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.

 

 

Dance group, I stole your beat!

When the dance group performed their stomp routine for the class I still had "the cup song" stuck in my head from when the music group had played it for us. Thanks to the marvels of technology, and soundnation studio, I was able to pilfer the audio from the video posted to facebook. Then I edited it, looped the beat that worked best, and recorded some singing of "When I'm gone" to go with the beat. The result is in the video below. 

It took me a while to figure out how to use this site, but it is free online software for audio editing, and I just think this would be a really cool program to expose students to. I haven't vetted all the prerecorded sound files, but assuming they are appropriate, students could learn about and edit music with this program! Many students say they are no good at singing or can't play an instrument, so why not let them mash up sound files and create music in an alternative way? (Thanks for counting us in Amanda!)

Why do I love Indian Music?

So, as the title suggests, I really like traditional (okay, and Bollywood) Hindi music. So what? Let me give you some context. I distinctly remember the first time I heard some traditional Japanese music in Elementary school. I thought it was pleasant, but it was very different than anything I’d ever heard. Hindi music was different, I liked it in the way that you like something familiar, like a favourite dish that your grandmother use to cook you. This was strange because I didn't listen to Hindi music growing up, but I think I may have stumbled upon the answer. The woman in the image (left) is playing a Tanpura, a member of the lute family. And this next picture is of an instrument used in much of the Greek folk music I listened to at Greek community events growing up.

This instrument, the Bouzouki, is also in the lute family. Some Hindi and Greek music seem to share a similar sharp metallic sounds, so I wonder if my exposure to this as a child made it easier for me to connect to Hindi music.

I was thinking of the teaching implications of this possibility, specifically that simply exposing children to many forms of music and art could make them feel more comfortable with them later in life. Therefore, it seems it would be good practice to expose students to a wide variety of music and art.

(Tanpuna pic, Bouzouki pic)

 I don’t have no skills

I want to correct a message that was briefly presented in our Drama PLO skit the other day. The main focus of the skit was to get across the main for content areas in drama and one exemplar of each. At one point the student (Ida-Mae) said she lacked drama skills, to which her teacher Mr. Raskob replied, something down the lines of ‘that’s alright, you don’t need skills!’ (I am obviously paraphrasing here, but that is more or less the impression I got).  For the sake of our skit saying this was fine (we had lost our script from the previous day, and therefore didn’t have much time to review the new script).

When teaching in a "real" class, I would like to suggest that it is never a very good idea to tell a student that they don’t need skills to do ____ activity. If our drama activities are not building confidence in some sort of skill then why are we practicing them? We can let students know that the activity is fun, but also that they have some skills to work with, and hopefully they will improve on them by participating. In truth, Mr. Raskob did show little Ida-Mae various skills throughout the skit, and assured her that she had some basic skill in these areas and would build on them. So, when a student says “I can’t do that, I don’t have the skills,” do what Mr. Raskob did, show them what the skills are, and that they can indeed do them!

(Photo adapted from: Hip Hop Shakespeare)

Useful 

      Art

So recently I read Evan’s blog about how art is useless unless people attach emotion to it, and initially I agreed. In fact I still think the point is valid when considering many art pieces, but then I started to read this article about web design and colour theory.  

For those of you who, like me, know very little about colour theory, this site provides useful information to help choose, and defend choices related to, colours and layout for our E-portfolios. The article explains briefly why complimentary colours are useful in a website, how to reduce eyestrain (something you want to think about if you don’t want to make future employers suffer while reading your E-portfolio), and how to frame with colours in order to make important points pop out. 

One of the most interesting points for me was when they touched on vibrancy of colours, specifically that brighter colour are more likely to make readers more emotional when viewing your site, while more muted colours can keep a mind more focused and relaxed. I would really recommend checking out the article if you haven’t yet decided what colours to use for your E-portfolio, because it appears in this instance art is very useful! 

(Colour wheel image)

Curiosity Killed the Cat...

There are many cliches I dislike because they are, well, cliche. They lose their meaning from overuse and they can convey confusing messages if people have been exposed to them in different ways. Really, they are often a lazy, uncreative way to convey what you mean. The cliche mentioned above is especially aggrieving to me now, because I think it sums up what we do as a society, or what we often fail to do: foster curiosity. 

I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.

-Albert Einstein

I hardly need to make an argument for the benefits of curiosity, as the usefulness of this trait becomes readily apparent when considering artists, scientists, historians, teachers, and many other walks of life. Curiosity is a powerful motivator, and helps students develop into deep ponderers and creative thinkers. In a strong arts program, as teachers, we need to let students know they do not have to fear curiosity, like our friend the cat. If they want to mix paint colours, let them (buy cheap paints for this). Having students experiment and play with their art materials will get them interested, and when they have some outcomes from their experimenting that look positive to them, or if others comment on something interesting they discover, the students will hopefully gain confidence in their art abilities.

Curiosity begets learning, as evidence here are some pictures from a nature walk I went on today with my sister.

I was curious as to what some functions on my camera do. By fiddling around with some settings I was able to get the lichen lit up while leaving the background darker. 

I love taking pictures of small insects, plants, etc. I fondly remember my grade 6 teacher taking my class out on a field trip to find bugs. I would highly recommend going on bug or flower hunts with students, it sparks an interest in the world around them and can provide  models for drawing activities. Integrated arts and science lesson anyone?

I saw a wasp and wanted to take a picture, then I noticed that it was being attacked by an ant that had clamped down on the its wing. They were both trying to sting each other, and I found it very interesting to watch. It took an initial bit of curiosity to get close enough to notice. So, to instill intrinsic motivation in your students during art, and other subjects, try to foster curiosity in your students!

Take home message: don't use cliches.