What is First Nation's Art?

I picked up this colouring book from the Art Gallery last week and was a bit surprised by some of the images inside. I fondly remember one of the Aboriginal education support workers in our school, Chis Wilson, teaching us Haisla art at Nechako Elementary in Kitimat. The art that he taught us was used the ovoid and "u-shape" heavily and was similar to the style of the blue hummingbird on the front cover. Growing up I always thought of that as "real" First Nation's art. The style of the bear on the front cover is something I had seen before, but I wrote that off as basically a more modern version of First Nation's art, certainly the art I had been taught about as a child was more traditional and more authentic.

It was only when I flipped through this book and looked at the artist names beneath the pictures that I realized all the images were legitimate traditional First Nations art, but from different geographical regions and different cultures of people. In hindsight it seems so strange that I knew that First Nations cultures varied greatly across Canada, but never considered that the art would too.

It is funny to think of all the little ways that we can be ignorant. Here I was, all my life so proud that I knew a how to draw basic First Nation's art, and now I find out that I only know a very small amount of Coastal First Nation's art, and that there is so much other art throughout Canada that I was totally unaware of. 

Definitely a humbling experience and proof that teachers really have to be dedicated to being life long learners!

The Night I was Shot

Tonight I went to the Drama Club's Series of Theatrical Shorts. There were 5 performances, some more enjoyable than others. I don't want to ruin the night for any of you who may plan on going tomorrow, so I wont reveal the plot of any of the plays (except that one of the actors shot me with a toy gun... at which point I pretended to be dead in my seat for the rest of their play). I would however like to comment on how being in plays throughout my life has ruined some amateur theatre for me.

 Often during a play, instead of fully immersing myself in the experience I am constantly catching lines, or expressions, that seem fake and thinking about how I portray them differently. Overacting happens a lot in amateur theatre, and I'm not saying I don't do it sometimes too. It is usually pretty easy to spot though. A great way to avoid overacting is to have a good director. When we teach students to act we tell them to use expression and their body language, but teaching them to be subtle and to act naturally is important too. A great way to teach students to self-assess this is to play back video of them acting and ask them to think about what they were trying to convey. How might they be able to change the way they act to do a better job of it conveying certain emotions? Record a real conversation and compare it to one done from a script by the students. What is the difference? How can we make the scripted lines more real? This is something I would love to try with intermediate students.

Microscope Art

For the art show I had my students work on art that integrated with their science microscope unit. The first step was for them to draw what they saw when looking through the scopes. At this point I had students generate the criteria (though of course I had what I wanted in mind and led them to generate all the criteria I wanted them to have). After students had drawn their specimen in pencil we talked about point of view and I asked students to brainstorm what they would see if they were tiny, the size of their specimen. They then had to draw what they think they would see from their specimen's point of view around their specimen. The results were supposed to be similar to the edited photo below.

The art show itself was quite fun. It is not often that our class gets to hang out and work on projects like that, so set up was fun. Of course it was also great to see all the art that others had made and to have students visit the university to see their artwork.

Speech Arts

The poem to the right of this post, In Flanders Fields, has been recited many times today. This poem was part of one of my first exposures to speech arts. My teacher, Mrs. Watchorn, expressed frustration that the poem is often read poorly. By poorly, I mean that the way the poem is usually read does not often match the gravity of the subject matter or make sense when you really look at the punctuation. Based on tone alone, most students who read this poem aloud at Remembrance day assemblies may as well be reading Hickory Dickory Dock. When reading poems with students try to have them think critically about what they are reading. How would the author have been feeling when he wrote this? How, therefore, should I be reading it? Is this one idea together, or two separate ideas that should have a pause between them? One important aspect of speech arts is to read a poem, or other written work, so that you convey the intended meaning. One line that always bothers me is:

        "To you from failing hand we throw
         The torch; be yours to hold it high."

Most people reach the word "throw" and give a pause before saying the next line. Read those two lines again. Wouldn't it make more sense to read all the way to "The torch" then take a pause at the semicolon? (The answer is yes, yes it does make more sense) This link is to a document that shows several ways to divide the poem into parts for choral reading. Check out how they divide the lines up. Speech arts invites you to think critically not just about what you read, but how you read it!

(Photo credit: In Flanders Field )

Manipulative Art

A couple weeks ago I was in my practicum class, and one girl was using blocks, similar to these, to help her figure out the math. But not really. She was mostly just playing with them, making patterns, outlining her paper with them, etc.

I tried to get her on task through proximity and by trying to help her with a question, but as soon as I left she would just keep playing with them.

I can't say that I don't understand why this girl was playing rather than working (as evidenced by the "art" pictured here that I made during Prime Math class). Sometimes you just wanna play with blocks! I was intrigued by the bright colours and wanted to make art with them. 

I remember someone once telling me that it is important to give students time to play and explore manipulatives. I was thinking it might be useful to have time allotted during a lesson in which students could quickly make some manipulative art. If they are going to play with the manipulatives, as teachers we could make the play instructional  by incorporating art PLOs, and we could potentially increase their focus on math during the rest of the period by giving them a designated time to pay with the manipulatives. 

Thoughts? Do you think it would be best to have manipulative art/play at the beginning, end, or in the middle of the lesson? Or should play with manipulatives be completely separated from "math time?" 

Art a la Carte

The other day my roommate told me that his mother had written a series of 4 art books, so I thought I'd share the resource with you all. The image to the left is from Art a la Carte: Art in Math. His mother, Vanessa Isitt wrote and illustrated these witty art integration books for math, science (nature), aboriginal education, and social studies (cultural art). Rather than theory, they contain activities, reproducibles,  and evaluation criteria for art lessons. On amazon.ca (see link above) you can take a peak inside two of the books. I appreciate the artwork she has done for her readers (teachers). Conversely textbooks that are all text based are much less engaging than ones with on topic humorous cartoons, and artwork intermingled with the text. Even at my age art helps me to stay interested in texts, and this is likely true of the average student as well.

STOP...motion.

Want a free app? If you are an iPad or iPhone user this app, Stop Motion Studio is free this week! It is really easy to use and makes stop motion video a breeze to create. Not to sound too much like an advertisement for this one app, I'll mention that there are many other apps available on iTunes and Google chrome that work well to create stop motion video.

 

Stop motion video is something I have always wanted to try, but never learned about in school. With the proliferation of technology in schools today making stop motion video is easier, but I don't think many teachers really consider it, or think it would be too difficult. Storing and organizing digital photos makes the job much easier than it was in the days of film canisters. 

We should be promoting the use of technology in all areas of the curriculum, here is a PLO that would support this type of activity: B3 analyse and use a variety of materials, technologies, and processes to create images.