When I was at the middle school level, it did not seem much different than other years. I went to a Kindergarten through 8th grade school, where all grades were in the same building. I feel that each year I grew a little more, but I never really realized many of the changes that we as students underwent.
With the proper classroom management, I feel that an art classroom can be both a fun and learning environment. The teacher who my partner, Melinda DiGiovanna, and I are placed with, Ms. Sturgis, handles her classroom with both patience and interest. Many people warn aspiring teachers about the middle school level, for it is a time when students are undergoing many changes, physically, mentally, emotionally, and behaviorally. Ms. Sturgis seemed to create lesson plans that addressed many topics and things students might face at this level such as identity, pop culture, and liberty.
Having a sense of identity is very important at this age, it will shape who you will be and grow from for the rest of your life. At the 6th grade level, Ms. Sturgis as well as another teacher in the school. shaped her lesson plan around identity exploration. In one class, the students had just finished a project about the "Elements of Art". After learning about these, students experimented with line, shape, color, space, value, texture, and form. The second class that we saw, students were creating a name poster for their locker. A locker is a very personal place and this project allows students to create a name tag that personally expresses themselves.
In the 7th grade, the lesson was based around liberty. Students learned about collage and were to create a "collage word locker project", where students depicted a word that described themselves or a close friend and incorporated collage in some way. Ms. Sturgis encouraged the students to use the whole piece of paper for their artwork, and after they were finished, Ms. Sturgis scanned the work into the computer and printed out multiple copies for the students. Each student picked two others besides their own to matte on a larger sheet of paper, that would be laminated and taped to their lockers.
The 8th grade was just being introduced to their new unit on Pop Art. For this project students find a headshot of someone who they see in popular culture today. In the computer program of paint, students will alter the image using bright colors similar to the Pop Art style. To educate the students about Pop Art, Ms. Sturgis showed her classes a series of videos about certain artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol and Keith Harring. All of the videos that she showed were taken off of youtube.com, which I thought was a good tool because students often use it. After the students viewed the short video clips, Ms. Sturgis passed out a hand out with pictures of each artist and asked the students to write down three facts about each artist.
Andy Warhol on Pop Art:
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