud, Eric Carle.

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors, Joyce Sidman. Illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski.

Once Upon a Cloud, Rob D. Walker. Illustrated by Matt Mahurin.

It Looked Like Spilt Milk, Charles G. Shaw.