Teaching Artistic Behavior Through the Studio Habits of the Mind

       In the 2018-2019 school year I have started my journey of personalizing learning in art. Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) is a nationally recognized choice-based art education approach for teaching art. In a TAB studio students are regarded as artists and choose what to work on, but I am not ready to give up total control, yet. I did find moving forward through the school year, I am able to release more control and allow more student voice and choice in the artist studio.  Right now, I fall on the "modified choice" continuum where students can choose the content or the media not both.
     
Eight Studio Habits of the Mind

      A big part of teaching students how to be artists in the art studio (classroom) are the studio habits of mind. The studio habits of the mind have form the framework. I started the school year with teaching the students the eight studio habits of the mind: Develop Craft, Envision, Express, Observe, Engage and Persist, Stretch and Explore, Reflect, and Understand Art Worlds.
The students and I started by unpacking the studio habits of mind and trying to understand this new vocabulary in the art room.

Kindness Machine and Design Thinking

Students reflect about their artwork relating to kindness when talking about their Kindness Machine. They also reflect about what they learned form the artwork of Emery Blagdon. This video documents their project. I am so excited about the end result.

The 4th grade students created a project inspired by the artwork of Emery Blagdon. He is an untrained artist that built something he called the Healing Machine

The 4th grade students used the Design Thinking Process to guide them through their learning.

This school year with my STEAM classes and in the art room, I have been experimenting with the Design Thinking Process and how to get students to take ownership of their learning.
Empathize - How do I understand and solve the problem?
Design- Analyze, Interpret and Plan
Imagine- What do I create?
Prototype- Build or Design or Sketch
Test- How can I improve this idea? Review, Revise and Reflect

The problem the students needed to solve- To design a "Kindness Machine"
What will I create?
How will I make people think about kindness when looking at our artwork?

Through this process students answer those questions. They were also inspired by Emery Blagdon and the story of his Healing Machine.

Then students written reflections on how their artwork generated kindness to make the machine work and then reflected on what they learned about Emery Blagdon and why he created his artwork.

Learn more about Emery Blagdon watch this wonderful documentary Emery Blagdon and His Healing Machine

Wind Tunnel Project

The Wind Tunnel Project was an idea that I saw on line and shared on twitter. I saw different videos of children putting random objects into this wind tunnel to see what would take flight. I wanted to make this project more art centered. I started by showing the students a video of a dancer performing in a wind tunnel like you would see at Fly Zone. After the students watched the video, I said, "how did she do that? If that were me I would be flopping all over the place." The students laughed and one student said, "Because she was a dancer she was able to control her body in the wind tunnel."

We then went on to talk about aerodynamics which is the movement of air around an object. We also talked about weight and balance of an object and how much air would be needed to move an object.

I showed the students videos I viewed of other wind tunnel projects and discussed how we could make art that flies.

The students using the Design Thinking Process sketched ideas of their flying art, created a materials list, and had to make a prediction of what they think would happen to their flying art in the tunnel. Most students made sketches of rockets, but some students explored art that would spin, soar, float
and flutter.
We also looked at the artwork of Kinetic artist Patrick Shearn to get ideas for what could fly in the tunnel. The students were inspired by the beauty of his artwork.

The students discussed the movement of his artwork Liquid Shard. They talked about the materials he use and how it fluttered in the air. The materials and movement was important to his work.

We used this wind tunnel pdf  to help us build our tunnel.
The following class we conducted a test flight with just paper sculpture. We had different sizes and weights of paper, transparent tape, and glue sticks. Before the students started on their ideas I demonstrated how to cut out a snowflake and how to make a simple paper sculpture.

Then I demonstrated how my art would perform in the wind tunnel. I told students not just to notice the force of the push from the wind tunnel but how the art flies through the art when it is falling.

Student got to work right away. They had about 30 minutes to design a paper sculpture that would fly and perform in the wind tunnel. I reminded them of the performance of the dancer in the wind tunnel. At the end of class the students would share their performance art with the group.

















All the projects were very successful in their performance. Here's a video of what this team created.

This lesson covers Virginia Standards of Learning in 4th grade art:

4.1          The student will use steps of the art-making process, including brainstorming, preliminary                   sketching, planning, and reflecting, to generate ideas for and create works of art.

4.2          The student will demonstrate craftsmanship in personal works of art.

This lesson covers Virginia Standards of Learning in 4th grade science: 

4.2   The student will investigate and understand characteristics and interactions of moving
objects.
Key concepts include
a)     motion is described by an object’s direction and speed;
b)    changes in motion are related to force and mass;
c)     friction is a force that opposes motion; and
d)    moving objects have kinetic energy

Circuit Drawings

Students in STEAM enrichment learned how to make a paper circuit, using copper tape, LED and a 3 volt coin battery. We discussed different types of circuits like parallel and shape. Each circuit needs a positive and negative charge to complete the circuit to light the LED. Students made parallel and shape circuits to fit in with their design.

Then students had to incorporate a LED light into their work of art. Some students drawings were of street lights, car headlights, and lights on buildings.

Students then presented their paper circuit artwork to the class. They discuss the type of circuit they used either parallel or shape and why it worked best with their artwork. They presented what was easy about this project, which most said the actual making of the art, and making the circuit was the most difficult. 

This lesson covers 4th grade SOLs in Science:

4.3             The student will investigate and understand the characteristics of electricity. Key concepts include

a)     conductors and insulators;

b)    basic circuits;

c)     static electricity;

d)    the ability of electrical energy to be transformed into light and motion, and to produce heat;

e)     simple electromagnets and magnetism; and

f)     historical contributions in understanding electricity.

This lesson cover 4th grade SOLs in Art:

4.1          The student will use steps of the art-making process, including brainstorming, preliminary                   sketching, planning, and reflecting, to generate ideas for and create works of art.

4.2          The student will demonstrate craftsmanship in personal works of art.

4.3          The student will use imaginative and expressive imagery to create works of art.