6th Grade Visual Journaling- Raining Popcorn

Check out my previous post for information on my Journey into a Work of Art visual journaling project.  I used the same set up for 6th grade and just changed the work of art from Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte to Sandy Skoglund's Raining Popcorn.  I LoOoOoOoOoVe her artwork!  She makes awesome installations, places models in the setting, and photographs.  Her artwork is great to talk about repetition, unity, texture, and color (lots of monochromatic artwork.)  One of my favorite pieces of her work is called the Cocktail Party.  (Here's a cool video showing her process: http://www.sandyskoglund.com/movies/camview/cocktail.html)

This project was also completed in one, 40-minute class period.  I showed the students a PowerPoint and explained the project just like I described in the 4th grade visual journaling post.  To help the students be more descriptive in their writing, and to add a little fun, I popped a couple bags of microwave popcorn and put it at each table.  The students had fun thinking about how the popcorn affected their senses and getting a little snack in art class.

We talked about using interesting adjectives as I knew they had been working on it in their English class.  I gave the students tan colored construction paper, pencils, sharpies, crayons, and colored pencils.  I showed the students how white crayon worked really well to draw popcorn on the warm colored construction paper and let them get to work!

4th Grade Visual Journaling- Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

When I wrote my first unit plan in an Art Ed class at ESU, my favorite part of the assignment was called Journey into a Work of Art.  We had to imagine being in the work of art (I chose Sandy Skoglund's Raining Popcorn) and write about what we experienced using all 5 senses.  I thought this would be a great way to encourage creative thinking and work on writing skills with my students.

I chose Seurat's A Sunday Aternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86) for the work of art and taught this lesson in one 40 minute class period (not a regular art class, a rotation set up while the 4th grade teachers collaborate.)  First, I showed the students a PowerPoint with Seurat's stats.  Next, I showed an image I found on Wikipedia, a detail of another of Seurat's Pointilist paintings, to help the students understand the concept of Pointilism.  After learning about Pointilism, I projected a large image of La Grand Jatte and explained visual journaling to the students.

I found a really cool website, http://visualjournaling.com/home.html, that explains visual journaling and has reference images.  We broke the term apart: "visual" tells us that there will be something to look at (doodles, drawings, etc.), and "journaling" tells us that there will be writing.  We listed the 5 senses and the students used their imaginations to complete the visual journaling project.  I told them that visual journaling was very free form and they could write a postcard to someone about their trip, make a list of what they experienced, write a poem, or write a paragraph.  However they wanted to do their journaling was fine.  I gave the students fine point sharpies to write with and told them they could use pencil, sharpie, or colored pencils to add the visual details.

Some students were noticeably more comfortable with the project but I think almost all enjoyed it.  I like to point out the little dog and the monkey by the lady with the umbrella, as well as the man who appears to be playing a trumpet to encourage the students to look for little details to help them.  I did a visual journaling project with my 6th grade students that I will post about next.  I am looking forward to introducing this to other grades and doing more projects in the future.