Getting Started with TAB... Opening Drawing Studio

 This school year, we started off by painting our sketchbooks.  The sketchbooks will be like our ARTifact books, or portfolios... they will house the skills sets and ATC's that we work on throughout the year.

We painted the sketchbooks with either a warm or cool color scheme with tempera.  One half of the room was given red, yellow, orange and white paint, and the other side had green, blue, purple and white.  Students were given a choice on where they wanted to sit. The idea of the painted sketchbooks came from Cassie Stephens!  They were able to explore tempera painting skills such as blending, sgraffito, strokes, drybrushing and we talked about tint.

The students really enjoyed painting their own folders. It gave them a sense of ownership. We used plain manilla folders.  I am excited to see how these work out.

Now that the sketchbooks are ready to go, we spent a lesson on reading the book "What to do With an Idea" by Kobi Yamada and students filled out Where Do Artists get Ideas.  This was given to me by my colleague at Bridgeway Elementary, Ms. Baumann. 

Now we are opening Drawing Studio! Yay!! So exciting to get going in our studio centers.  Students are working on the following handout. You can find a viewable copy here.bit.ly/WCdrawingstudio We are identifying where to find Drawing studio supplies. They are color-coded and organized and children are showing their skills in the boxes.  I know teachers have a different ways of opening studios... some are more flexible with skill sets. I like the accountability of having the uses of different mediums right in there sketchbooks for assessments. I hope this is helpful to anyone giving TAB/Choice a try... you won't ever regret it!

Back to School... How I started the year with TAB/ Choice

Welcome back to school WilcatsCreate fans! We are ready to begin a fun-packed year with lots of new things. I am looking forward to learning and growing my students.

With beginning a new school year, I have been traveling through a lot of REFLECTION.  I have two big take-aways from my 2nd year of teaching TAB/Choice. The first big "take-away" from last school year (my 2nd year of TAB) was to have FAITH in my teaching. So much attention had been placed on my classroom in my 1st year of TAB/Choice, I thought to myself, "I have to be the best at this to have have people come observe me." I relied on my mentor and generous colleagues who practice TAB pedagogy for resources, assessment and planning.  I didn't rely on my own instincts to provide authentic art opportunities for children, I followed others' leads.  My students did create wonderful artworks, full of meaning with enriching artist statements, but I lost sight on PROCESS and sometimes looked at PRODUCT.  Especially with Art Shows, Exhibitions with other art teachers that are project based. I lost confidence in PROCESS.  Takeaway Number 2... forget PRODUCT! Let go of the pressure and have FAITH in yourself and have FAITH in the PROCESS!

So this year!!! I currently have had students working on Painting Skills while decorating the covers of their sketchbooks.  We talked about Tempera paint and different painting skills and terms like tint, sgraffito, blending, drybrushing, etc.   The students set to work with a warm or cool color schemes and had a lot of fun exploring sgraffito and blending. The sketchbook idea came from Cassie Stephens.

We are going to use the sketchbooks to house our studio skills, idea sheets, and ATC's!  We have joined in with MiniMatisse's ATC Swap!  We will be creating 2 1/2x3 1/2 mini art pieces to swap globally with countries like Australia, Cambodia, Germany, Japan, Scotland, Thailand, and the U.K. not to mention 80 schools from all over the United States. More about that soon!!

I hope everyone is off to a great year! I love all the comments and questions I have been getting on the blog! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram!