Teaching art during the pandemic can be quite difficult as many students may not have access to art supplies. In the name of equity, it is best to design lessons with simple materials that aren’t costly and easily accessible for all. Not every kid will have an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil or a full set of paints at home - so check your privilege/assumptions at the door!
The visual art period I teach to a grade 6/7 split on Fridays was exhibiting low participation for online assignments during the lockdown. Because this period was asynchronous, I felt there was even more of a disconnect to engaging students and getting them excited about creating. We had started another art project, Eye of the Dragon (more on this in another post…) that the vast majority of them were super excited about, so I tried to choose a lesson that could relate to that while their other projects were still at school. The slide deck below was posted to the Google classroom with visual and written instructions, as well as my own attempt at the origami eye. I tried filming a tutorial, but I will admit my video editing skills are rusty at best - I wanted some parts sped up and to overlay some narration. I did however tape my phone to the top of my desktop to film my hands and the paper folding in a cool Art-Attack-esque kind of aerial view. Goals to work towards for my very likely future in the online-teaching world!
We did have a handful of students submit their work and I encouraged them to post on the Google Classroom Stream if they were comfortable doing so, so that their classmates could could comment and get inspired by their work. My modelling of the task seemed to spark the interest of some as well. It is important to create exemplars alongside your students to encourage them to take risks, explore, be vulnerable, and make mistakes!
We also did this activity synchronously with my Grade 4 and 5 classes, and had them describe the steps in a procedural writing assignment. Lots of fun to writing.
Some samples of student work…
