Respecting Art Class Time

Tom Montague

Most Holy Rosary

tmontague@syrdiocese.org

Introduction

All of MHR’s students have art class twice a week. Each class is 40 minutes long. Students often miss important information in art class. Students tend to come to art class late, miss a portion of class, or miss the class altogether. We are going to figure out ways to minimize the amount of time that we are missing art room class time. The beginning of art is very important for students be present because that is when all the directions are given in detail for the rest of class. It’s also a time when students can ask and hear questions on the day’s lesson. Art is a very important class to promote personal creativity using visual tools and to learn to put it in a composition that can be clearer to others. (Parents didn’t bring them on time. Students consistently have to go to band during art time. Have to go work with their special needs counselor. Teacher wants to talk to the student. Teacher bring students late and/ Students are going to the bathroom/drink.)

Task

You are to come with reasons why students miss class time and design ways to avoid that from happening. Students will split up into groups to create posters that will address this problem with an objective to encourage all students to be in art class as much as possible.

Process/Resources

· Define the problem

· Gather the evidence

· Identify the Causes

· Examine an Existing Policy

· Develop Policy Solutions

· Select the Best Solution

As a class we will discuss billboards and how people in cars only have a few seconds to get the information on them. We will also discuss how the people who design the billboards want the viewers to remember and be influenced by the imagery and text. Examples of both artists and businesses will be shown. We will then talk about the relationship of billboards to this poster project, how most students won’t look at the poster for very long. I will explain how even the most famous paintings in the world can only retain people’s attention for seconds.

Each group’s objective is to encourage all students to go to “all” of their art class using this poster as an advertisement to be hung in the school.

The Students with be split up into groups of 3 to design a poster that will address that problem of missing art room class time and encourage all students to be in art as much as possible. Each group will be given a survey to help them understand why it is a problem and help them establish their solutions to the problem.

· Survey for respecting art room class time

· Results of survey in graph form

Students will be given a variety of mediums from which they can create their posters; acrylic paint, watercolor paint, tempera paint, variety of brushes, pencils, charcoals, colored pencils, crayons, oil/chalk pastels and markers.

Students must discuss within their group which materials will be most optimal to accomplish their goal for their specific poster.

All posters will be on 11X18 inch poster board.

Evaluation

Students will assess themselves. All posters will be hung in the halls of the school with an effort to be most seen based on traffic of all the students. They will be told to judge work based on clarity of text and image and well the text and imagery work together. They will judge how well they expect the effectiveness of the poster. This will be followed up two weeks later and the same question will be asked again after they have had time to see the works several times in the hall.

“Which posters really stood out to you while walking around the school? Why?”

“Which posters are neatly presented?”

Analysis of A Work of Art : Creating a Poster

CATEGORY	4- Masterered Project	3- Met Standards	2-Below Standard	1- Standard not met
Language on Poster	Makes a complete and detailed description of the subject matter and/or elements seen in a work.	Makes a detailed description of most of the subject matter and/or elements seen in a work.	Makes a detailed description of some of the subject matter and/or elements seen in a work.	Descriptions are not detailed or complete.
Pictures Used	Pictures that were used were accurate for the period depicted. Pictures also exceeded the required task.	Pictures were expressive in detail.	Pictures did not show depiction of the time period nor was it informative to the viewer.	Pictures did not meet expectations.
Language on Poster	Student used language that would be displayed in a poster in that era.	Student used basic language.	Student did not use language that would be displayed in that era.	Student did not meet the expected requirements for the language that would be used in that era.
Spelling	Student had no spelling errors.	Student had 3-4 spelling errors.	Student had 2-3 spelling errors.	Student had 1-2 spelling errors.

Conclusion

The objective of this poster project is to make students more aware of missing art class time and to show them the importance of being there. This will hopefully have a ripple effect to other teachers, staff and parents. I will also follow up by documenting attendance before and after this project to show quantitative evidence.

Standards

New York State Standards for Arts 1, 2, 3, and 4