first lessons 6th grade: radial names

Hey all, we are three weeks into our school year here in Portland. Already we have had a stomach flu and a head cold sweep through the school (and my house) but we still have been plugging away.
This year I teach four sections of middle school. A 7-8th grade class, a 6th grade class and two 6-7th classes.
Let's start with our 6th graders who come in with a WIDE range of art experience from no art to parents who are professional artists.
We started with the favorite radial hidden names...always a big hit. There are so many tutorials on how to do these that I'm not going to bother.(UPDATE: there really are not that many or any good tutorials on how to do this with photos that I can easily find so I will make and post one in the next day or two) I will say we radiate our names 8 times and I have the student's really focus on correctly using the markers to add color.

 As these were hanging in the hall something seemed a little different about them this year. I finally realized that following the whole florescent colors trend going on right now that the packs of markers I had bought had five "florescent" colors that are as blinding as highlighters. The kids loved them...I would have pulled them out of the mix if I had realized they were there.
I also think I liked it better last year when I had all the kids mount their names on black paper. Oh well live and learn. Overall I think they did a great job with this first lesson and they were very happy with the results.

I like how she used brown along with the magenta and orange

Hard to see...but this young man cut out the open spaces in his letters so it is almost like a paper snowflake...anywhere you see black is where it is cut away...very creative

hanging in the main office are the best examples...too bad the glare off the glass makes it hard to see them...

my absolute favorite this year is the one in the bottom right corner... the photo is not doing it justice

and our group display boards.

Coming up next....6th grade color wheels 

collections

At the end of the winter trimester I ask my 6-8th students to choose their favorite project and have me photograph it. This term most students choose between three projects.
1. the chalk pastel stuffed animals I blogged about before
2. Our large pop art sweet treats
and this project
3. collections
(their always has to be a Sponge Bob project...eye roll)
All thee of these projects required the kids to use grids with their art. In this lesson a grid helped the kids create a interesting composition. We got to talk about those two fun concepts of unity and variety.

Each student was told to divided a sheet of card stock down the middle and from their they needed to divided the paper into 9 rectangles and or squares of different shapes and sizes. Then they choose a theme for their collection. We brainstormed everything from sports to cartoons to sushi!

I allowed the students to use how to draw books, bring in photos and use images from the Internet to get ideas. I encouraged the students to shrink, enlarge and crop images to make interesting compositions within each space. I'm sure some kids were sneaky and traced a bit but when they are really interested in a lesson I get a little looser with my rules.

We used this lesson as something to work on when you were done early with your other projects or waiting for a turn at the printmaking station.

The kids got really into this lesson and spent way more time than usual drawing their pictures and working on the coloring. I even had some take them home to work on them! I think this would be fun for kids 4th grade all the way up to high school.

and of course their is always the student that comes up with their own twist on the lesson. My only rule to him....absolutely no tracing and he had to enlarge the image. He did a great job!