Why I Use Reality Competition Shows in the Art Room

During my first go round at the high school level, students learned about color theory before winter break and we would use frosting and food coloring to create cakes in a color scheme. I would reference two popular competitive baking shows at the time (Ace of Cakes and Cake Boss) but we didn't watch them. I don't think I had the ability to save/record or project the shows or it just didn't occur to me.

With our last week of school coming up I was trying to think of something similar, but there are now restrictions on students eating food in my classroom, so we went another way. I decided to show my students the Netflix show Blown Away* and it was such a great decision.

For background, our admin cancelled final exams and are collecting the ipads from our seniors which doesn't leave me with a lot of options. This is my Art 4 class and 80% of the kids are at home this year.  I can't really assign new work since grades are due before the last day. So most days I'm sitting in the room with a small handful of kids. This week it ended up being one girl. One. Also known as super awkward art class. So I thought I'd introduce the show a day early to test it out, and avoid the awkward situation of us in the room for 80 minutes.

As we watched the show together it became abundantly clear that I NEED to show something like this to ALL of my students before the first critique of the year. There is so much modeling of the studio habits and art criticism that was so much more meaningful than me explaining it to them on a worksheet. Let's break it down:

1. Prompts: Each of these shows regardless of end product give a prompt of some sort (design a birdhouse, create a vessel) that is open for interpretation

2. Limitations: The judges on the show always introduce a restrictions of time, media, size or color palette 

3. Rubric: Prior to saying "Go!" the judges reveal the categories upon which they will be judged.

4. Planning: The shows often include brief interview with the artist where they outline their plan and or materials and explain their rationale for the direction they have chosen. This time may also include a biography in which students can hear about a wide range of career pathways and programs of study. 

5. Formative Assessment: The judges circulate throughout the competition asking the artists clarifying questions or reminding the contestants of the limitation or criteria.

6. Trial and Error: We see the artists push the boundaries and fail. They regroup and try again.

7. Reflection: Prior to the judging portion of the show, there is often a second interview with the artist where they self-reflect on the process and how they did, what they would do different, what they are proud of and what they learned.

8. Critique: Some shows have judges meet privately while viewing the work, some review the work in front of the artist, some ask the artist to present and defend the work (Hello, artist statement).

9. Feedback: At the end of the episode, the judges reveal the winner (or loser) and explain why the person who is going home was eliminated.

I'm pretty sure the lesson plan just wrote itself. And now, when I watch season 3 of Making It this summer, I can tell myself I'm "lesson planning"

* This is not a sponsored post. I used my personal Netflix account to share in class. There is mild profanity in this specific show that is not censored out when the contestants glass pieces are broken. Make sure that is allowed in your setting.

Digital Interactive Notebooks Pros and Cons

What's so great about digital interactive notebook (DINB) anyway?

DINBs can provide structure to your remote online, hybrid, blended learning classroom. Most students are already familiar with the concept of a notebook. It's like comfort food. It gives them a little bit of a format they are used to, while taking advantage of the technology that is available.

One of the things my high school students struggle with in maintaining a traditional notebook is losing the pieces, finding the right page quickly, etc. I would give them somewhere around 60-80 pages over the course of the year and they received "participation points" for keeping it up to date and in order. This usually resulted in mass hysteria at the end of the quarter when they couldn't find their pages. Sound familiar?

With the digital notebook they will always have all of their pages available to them. They won't run out of space when taking notes. It's easier to collect and grade if needed and it cuts down on teachers physically touching hundreds of pieces of paper.

What are the downfalls of DINB's?

Students aren't able to "draw" on a slide in a way that feels authentic to them. So if you're thinking digital sketchbook, you may want to add a digital app in there and let them place drawings in from other sources.

Some students may not have access to technology. While we are a Title 1 school, I am lucky to work in a district that has provided 1:1 technology (ipads) to our students. We are currently working on providing hotspot access for those without internet in the home.

How can you get started?

The first thing you will need to do is decide if you want one notebook for the entire year/semester or if you will have several smaller notebooks for each project/unit. I started designing a year-long notebook at the beginning of the summer and the file quickly grew larger than I think will be manageable. Since everything will be housed in their google classroom, I am currently leaning toward a project-based notebook. 

The second thing you will need to decide is if you want to set up your book vertically or horizontally. Because I am transitioning from a paper notebook to digital, I knew 99% of my assignment sheets, rubrics and notebook pages were already set up vertically. It's not the best format for me to view on my laptop, but they are using ipads so they just need to turn the screen and it will be great for them. This is their notebook. I can deal with a minor inconvenience.

If this is sounding good to you, but you're still not sure where to start, I would recommended looking at established templates and notebooks that are out there. I have both of my art teacher templates - the year long and the project-based available on TpT. 

How long does this take?

It took about 10 hours to create the year long book. It was brand new to me, and I had to search for and week through a bunch of tutorial videos, but I did have a working knowledge of PowerPoint and Google Slides. I also wanted to make cute custom covers and have tabs that link. You don't have to do that, especially in a time crunch. 

This will depend on what you already have saved. If you have a worksheet made you could take a screenshot and insert it. Based on the level of your students you will need to decide if you will be adding the text boxes, or if they will. Obviously it will take more time if you need to create worksheets from scratch AND decide that you will be putting in all of the text boxes for your students. Perhaps you do so on the first 3-5 slides, realizing that later in the year they will have the skills to do so on their own.

Still have questions? Drop them in the comments below.

Distance Learning Week 1

As a department our elementary art teachers decided to focus on a theme for each week. The first week for us was color. Using a choice board with the other specialists in our building we created 5 activities. We were allowed to have some be technology dependent but had to make sure there were paper pencil options. This is what our first week of choice looked like:

Since there are six teachers we each created a sample of a different activity. We made an intro video and one teacher compiled all five together. Our sixth teacher narrated a script that went along with some slides to review the vocabulary words.

So far I think I have about 80 responses. It's amazing how creative the responses are.

This student imagined if ROY G. BIV was a person, what he might look like:

This student made soap using the cool colors:

And this kindergarten student made a found object color wheel that included the tertiary colors:

A digital drawing

A lego rainbow

Origami Color Wheel

A primary color outfit sewn by the student

A tie-dye shirt in progress

Students in K-2 are using the Seesaw app and students in 3-5 are using google classroom. Please share the successes you are having with distance learning in the comments below or drop a link so I can follow you: