6th Grade Manga

The longest project of last semester was my 6th grade Manga lesson. As soon as I found out that Cultural Heritage Week would focus on East Asian cultures, I wanted to teach about Manga. I read a great article that was published in Art Education in 2001 on Manga as part of Visual Culture and was immediately interested. Manga is basically a Japanese comic book, the print form of Anime. 

*Did you know that Manga is read top to bottom but from right to left?

I ordered a couple of books on drawing Manga with some PTO money and also found some video tutorials from Sakura useful. (You can find the videos on my Asian Art Ideas Pinterest board.) 

I was planning on this project taking 3 classes but it ended up requiring 4. The first day was introduction and explanation of all the choices. The students could choose to tell a whole story in multiple panels on their page, tell part of a story in multiple panels, or focus on one character with a speech or thought bubble. If the students decided to tell a story, I asked them to make a simple list of what would happen in each frame. It's a lot easier to tell a story in comic form if you know what needs to happen! The next class and usually part of the 3rd were spent drawing with pencil. When everything was planned in pencil, the students checked with me and started tracing with sharpie after they were approved. 

TIP- Have the students trace the words inside their bubbles before they trace the bubble itself. Students tend to write small, forgetting that tracing in sharpie makes it spread a bit. If the words end up too big, they can always redraw the bubble.

 Violence is an issue that needs to be addressed with this project. Lots of anime has fighting in it. I told the students if they had people fighting in their story, it could not end with someone getting hurt. I asked them to think of a surprise ending that's more appropriate for school. 

I really, really love this project. It allowed the students to learn about Manga as an important part of Visual Culture, practice a style of drawing different from strict observation, incorporated writing and story telling, and they were able to show their interests. Some of the drawings were funny or silly, some a little, well, shallow, but I found many to be very honest. I had several students tell me their drawing was based on a true story, and several showed insecurities or vulnerabilities. It was nice to see from my 6th graders who are starting to suffer from the elementary school version of Senioritis.

Some of the drawings were a bit puzzling. The following drawing was described as a true story. I think maybe inspired by a true story since anyone old enough to have a married ex would probably not ask their mom for permission to go to the mall. :)

1st Grade Tornado Safety

 This is the 3rd year I've taught a variation of a tornado safety lesson. The first year it was pretty much just a collage. Last year I added more mixed media elements, and while it improved the visual, I still wasn't completely happy. This year I am much more satisfied. The difference this year, is that the students wrote their own safety tips. I was afraid to do this before because I wasn't sure if I would have time to read all of them, and I didn't want the students to write something that would actually be dangerous when we were learning about something that could be a real life and death situation. I emailed all the 1st grade teachers about having the students write tips in the classroom and bringing them to Art class ready to go. Fewer than half remembered to send them (I'll send a reminder on the day of Art class next year) but the classes who forgot were able to write them in Art class without too much trouble.

 Day 1: *Tornado safety info, geometric shape review, give students primary colored tempera paint to paint squares or rectangles for base of house at bottom of paper, students cut triangles from newspaper to form the roof for their houses, glue newspaper to background. (Start with squares of newspaper and show the students how to cut diagonally corner to corner or cut off a corner with one straight line to form their triangle. This saves lots of time and frustration if they actually listen.)

John Steuart Curry, Tornado Over Kansas, 1929, Muskegon Museum of Art

*Edit: I forgot to say that we also discussed John Steuart Curry's painting Tornado Over Kansas. We pointed out how the family is taking cover to stay safe.

Day 2: Students use crayon to color background/sky while supplies are being passed out, demonstrate tearing 1/2 sheet of black construction paper into an organic tornado shape, glue tornado onto paper, use color stick or opaque colored pencil to write safety tips directly onto black paper tornado, add more details with crayon. (The students may be frustrated by not using scissors, but push through! It's good for developing fine motor skills and makes the edges of the tornado soft which is good since they are not solid things.)

This project could be adapted to help review and prepare students for any natural disaster or safety situation. I like to do this in the spring around tornado season when we start having hallway drills at school.

 I decided to make a hallway display with the tornados this year since they were finished a little earlier- last year they were just finished in time to go home before the end of the year. When students finished early, I asked them to think of a word that they associate with tornadoes. They wrote the word on a big torn paper tornado I made out of butcher paper and labeled with "Tornadoes Are..."

Here's the hallway display. I used the big tornado and picked 10 pieces of student work that had different (accurate) tips on them. I cut out my letters and used a 1 inch round punch for the negative space in the letters. I thought it was kind of fun. Then I used the resulting 1 inch circles to make a dotted line under the word "Safety".

1st Grade Wild Things + Artist Statements

Way back in October, a couple of my 1st grade classes made "Wild Things" inspired by Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. We brainstormed things that he included in his illustrations to make the "things" look wild. The students used the list (horns, fur, claws, scales, feathers, beaks, etc.) to get ideas for their drawings. They drew in sharpie first then used construction paper and regular crayons to add color. The best part, for me, was reading the artist statements I asked them to write on the back. Since it was their first attempt at writing about their artwork, I just asked them to tell me something about their wild things.  I added them into our Artsonia gallery with a little note that I typed the words as they were written by the students and I was sure that their parents had already noticed an improvement in their spelling and writing skills.

Andruw4 says this about his/her art... My mostr is nice.

	Crystal1058 says this about his/her art... My mostor is osm. It is sckere. My mostr is fune.
	Gabriel1830 says this about his/her art... My monstr is sckere. I love my mostr.		Skylar1032 says this about his/her art... My mosr [monster] is men. He has big feet.

	Annika300 says this about his/her art... My wild thing is a scare animal. It has a spice [spikey] mowth. It has spice feet.		Tonya70 says this about his/her art... This is my mostr. I hav put bune irs and I hav put a orch srt on him and I put to trezz. [This is my monster. I have put bunny ears and I have put an orange shirt on him and I put two trees.)
	Joelle119 says this about his/her art... I love my wild thing. I love it.		Ethan5046 says this about his/her art... I love my picture very much. I worked hard and did a good job.
	Lillie127 says this about his/her art... I lick my goiing [drawing] cas [because] it was funing [funny.] I lick my funing wilyd thing.		Peyton1320 says this about his/her art... I liook Art.
	Taylor10174 says this about his/her art... I love my wiyld rck.		Brooke3418 says this about his/her art... I love mi proijekt becozz it was dark! I made a wild thing.
	Cade695 says this about his/her art... I like my wild thing be cos it is funny.		Isaac2017 says this about his/her art... I lick [like] it bucus it wus fun. I lick it. A fun crech [creature].
	Cheyenne1867 says this about his/her art... my monstr is funny. My monstr likes to draw.		Zoie132 says this about his/her art... My monstr is funny and skarey and nice. It likes to drowl [draw]. It is going to be vere skary varey son [soon] wan I tech it to be skary.
	Matthew10750 says this about his/her art... It is sogoun. He is so big. He is siney. It wuzz at nite. Me and him had so mut fun. Wuw! I love him! Bi!		Samantha8066 says this about his/her art... It's in the forist. It's cool. It's has a good singing. This is wan.
	Travis1966 says this about his/her art... The monster yelled at Travis. I like to draw and color the picture.		Sadee8 says this about his/her art... I love my wild picture. I really love it. Boo!

Organic Shape Monsters

The inspiration for this lesson came from Joanna Davis at We Heart Art- Organic Shape Monsters. I love (LOVE!) her idea of using yarn tied in a not to teach organic shape.

Source: ourartlately.blogspot.com via Katie on Pinterest

I pinned the idea for the yarn, intending to do something different with it, but my 1st graders and I were kind of on a monster/wild thing kick so it stuck in my head! I do try not to look at many photos when I'm planning that way it's easier to kind of put my own spin on it. Not that there is anything wrong with not spinning, or that I really spun this one all that much.  Each student got a piece of yarn that I had already tied in a knot and moved it on their paper until they got an organic shape that they liked. They traced with pencil then added details. I told them that their monsters had to have a mouth and at least one eye, some sort of pattern, and a way to get around (does it walk, fly, swim?) After planning in pencil, the students used markers to add details. I always have to remind the students to use the right size tool for the job. I put out regular size markers for coloring in big areas and skinny markers just for tracing lines and adding little details. Of course you'll always have a few students trying to color in their whole monsters body with a teeny tiny marker. I like to just hand those students a marker of the right size and walk away.

The first class was for drawing and starting to add color. I didn't want to keep these as plain drawing since the students had already made Wild Thing drawings and I was trying to decide what exactly to do when I saw a photo my Art Teacher friend, Miss Ihrig, posted on Facebook of her students monsters cut out and glued onto bright colored construction paper- perfect! It was also good since I hadn't cut or glued much with 1st grade yet this year. I took the opportunity to talk to the students about contrast before I let them choose their construction paper. I have a bunch of little girls who LOOOVE pink and would make everything with pink markers and pink crayons on pink paper if I let them. The problem is that monochromatic artwork when everything is the same color is a little hard to see. (They can't quite pull off the subtlety of Rothko's black on black paintings...) I encouraged them to try holding their monster up to different colored backgrounds to see what looked best. Most just pretended to consider other colors then picked their favorite anyway. :)


After carefully cutting and gluing, I asked the students to write a story about their monster. If they needed more prompting, I asked them to tell me their monster's name and something they like to do. I printed off a half sheet writing paper template so they would have the lines they are used to writing on. When the writing was finished, I taped it from the back so their story is visible below their artwork. Students who were super speedy added details to their background with construction paper crayons. Or markers if I didn't notice in time! I think the story was the most interesting part of some. I have some leftover writing paper that I held onto for future lessons because it made their writing so much easier to read.