Because it is important for middle-school students to feel confident about themselves and their abilities, the author wanted to challenge her seventh graders with a drawing problem that would yield a high rate of success. So she asked them to put their best foot forward as she introduced a lesson on contour drawing. The assignment was to draw a…

In this article, the author discusses how she made a major improvement to her fifth-grade lesson plan by providing a hands-on Internet experience before students worked on their own oil pastel still life. It was a success with beautiful finished products and highly motivated, engaged students. Details of this lesson are described in this article.

Foam printing offers all ages and abilities a way to explore textures in the classroom and to develop personal creativity and imagination. Polystyrene foam trays (commonly known as "meat trays") are readily available, inexpensive, lightweight, portable, and receptive to a wide variety of surface treatments. The printmaking process requires only a…

Can going to an art museum make elementary school students better learners? It can if they are participating in Thinking Through Art, an innovative partnership uniting the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Boston Public Schools (BPS), and Visual Understanding in Education (VUE), a nonprofit educational research group committed to improving…

This article discusses the National Art Education Association's strategic plan for art education. Their plan states that all PreK-12 students deserve a comprehensive, balanced, and sequential program of instruction in the visual arts. The Association's primary vision and goals are described.

In an effort to intrigue her fifth graders with a novel and spontaneous approach to line and movement, Nancy Walkup introduced paper marbling as a means to create remarkable decorative surface designs. To marble paper, some kind of pigment, usually oil or acrylic paint, is floated upon the surface of a liquid such as water or liquid starch. In the…

In this article, the author states that as an art teacher, your contribution to your students' knowledge of another culture is to familiarize them with evidence of how a group of people produced visual images in that time and place. You should not claim that they will gain understanding of the culture itself from this experience. One art lesson…

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), a Viennese painter, was the founder of the Vienna Secession, the Austrian Art Nouveau movement. Art Nouveau is characterised by flowing lines and flat designs based on organic structures. This style is found in the symbolic aspect of Klimt's later work, and in the works of other artists of the late 1890s and early 1900s…

Several years ago, the school system discussed in this article, agreed on a five-year cycle of nature themes to integrate instruction across disciplines. Last year, students studied artists and artworks inspired by oceans. Students also explored the theme with their own artistic expressions. Teachers began the year with lessons based on sea…

Throughout the day, art teachers make decisions--some impromptu, others after considerable deliberation. Some are simple, easy, black-and-white choices; others involve gray areas of uncertainty--areas that need legal interpretation. This article is intended as a guide for structuring curriculum and instruction to ensure that every student's…

Prior knowledge of hand-building and several weeks of practice throwing on the wheel allowed Jane Graziano, as guest artist, her students, and a high-school art teacher to focus on introducing works by artists who found inspiration from the sea: glass artist Dale Chihuly, clay artists Ken Price, John Bennett, and Vipoo Srivilasa to name a few. She…

Egyptian artifacts and treasures mesmerize nearly all museum visitors. A careful look at ancient Egyptian art can tell us a great about Egyptian culture and artistry. The ancient Egyptians believed that in the afterlife, the spirit (or ka) of the deceased returned to the body. It was important for the body to be preserved to ensure that the ka had…

One of Michele Curio's favorite art lessons is creating a resist using oil pastels under black tempera paint. The process produces dramatic and creative results with a high success rate even for the most art-challenged students. The artworks have a sophisticated, painterly quality that is achieved with more control and less mess than direct…

Deep down in the depths of the sea, beautiful fish, mysterious ocean life, and unusual plants glimmer and glow in the eerie atmosphere of an ever-changing ocean. This article describes how, with this vision and a purpose in mind, three teachers pulled open classroom walls and joined forces so their second graders could create a mammoth 30 x 75"…

For thousands of years, the three perfections--painting, poetry, and calligraphy--have been considered the mark of an enlightened person throughout Asian cultures. Fifth-grade students learned about these three hallmarks by studying three works from the Detroit Institute of Art's Asian collection: a nineteenth-century Japanese hand scroll, a…