GCS students each began a 7-inch square, glazed ceramic tile by nominating mosaic themes. After electing album covers narrowly over movie posters, each student cut and painted a tile. I designed the frame, kiln-fired, arranged and grouted the tiles in traditional checkers. An art history assignment could have required writing about a chosen album plus cover artists.
8th graders made linocut printed t-shirts with fabric ink.
Students also created albumen prints from digital negatives on Pictorico transparency film. Again they paper coated, exposed and washed their prints.
A Photoshop assignment might ask students to incorporate digital collage in a negative. Following this, middle schoolers used digital cameras for a stop-motion animation.
U.S. map paintings for a "Road Trip" themed fundraiser–
After sharing their stories, they re-storyboarded in groups. 3rd graders learned about stop-motion video using digital cameras and tripods. They watched a documentary about the making of King Kong (1933). Perhaps more materials could include robotics. Groups made characters using modeling clay, painted cardboard sets, enacted and recorded footage with captions of their narratives. I edited all videos.
After writing biographies about Harlem Renaissance contributors in homerooms, 3rd graders added portraits in visual art. First they made pencil and sharpie sketches while observing photographs. Watercolor portraits by Chris Ofili helped create a rubric for adding watercolor.
Classes visited MoMA to see Jacob Lawrence's Migration series. Back in school, they discussed Romare Bearden collages including one titled Mother and Child. Students explored compositions through collage with at least 10 cut shapes plus caption.
3rd grade discussed ways sounds are made by musical instruments they know and looked at alternative instruments online: Wheelharp, Marble Machine. They sketched invented instruments with labels or manuals on how they work. Then reviewed how to make a ceramic whistle and sculpted their instruments.
Future mosaics could include new geometric tile materials, sizes, shapes, student proposed tiled areas plus inlay, relief sculpture. Beforehand 8th grade looked at some NYC subway mosaics. Classes participated in a mural design exercise, composing cropped 3 x 3-inch sections of their own open-themed sharpie drawings. They also practiced painting on paper.
 |
| 3-inch square drawings |
 |
| Painting warm-ups |
8th graders reviewed perspective drawing. Examples in Unbuilt America, helped us develop a 3-d drawing rubric. Using pencils and rulers students first made studies from memories of familiar spaces. Next they learned about the history of site-specific and plop art, and debated how to categorize some examples. Students were assigned to make a perspective drawing with written proposal for an installation or alteration to the current school grounds.
A rotoscoped proposal
Students presented and received feedback on proposals by role playing how various community members might respond to the changes.
Another assignment could include silkscreen printing.
Students explored cyanotype and van dyke processes. They looked at photomontages by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and were given National Geographic magazines. Some pen traced images onto transparencies, before paper coating and exposing to sunlight.
Students also created albumen prints from digital negatives on Pictorico transparency film. Again they paper coated, exposed and washed their prints.
A Photoshop assignment might ask students to incorporate digital collage in a negative. Following this, middle schoolers used digital cameras for a stop-motion animation.
8th Grade Elective observed plastic sculptures and ceramic light fixtures. They designed lamps using a socket, switch, LED bulb along with cardboard, wood, clay, wire, and paper mache. Lessons could also include pottery wheels, research and writing about the development of light bulbs and lamps.
Elective students made presentations on professional photographers with PowerPoint. They followed instructions in Photoshop to digital print positive transparencies from their own photos. Using makeshift black light exposure boxes and contact cases, they contact etched their transparencies while measuring solar plate exposure times. Students inked and press-print their plates, some experimented with watercolor finishes.
2nd Grade
In connection with their studies of U.S. colonial history, 50 2nd graders observed wood carved, painted masks and totems from the Pacific Northwest at the Museum of Natural History. Before visiting the museum they
learned about purposes Native American masks were created and worn. In 3-4 classes they sketched out a mask design, sculpted and glazed ceramics, plus titled their spirit summoning masks.
 |
2nd graders discussed totem poles as seen at the AMNH. Using lunch knives they each carved a styrofoam block. Classes painted, stacked, and adjoined foam with popsicle sticks to balance two 7-foot totems. I did not advise trying to carve from observation, but rather designing totems based on a traditional Native American theme. Nevertheless, students proposed a shame totem for someone. Next time 2nd graders could weave in connection with social studies. I would not recommend styrofoam carving due to dust and biodegradability.
2nd graders tried animation. They sequenced and organized a series of drawings in order to create a moving image. Students worked on a frame of rate 12 drawings per second of video, using proportions to help calculate the number of drawings needed to create videos.
After our AMNH visit to the Hall of North American Mammals, we started more sculptures with a discussion of vertebrates. Using the idea of a backbone for their sculpture, students engineered armatures using tape, newspaper, cardboard toilet paper cores, and wire. They cast their armatures in paper mache and painted their North American mammal sculptures. Despite exploring the AMNH's Hall of Ocean Life, marine vertebrates were not optional for a Lewis and Clark display.
A 2nd grade printmaking lesson discussed what is symmetry and pattern before sketching on graph paper. 2nd graders looked at an XY coordinate plane and points measured in a drawing as (X,Y) coordinates. I suggested they divide their graph paper in four equal quadrants.
Students selected and transferred final designs into styrofoam plates, inked, registered and hand-printed.
 |
After our AMNH visit to the Hall of North American Mammals, we started more sculptures with a discussion of vertebrates. Using the idea of a backbone for their sculpture, students engineered armatures using tape, newspaper, cardboard toilet paper cores, and wire. They cast their armatures in paper mache and painted their North American mammal sculptures. Despite exploring the AMNH's Hall of Ocean Life, marine vertebrates were not optional for a Lewis and Clark display.
2nd graders discussed an architectural drawing and were asked to design their own home using pencil, sharpie, and then varying opacities of watercolors. Considering weight and force in relation to balance, 2nd graders slipped and scored clay as well as glued assorted pre-cut wood pieces. Some cut wood with one supervised clamp and hand saw.
 |
| Woodblock display |
2nd grade reviewed color mixing with oil pastels, first blending and naming10 of their own colors. Then they made self-portraits using mirrors. Our rubric included carefully observed shapes and colors, inclusion of details, layering and blending tones, as well as inclusion of foreground and background.
Students practiced working with brushes and acrylic paint. They mixed primary and secondary colors. We talked about landscape paintings and Albert Bierstadts Storm in the Rocky Mountains at the Brooklyn Museum. A topic dialogue asked students to create paintings about their commute to school on 12 x 18-inch paper.  |
| "This is a piece of graffiti I see sometimes" |
 |
| More paintings with captions by 2nd graders |
U.S. map paintings for a "Road Trip" themed fundraiser–
Each 2nd grader was randomly assigned a state and then given a map. Using pencils, cardstock and scissors they were asked to create a large border shape outline of their state and then cut a stencil. Students geographically placed their stencils on stretched 50 x 72-inch canvases and painted. One class added roads.
For another "GCS graduates" themed auction item involving the 2nd grade, I directed students to photograph one another using a digital camera in front of a makeshift green screen. Some students also participated in an open-ended, stop-motion dance video. I arranged digital negatives of their portraits with a signed transparency and printed (school color) cyanotypes.
3rd Grade
3rd grade students began the year recalling American tall tales they read in 2nd grade. They also looked at compositions of text and illustration in Where the Wild Things Are. Each student was assigned to write and illustrate a short story.
As requested, 3rd graders also painted a cotton field scenery with cardboard boll weevil props for a 3rd grade play about U.S. history and the Great Migration.
 |
 |
| Collages with typed captions |
3rd graders made an open-themed animation, then voice recorded sound effects for it.
They also made a second sound effect animation about New York City.
They also made a second sound effect animation about New York City.
 |
| Organizing frames |
Students made NYC themed styrofoam plate prints. An "inspection card" rubric listed inking, center registering and hand-printing three clean prints. U.S. history teachers also required students cut their styrofoam then ink and reprint within an outline of the Statue of Liberty to announce their Ellis Island reenactment.
A question about a hypothetical fashion show began a paper mache sculpture assignment. Classes discussed Neoclassical style as well as a Duane Hanson sculpture seen on a visit to the Whitney Museum. They engineered armatures, casted paper mache, and finally painted and collaged fabric.
 |
| Aphrodite |
