Day 2: Acetate Birdosaurus

Before the students even arrived for the second day, I had put a short list of expectations on the white board. There were three rules based on my observations from the day before: 1. Raise your hand to speak during teacher talk time and demonstrations. 2. Be nice and respectful to others. 3. Be respectful (careful) with materials.

It seems a lot more difficult for students to know what appropriate behavior is in the art room. For one thing they are not always or even usually in their seats. Aside from presentations and demonstrations, they are usually moving around getting materials or working. I like the flexibility of the art room, and I appreciate getting students to a point where they know what to do next and can work mostly independently. However, the flexibility and independence can also lead to more misbehavior for squirrely or unmotivated students.

After we went over expectations I showed the students a visual PowerPoint about birds, dinosaurs, and the artists we were emulating for our project that day. We also watched a short video from PBS about Jack Horner’s quest for the pet “chickenosaurus” that the kids found very interesting.

The kids gathered for the acetate collage demonstration and I enumerated the steps they needed to complete and in what order. Then the rest of the class time was spent drawing in acetate, painting, drying paint, and collaging our paintings.

The students needed to select a bird to transform into a dinosaur for their collage. I had a large book of birds for them to flip through. Each student wanted a printed off bird to first trace. In a class of seven it was easy to find and print a bird for each student. With a larger class I’d need to have a limited selection of pre-printed birds to offer.

I was surprised this first day to find that my most disruptive student was also the best at following directions as far as art projects went. She was hyper-focused, followed all the steps to a “t” and quickly produced the most well-crafted and aesthetically pleasing collage.

Also, one of my students who was more difficult to engage later became very engrossed in painting on acetate and wanted to, and did, make three different acetate collages over the next three days.

 The finished projects turned out really well and best of all the kids really seemed to love painting on the acetate.