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9/30/2012 1 Comment

What are your five words?

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Imagine you were going to introduce yourself to someone that you had never met before, but could only give them five words that best describe you. What five words would communicate the essence of who you are?  This is the challenge that I gave to my students last week.

The idea came about when we started working on our first set of Artist Trading Cards for the ATC school exchange.  The theme for this month is, "All about ME: Introductions and Goals for the Year."  When I first told students about the exchange I wanted them to have a lot of independence.  I told them they could do anything they wanted on the card and use any medium that was interesting, as long as the card was about themselves.  However, as they began working we realized that the cards were very pretty, but they could do a better job of introducing themselves visually on the ATCs.  That's when I asked them to re-think how they were approaching these and start again by brainstorming a list of words about themselves. After they each had a big list of words, I asked them to narrow it down to their top five.  It was fun to hear what student's chose as their words.  Not only did I learn a lot about each student through this activity, but they also go to know each other as peers as we shared our words in class.  Hopefully the students that receive our cards will enjoy them too!

By the way, my five words are "art, teacher, family, love, learner," and my sample card for the project is the photo above.  Not only did students have to think of their five words, but they also needed to figure out how they could make a symbol that illustrated each word and how to put them all together in an interesting way. I think my students learned a lot from of these 2 1/2" X 3 1/2" miniature works of art!

So, what are your five words? I'd love for you to share them!

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11/1/2011 0 Comments

7th graders participate in Artist Trading Card swap!


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ATCs created by Coolidge students
Artist Trading Cards are miniature works of art that are the same size as baseball cards.  The purpose of these cards is for artists to create original pieces of art in a relatively short amount of time that can be traded or exchanged with other artists.  Some people even collect their cards in plastic sleeves, just like baseball card collectors do!  

The fun of these cards is to see what other artists from around the world are creating.  Recently, all of the 7th grade classes currently taking art participated in an ATC swap!  Each student made several cards with the theme of “Elements of Art.”  This was the determined topic for all of the schools participating in the trade.  Students had fun using a wide assortment of materials, such as scrap papers, magazines, gel pens, watercolors and colored pencil to create their cards.

After they created several cards, they picked their best one to trade with another school.  They labeled their first name, title of card, date and state (MA) on the back.  We then mailed the 100 cards Coolidge made to Ridgely Middle School in Lutherville, Maryland. Several days later, we received a box in the mail with 100 cards created by students from the Spring Oaks Middle School in Houston, Texas.  Each Coolidge student picked one of the cards that were mailed to us to keep. They also traded the extra cards they had created with other students in their class.

This was a new experience for all of us, including me!   It was fun to see all of the different ideas students came up with using a single theme.  We also enjoyed seeing the variation of materials and concepts from one school to another.  I think that students got a lot out of it and we hope to do more swaps with other schools down the road!

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These are the cards that we received from Houston, Texas.
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