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Middle School Resources:
Storytelling with Quilts: 6th Grade
1/6
Inspired by the Quilters of Gee's Bend, students learned that quilts can tell stories through the past life of fabrics, but also through abstract shapes and colors. Students decided on a story they wanted to tell, planned the colors and shapes they would use to tell it, and then built a quilt square using the shape tool in Google Slides. To wrap up the project, students participated in a collaborative jam board where they were able to guess their fellow classmates' stories based on their quilt' designs and then compare it to the artist's intended story.
Trading Cards: 6th & 7th Grade
1/5
Students learned that trading cards are a way to spread knowledge, and that they can honor someone that is under-represented/ under-rated in society. Students worked on using layers, cutting the background out of a photograph, and building a composition with text and visual components in Pixlr. At the end of the project, students swapped trading cards with each other using email to spread the knowledge on their trading cards!
Social Justice Posters: 7th Grade
1/13
Students learned about the difference between Community Art and Public Art and discussed some controversial works of both Public and Community Art in Milwaukee. They brainstormed issues that affected their community, where they might want to hang a poster to get the most visibility, and what imagery they would use to raise awareness for their issue. They created a sketch on paper, then uploaded it into Pixlr where they made the line-work crisp and added color!
Emoji Self Portraits: 6th Grade
1/9
Inspired by both Frida Kahlo (queen of self portraits) and contemporary portrait artist Yung Jake, students created self portraits using emojis as symbols to express who they are. Students used visual thinking strategies to analyze artwork from both artists and come to their own conclusions about the meaning of symbols and how they could use symbols to express their own identities. Through daily guided drawing, students learned how to use facial proportions to draw more realistic faces.
Virtual Choice Board
This virtual choice board is a resource I created for students to independently explore digital art tools far and wide across the internet. Students can relate to classic works of art, reimagine contemporary art, and create their own adventure with a variety of experimental tools at their fingertips.
Digital Flipbooks: 6th Grade
1/6
In this hybrid in-person/virtual lesson, students brainstormed detailed observations from their daily lives as a practice in paying attention on purpose. We discussed how to break an image down into shapes, manipulate objects in layers in a digital program, include a horizon line, and then used Google Slides to make a digital flip-book portraying an event from our daily lives. Pictured here are five student examples as well as the brainstorming sheet we used to record our observations of our daily lives.
Retablos: 6th Grade
1/3
In honor of Dia De Los Muertos, students learned about the tradition of retablos - a fusion of cultural practices that exists as a small painting with both text and images in honor of an important person. During the project, we took a field trip (virtually and in-person) to the Latino Arts Gallery in Milwaukee to learn about the retablo tradition as well as other traditional and non-traditional ways Dia De Los Muertos is celebrated around the world.
Sketchbook Exercises
1/5
During online instruction, I posted weekly sketchbook challenges for students to engage with that leave room for creativity, while still providing enough structure for a place to start.
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