Creative Arts Chronicles

Creative Arts Fridays continue to be very popular in Room 23!  Poetry Workshop and Tech Block are rolling right along and everyone is making great progress.  Mrs. MacMurray is working her magic with the chorus and the recorders sound fantastic!  

Mrs. Hess is the guest author this month for the blog.  She has written a great post about all of the art work and art history that has taken place in 4th grade this month!  Also, the concept of "zooming in," is used in writer's workshop as well as Art!  We love when all of our teaching strategies and concepts cross curriculum areas.  It makes the learning more meaningful and authentic for students. Thanks Mrs. Hess!

"Abstraction of a Leaf" 

Students used a view finder to 'Zoom in' and look closely at the veins of a leaf and draw a close up view.

They used  unrealistic colors to turn the drawing into an abstract design.

We looked at paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe since she painted with a close up focus on nature.

We also looked at portraits by Pablo Picasso as an example of abstract artwork.

Students learned that abstract art does not look realistic but can be based on real life things.

"Autumn Still-Life Drawing"

Students looked closely at an arrangement of pumpkins leaves and sunflowers and created a still-life drawing based on what they saw. They looked closely and tried to create a realistic image of the autumn still-life. Students learned that it is easier to create a realistic drawing when you have real objects to look at and draw from, rather then drawing from memory.

Creative Arts Chronicles

Our first month of Creative Arts Fridays has been a huge success.  The children are adjusting nicely to the routine and enjoy the independence involved in switching classes.  It has been fun for us to get to know another group of students as well.
            In Poetry workshop, we have written Bio Poems which will be on display at Open House.  Some of us have even written bio poems about characters from our books. We have begun studying Walt Whitman and his influence on American poetry. Click here to listen to a wax cylinder recording of Whitman as he reads from “America.”  Everyone agreed that it was cool to hear Whitman read his poem, especially since he has been dead for over 120 years! We learned that Whitman often wrote in the style of free verse poetry and used the poetic technique of “catalogue,” to write some of his poems.  We began preparing for MCAS by answering questions about “The Runner,” and discussed some test taking strategies when answering poetry questions. We will be using Whitman’s poems as mentor texts, as well as a collection of poems by Georgia Heard, called Falling down the Page, to write list poems in the coming weeks.  Too much fun!!!
            The children are excited about chorus and sound really good already! The concert in December will be great, we can just tell.
            It is so exciting that we get to have Art class on Fridays with Mrs. Hess!  Who wouldn’t want to spend forty minutes creating art and letting the creative juices flow? We are so lucky! In Art class, Mrs. Hess has been discussing elements of art and has been working on a unit on Value.   Grandma Moses is the artist of the month for 4th graders!  The students have been working with colored pencils and they will be creating landscapes by painting. Today was our first day painting! The next focus will be on using Value and Form with three dimensional shapes.  There will be a sculpture component to this next phase of the Value unit.  We can’t wait to see what is created.
            We are really excited about working in our technology lab.  This summer we got new computers in there, and we are learning how to use them.  We have learned to sign into the computer using our user name and password.  It is exciting to think that everything we save in our folders will be available to us next year, and even after we leave Kennedy School!  We have learned how to use Microsoft Office in order to format and type our biopoems.  In the next few weeks we will begin to learn about different Internet websites.
Artfully Yours,
Mrs. Merten and Mrs. Williams