Books For Teaching Art

As we all know, one of the best way for students to master any content is to activiate their schema using various strategies.  As emphasized through the "thinking strategies"  kids have tiny file folders in their brains which can be opened to connect new information.  Without the schema(experience), it is very difficult for them to understand new content.  As we all know, books are a great way for kids to make connections and create experiences (schema).
Here are a few books I would reccomend to help students become art literate and help them make real life connections to art content.
Harold and The Purple Crayon
The Dot
Eric Carle Books
Lily Brown's Paintings        Angela Johnson
The Quilt Story
The Rough Faced Girl
A is for Appalachia              Linda Pack
Appalachia The Voices of Sleeping Birds  Cynthia Rylant
Rain School (Africa)            James Rumford
The Dancing Masks of Africa
The Boy Who Drew Birds    John Audobon
The Yellow House               Susan Rubin
Lucy's Picture (texture)         Nicola Moon
You are My Work of Art      Sue Diccico
Enjoy!
Robin

Recommended books

Here are a few books I use: Unlikely pairs/Fun with famous works of art (excellent for comparing works of art that connect in some way), Mouse Paint (great for when describing mixing the primary colors to make secondary colors, The Quilt by Ann Jonas, Chameleons are Cool (great examples of different patterns and vibrant colors), Giraffes can't dance (great for k/1's or 2/3s) and A is for Appalachia (alphabet book of appalachian heritage with various objects of the area).
Rae Schooley

The Wonderful Books of Laurence Anholt

Without a doubt the books I've most enjoyed sharing with the kids the past few years are the Laurence Anholt books...

   

Book photos from http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2011/09/12/best-childrens-books-to-teach-art/.

These books have gotten a better response from my students than any I have ever used.  I like to bring the masters to life, telling wild, fantastical stories that most of the artists have in their histories.  These books always involve either children or young people who actually met the artists and knew about them.  The books are frank about the artists' idiosyncratic personalities, while also avoiding some of the gory details they don't necessarily need to hear.  These four are the ones I've shared so far.  I also have the da Vinci and Degas books he wrote, but haven't used them yet.

Reading the Matisse book led me on a wild goose chase that I loved.  I decided to contact the nuns at the convent in Vence, France, that Henri helped plan and construct.  They were very nice to communicate with, and ended up sending me a small book about the process of the construction of the chapel.  As a pastor as well as art teacher, I relished that opportunity.

These books "speak to" my students.  They may not get the same effect for you, but here at Kenwood these are the books the kids remember, that the teachers bring up to me about discussions in the regular classrooms, and that the parents mention as inspring their kids.

Book;"Painting the Town" by Denise Minnerly

I use this book with K, 1 and 2's...but mostly with kindergarten. It helps students to understand more about colors, color families and how to make colors (blending). Focuses on Primary & Secondary color families.

Art Library

This list is a compilation of texts that we use in our classrooms to foster art literacy, to create our classroom environments, or simply to engage students with art in new ways. Please, add to this list by following these directions:
1) Sign in
2) Under "Manage Blogs" for Oldham County Elementary Art Blog, click "Edit Posts." This will bring up a list of past posts starting with the most recent.
3) Next to "Art Library," click "Edit"
4)Add your titles to the list, along with any summaries, anecdotes, or recommendations you might have to help others get a sense of how the book is useful.
5)Click "Publish Post"

This will allow us to have one easily accessible list of titles to use in our classrooms!

Art Library
1) Peter H. Reynolds, The Dot: A book I am sure we all have in our classrooms! I like to read this at the beginning of the year to promote trying new things and being creative.
2) Peter H. Reynolds, Ish: I use this book due to its links with abstraction. It is also a great book to foster an environment in which it is okay to see things differently than others. I use it especially when teaching about abstract styles of art.
3) Barney Saltzberg, Beautiful Oops: A great book to promote an environment in which mistakes not only okay, but in which they are opportunities to learn and be creative problem solvers.
4) Denise Bennett Minnerly, The Color Tree: I have used this book with my Ks and 1st graders we learn about Primary and Secondary colors. 
5) Tanya Lee Stone, Sandy's Circus: A great text to use when studying Alexander Calder.  It focuses on his creation of kinetic circuses as an introduction to his art.  Not a super-short read, but something one could read throughout a unit on sculpture inspired by Calder. 

Strategies for Art Literacy

After our discussion on art literacy through classroom strategies, I believe this is one thing I am doing well (or would like to celebrate)...and this is one strategy I would like to try/or a lingering question I have for a fellow art educator regarding their use of a specific strategy to foster art literacy.

I didn’t have to think long about identifying my strength and weakness in assessment because it is something I am aware of and currently trying to work on.  My strength is in the variety of assessment strategies, which often combine drawing and writing.  My weakness is my lack of consistency in administering summative assessments.  I’m bad about that. 

First, briefly about the positive:  Part of my job as an art teacher is to teach students how to use visual art as a form of communication.  If they are trying to show ‘happy’ in a self portrait, I do not want to see the letters h-a-p-p-y written across their art. That isn’t challenging.  I want them to show me ‘happy’ visually. This is important to me.  It seems natural and authentic, then, that an assessment in visual art should allow for...Yes, visual art as communication.   It also adds a little fun to assessment.

Now the negative:  I’m just terrible about consistency in assessment, particularly summative assessments.  On day one I always have our Guiding Questions written on the board, discussed and well established, the assessment is all typed up and was an integral part of the planning process….. BUT, the assessment is the first to go when the time crunch hits.  Day five rolls around and the kids are focused and involved in their work, but nowhere near being finished. That formative assessment that looks so quick and easy TO ME just always seems to take them so long to complete.  I start thinking about Suzie Q who is finally involved in her art making, finally blossoming with her work and ‘getting it’ and I have to make a decision: formative, written assessment that was a part of my plans, or allow her to complete her art project that she has been working on for four days?  For me, it is a problem with my planning and my priorities.  Time is a parameter, not an excuse.  I need to find a way to work around it!

Assessment in the Elementary Art Classroom

Keeping in mind that kids love coming to art, assessing can be tricky.  As an art teacher, the moments of creativity and exploration that kids experience is vital. The success they feel is vital as well. Natural assessments occur as I visit with each child while hands on work takes place.  This allows conversation to take place with ease...most of the time gaining insight of that particular student's knowledge base as well as the thinking strategies used, the thought process the student went through, the real world experiences related to what is being created, and the transfer of art vocabulary to everyday conversation.  This is the assessing I love! When this type of assessment can be combined with written assessment, whether it be reflective, short answer, exit slip, peer and/or self evaluation, a true evaluation of the student can occur! Of course the "tricky" part to all of this is finding that healthy combination.  I am currently working through this!!

Meaningful Assessments of Art Content

As a teacher, assessments is one of the best way to see if the approach that I am choosing to deliver standard based content is being learned by students.  I feel that assessments are a direct reflection of how I am doing as a teacher.  I always remind the students that assessments give me immediate feedback of how I am doing as their teacher and what things we need to revisit, maybe in a different way, so that they can fully master the content.
I try to assess differently throughout the year so that students with different learning styles can feel comfortable and experience success. (Ex:  open response, oral assessment, multiple choice, reflections) Writing is a natural part of my art classroom and how the students respond to art tells me much about their art content knowledge.  Essential questions are always noted and explained on the first day of rotations so that students will know exactly what content that I expect them to know after our six days together.

Transforming My Assessments

I'm going to try to get my thoughts out more quickly right now, because somehow my laptop just erased everything I had written.  I had written a nice, long entry for this blog, then it disapparated.  Don't you hate that?

I've been changing my assessments every time this school year, meaning I've had three different units of study this year and each assessment looked a lot different from the previous one.  My first unit, on haiku poetry, had the kids do an on-demand haiku based on an artwork of the class' choosing, then answer several multiple choice questions about the process and their use of haiku with art.  My second unit, on watercolor painting, I used a close variation of an assessment a couple of my art colleagues devised, which included peer review.  My third unit, on Navajo sand painting, had an assessment page that included only reflective questions, on sand painting as an art form and the students' individual work with it, and also a revised peer review.  Next, when we embark on a clay unit, I'm not sure where I'll go, but I know it will continue to delve deep into reflective writing and deeper into the peer review process.

Since we lost the Arts & Humanities portion of CATS a couple of years ago, I think it's given me at least more poetic/artistic license to gamble and go crazy with my assessments.  I like it and believe it or not the kids do too.  I actually don't have much grumbling any more, especially since the assessments include a lot of dialogue and sharing, as opposed to the more traditional open response and multiple choice tests I used to administer for the first dozen or so years of my art teaching career.

I hope to keep tweaking, to follow my PGP goals (it's on there), to better serve our school from a program review persective, and even to better serve my own program from a national board recertification perspective.  Sometimes I feel like I'm a boob of a teacher because a lot of my new ideas or innovations seem wacky or silly, but on the other hand I hear a lot more of my students now who seem to understand art on a deeper level.  Something I'm doing must be working, at least with my schools' clientele.

Student "Self-Assessments/Triangular Reviews"...update

For this blog, I thought I'd share with you what success I did/didn't have after giving my new "Triangular Review" student self-assessment sheet some work-outs. At first, like many things, it seemed really great and students were very enthusiastic about doing it (for the most part anyway). Then, after completing it a few times, many students began to fizzle out,...writing short, quick assessments that ddin't have much meaning or detail..."just to get it done" type work. Some assessments even went back to the "I think it's beautiful" type answers instead of following the rubric/directions given to complete them accurately & actually be beneficial. So...I began having students read their assessments to the class...both the self & peer sections. This seemed to have kick-started them into better, more meaningful assessments. Reading them aloud actually pushed the whole class into deeper conversations about assessing each other's work. I had much less "lazy" work, and more details that actually made sense once the kids knew I was going to randomly choose for read-alouds.I believe this presses them to think a little deeper, and strive to be better writers. I still haven't gotten everyone where I want them to be with these type of assessments, but we're getting closer!      Cindy Thurman