Nature's Nook

How thrilling it is to have the art room filled with students, watching the many smiling faces as they unleash their creative spirits! I love that I teach all four grade levels and that I have over 200 students that move in and out of my room each week. While it's crazy at times keeping up with what each section is doing, who finished what and who still needs more time to work, the grading, the prepping and the displaying of art... I am passionate about it all! But there is one element of my classroom that continues to excite me after 12 years of teaching, the monthly art binder assignments. Each quarter, I post 2 assignments on my blog that I expect students to complete outside of class by the assigned due dates -essentially one assignment each month. These assignments are for all of my art students in 5th, 6th and 7th grade (I do something different for my 8th grade elective). The assignments focus on various skills I would like my students to develop, and at times, connects directly to a lesson I am teaching in class. Given the amount of time students have to complete these assignments, the quality of work I see is pretty impressive and reaches my high expectations. I always look forward to seeing what my students come up with when left to their own devices! While I expect them to work independently, I like that they may share these assignments with their family members and become inspired by each other, however, students must do the work themselves in order to develop the skills they need in the art room. After assessing all student work, I select about 40-50 examples to display on my blog in a Smilebox presentation. I try to feature different students each month and hope that by the end of the year, all student's have had at least one of their art binder assignments displayed this way. Please enjoy the superb photos that reflect the first binder assignment of the year, Nature's Nook!

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