Aboriginal art

Andy Warhol

O'Keefe Watercolor

Collograph

Bamboo

Lamp Shade

Snowflake

Art Assessment

When I hear the words assessment and art in the same sentence it makes me cringe. I feel like I have always been creative but I have never been very artistic, especially when it comes to realistic work. I’m fine being abstract. I have never been too keen to someone critiquing my artwork. I really don’t like even showing my art. As I was reading I found some ways that I would like better then other ways to assess and be assessed considering artwork.

The article, “Assessment in Art”, It states a list of ways that you can assets your students. These include portfolios, journals, integrated performances, group discussions, exhibitions, videotapes and computers. I want to go over a few that I really like along with a few that I don’t really agree with.

I really like the idea of a portfolio. The students don’t have to share with anyone else but their teacher and they are able to describe their work. The article had a checklist that the students would do. Some of the things to include in their portfolios would be and introduction, a table of contents, the process of how they got their final product and of course the final project with self evaluations and the students feelings about the artwork. I think this is really effective because it allows the student to explain their art and the thought process they went through to get it.

Another assessment that they described is a journal/sketchbook. This method is still going strong in college. I think it is a very effective way to have students show their work. I was previously studying landscape architecture and in most of my classes we had to have a sketchbook that we were constantly using to show our process of thought and how we got our ideas. It was easy for me as a student to use it because I always had it with me and at anytime I could pull it out and write or draw something that I had just thought of.

I guess when I heard class discussion I was thinking that the students would stand in front of the class and show their work which is what I thought was not right at all. As I was reading I realized that I was totally off. The class discussion would include talking about what the requirements should be on a certain project and peoples feelings on them.

I don’t really agree with exhibitions. It would include a students showing off their artwork to other students. I think it is great if there is a student that really wants to show off their work but what about those who are embarrassed about what they did cause they can’t draw as well as their neighbor.

I think the idea of using computers is a great idea. I had to make a digital portfolio here at college and I really enjoyed it and it looked so clean and nice. It might be hard for a kid to learn but all they would need to do is scan their work into the computer to create a portfolio.

Picasso and 8 Textures

Think about your elementary experience. What are some projects you remember? I’m assuming that most of them that you remember had some sort of art integrated into it. Those were the projects that we all liked in school. They were fun and you were still learning in the process of also being creative. For example, making your name in macaroni, making a presidents face with cotton balls as their beard, making a turkey out of your hand and making a rainbow out of jello to name a few.

It is important to integrate art into your classroom. When we are talking about integrating the three domains it means cognitive, psychomotor and affective. The cognitive domain pertains to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning. This would be integrating art into your main subjects like math, social studies, science and so on, which I will touch on a little later.

Another domain is the psychomotor domain and the multisensory area. This is learning with our bodies. This would be like acting out a piece of art. One of the elementary teachers I work with was telling us about a project they did where the students picked a president and did a little presentation on them. The day of the presentation they dressed up as these presidents and acted like wax sculptures until someone came and hit their bell and they lit up to tell the people about the president they had. They were literally works of art just standing there.

The last of the three domains is the affective domain. This is relating to the students feelings and emotions. This is very important to use art in this domain. Art is a way to express emotions, which the students can do. The affective domain meets needs such as creativity, meaning, and self-worth. I think these are all important things for students to have.

An easy subject to integrate art into is social studies. This is because of the visual cultural approach. There is so much art in each of the cultures we learn about growing up. Art is just an aspect of culture therefore there is plenty to study and plenty of activities you can do. There are many things about a culture that we can learn through art, these are time, continuity, change, people, places, environment, individual development and identity, groups, institutions, power, authority, governance and so much more.

In an article I found called Art Across the Curriculum: Bilingual or Mainstream Classroom a teacher described ways he integrated art into other subjects and I really liked his ideas. He states that he organizes four art projects a month that deals with that month’s theme. He talked about examples like in September he did fruit prints, color mixing and straight line and curved line designs. For math they discussed fractions like whole, half, one-fourth and so on. To integrate art they looked at the different fruit prints as each fraction. For science they guessed what colors they would make when they put two different ones together. They would also measure the paints, which is also a science thing. “Integrating art across the curriculum brings novelty and breaks the daily monotony of "classroom work." Students enjoy exploring and tapping into their creative side. Art unifies teaching lessons and is the accent to classroom Lesson Plans,” states Jesus Lopez the author of the article.

Another article(Bringing Arts into the Classroom) I read stated that research showed that quality arts-integrated learning helps to even out the learning process for all students of all intellects and physical abilities as well as different social and cultural backgrounds. The article states, “Students engaged in the arts develop strong critical-thinking skills and problem-solving techniques and gain greater appreciation and tolerance for new and different ideas and people.” I agree so much with this article. Art is something that all students like to do and when you are that young your peers won’t judge you on your abilities, which can happen in some of the core subjects.

Arts should always be integrated into the classroom in all subjects. I think it really helps students learn in different ways then the norm and the boring. I found another article that included 15 reasons that the arts are important in the classroom. I’m not going to list them all but I am going to end by listing a few that I really liked: They are languages that all people speak that cut across racial, cultural, social, educational, and economic barriers and enhance cultural appreciation and awareness. They integrate mind, body, and spirit. They create a seamless connection between motivation, instruction, assessment, and practical application--leading to deep understanding. They improve academic achievement -- enhancing test scores, attitudes, social skills, critical and creative thinking.