Thursday, April 5, 2012

Preparing LPHS Art I Students for Studio Thinking

We are piloting Studio Thinking in two of our elective courses (Mixed Media and Drawing & Painting), and introducing the language in AP and IB Art this year. The intent is to have all art students working with Studio Thinking for next school year as we have a school-wide ILT focus on Critical Thinking.

Our LPHS art students are acclimated to writing in the art room. They have always completed a variety of different types of writing while in art classes: critiques, essays, compare/contrast, investigation/sketchbook assignments, project proposals, research papers, artist statements, self-reflections and self-evaluations, etc. They understand that writing is part of learning about, from and through art.

I have often found it a challenge to teach Art I/early high school students to reflect on the project criteria that ties to the objective(s) of a specific lesson. Therefore, I have been easing them into this process through the use of a revised Art I rubric that utilizes Studio Thinking prompts to help them focus on their work process in relation to the project objectives and criteria. So far it has been quite successful, and I anticipate that the Art I students moving into electives next year will be able to easily transition into the the language having seen and reflected on the SHoM prompts in Art I this year. I also anticipate that with the introduction of the SHoM language for Art I next year, their reflective writing will only improve.

Rubric uploaded to Google Docs.


2 comments:

  1. Beth,

    Thanks for sharing how you are piloting and scaffolding Studio Thinking at Lincoln Park. The way you lay out use of the ST reflective writing tool for Art 1 students gives us valuable insight into how we scaffold ST. Kitty talks about this too with her early elementary school students using the language.

    I also appreciate your stated challenge of getting students to reflect on their work. This is a challenge across the board at all grade levels. Putting this challenge out to the learning community is enormously important and helpful. Thank you for just stating this.

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