Week 2... Nametags, Sketchbooks, and Forms, Oh My!

Students in all classes spent this week finishing their nametags, creating designs for their own sketchbooks (now known as Investigation Workbooks for IB), and turning in forms signed by parents. If you have not signed and returned your student's art form and fees, please do so ASAP! Thanks to all who returned them this week and paid the fee already at registration!


Students will be using their Investigation workbooks (IWs) all year, every day. They will write, draw, reflect, research, and brainstorm every day in these books, so I asked them to make the cover designs special. They should create a cover that immediately shows who they are, what they like, and what their personal style is. I am excited by the diversity of designs and the willingness of some students to make a really interesting cover!

Art 1 students are also reviewing the Elements of Art and Principles of Design this week. There will be a quiz on that vocabulary soon! Students finished work on creating their own sketchbooks from a simple bookbinding technique they learned in class. Their covers really reflected their personalities and interests and helped me get to know them even better!

Once finished, we began learning about the Elements of Art and Principles of Design. Here is a link to a great site that explains what these terms are and their significance. The terms and ideas are the basic language of Art, so it is important that students learn those early and quickly. After an intense note-taking session, I taught them a song to help them remember the Elements of Art and an acronym to help them remember the Principles of Design. And yes, I made them all sing it! Although it's a silly song to the tune of Row Your Boat, it really helps students remember and reminds us all we are not as cool as we think we are! :) We also listened to one student's new version created on Garage Band software to more of a Caribbean beat. Props to Baxter for the great new version! We will be quizzing on those terms until I feel everyone knows them by heart!




Advanced Art students (Art 3/4/AP/IB DP) are also generating ideas this week and beginning to plan projects. Both group and individual tasks asked them to list ways of coming up with ideas and how to find inspiration. Students also looked through the art library in the classrom for ideas, listing them on their idea sheet.