Grade 6 Semester 1 Art projects, Middle School Art

One of the lowlights of teaching at my current school is the lack of contact time I have with my Grade 6 classes. I meet with them on average of 70 minutes/week for a semester (18 WEEKS) equaling about 1.5 classes considering I'm on a 12 day rotation schedule... In Egypt my contact time with Grade 6 was either 180 minutes/week for a semester or 90 minutes a week for a year. But then again the Grade 6 in Egypt was around 15 students because that was size of the entire Grade 6...our current Grade 6 had around 90 students. It's all about the numbers.

Below are examples of 4 of the 6 projects we did in a semester.
1. Oil Pastel mood self portraits (color mixing/theory/texture/lines)
2. Printmaking - insect linocuts 
3. Color Pencil fruit drawing (geometric shapes/color mixing/theory)
4. Drawing eyes and mouths (rendering/value/shading)
5. Ceramics (coil/slab/glazing) NOT PICTURED
6. Digital Photography (rules of thiirds/lines/texture) NOT PICTURED

Selected student outcomes (meets standards examples and exemplary examples) :

Grade 8 Mola Paper cutting. Middle School Art project

The Mola, or Molas, is a hand -made textile that forms part of the traditional women's clothing of the Kuna people from Panamá. The full costume includes a patterned wrapped skirt, a red and yellow headscarf, arm and leg beads, a gold nose ring and earrings in addition to the mola blouse. - Wikipedia

Supplies: various colors construction paper 12" x 18", x-acto knives, cutting boards, white color pencil, paperclips, pencils, rulers, and paper.

Vocabulary: mola, layers, bridges, boarders, outline, negative/positive space, cutting, overlapping, lines, warm/cool colors, and shape.

Please click on link to see the step by step instructions and previous student work.
http://www.mrbobart.com/2011/11/molas-grade-7-paper-cutting-project.html
http://www.mrbobart.com/2013/02/mola-project-reprise-7th-grade-art.html

Selected student outcomes (meets standards examples and exemplary examples) :

Grade 7 Oil Pastel leaves Middle School Art

Project: Oil Pastel leave drawing

Supplies: Oil pastels, pencil, black paper, 12" x 18" white color pencil, swatch paper, mirror, camera, outdoor vegetation.

Leaning objective and Essential questions: Drawing leaves/flowers/ vegetation from a digital photographic image created by the student. What qualities do we choose to focus on when taking a photo? How do colors choices project a mood of feeling? How does mixing colors create implied textures ?

Steps.
1. Teacher tutorial on how to draw the shapes of the leaves and apply color by mixing 2-3 oil pastels together.
2. Students will go outside and take photographs of vegetation with leaves and create draft on small paper (formative).
3. Student transfers draft to large black paper.
4. Student uses swatch paper to investigate and create a color swatch. They will experiment by asking themselves: "What is the outcome if I mike these two or three or ...colors together?
5. Student will apply color choices and design qualities to the final project.   

Student work:

Grade 7 Positive and Negative lines with shapes

Project: Positive and Negative lines:

Learning Objective: The student will create a line design using masking tape on paper. Once the tape is laid out on the the paper, the student will use spray paint to paint over the tape. The student will then remove the tape to see the design formed by the negative space.  The student will repeat the process on the same paper with shapes of cardboard. The outcome will be two patterns on top of each other with some transparency.   

Essential questions: How do I create shapes and pattern with lines? How do two distinct patterns/shapes interact layered on top of one another?

Supplies: Tape, spray paint, cardboard, paper 18" x 18", an open mind and a sense of inquiry.

Student work:

Grade 7 Day of The Dead linocuts Middle School art

A new school means a new project for my grade 7 kids.

Project: Block Reduction Printmaking 

Supplies: paper, gouge, lino blocks, ink, brayer, sheet of plexi glass, barren, and pencil.

Vocabulary: Reduction print, brayer, ink plate, gouge, block/plate, edition, pulling, inking, and baren .

Step one: design an image on paper with pencil.
Step two: transfer image to a lino block.
Step four: print background color with a light color.
Step five: use gouge to remove the background.
Step six: print dark color over background image.
Step seven: sign and number prints with pencil.

For a detailed step by step instructions, please visit my website:
http://www.mrbobart.com/2011/10/block-reduction-printmaking-with-grade.html

Student work: