VCUarts Art Education Student Teacher Blog

My goal with my Art 4 and 5 students is to help them grow to be more self-reflective through a series of homework activities in their sketchbooks. Several students are thinking about art school in the future, and, even for the students who aren’t, I think these activities will help them be more reflective in […]

My kindergarten babies, like me, were new to the school; so I decided to try and give them the opportunity to do something fun and practical.  My cooperating teacher was amazing and bought the classes some little pallets of pansies to plant.  We ventured outside during our second class meeting to plant the flowers in […]

My second grade students had a huge feat ahead of them, and time only seemed to go faster! During our first class we discussed the topic of comfort, and I asked each student to share what brings them comfort, and to try and explain why?  Every student had the opportunity to share about their favorite bear […]

3rd Grade: Animal Unfairness? Let’s Raise Awareness! For the last 8 weeks, my amazing 3rd-graders have been learning about the effects that littering has on animals and the environment. On the first day of class, my students entered the classroom to find a giant plastic bin full of water and plastic. We discussed what this […]

Where do we live? Who is in our family? Recently, the first grade class read Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach. While reading the book, we payed close attention to the setting, and family members. Does this place look like Chapel Hill? Where is her home? Who is in her family? After the story, we discussed all […]

Poetry and Imagery The fourth grade recently completed a project combining poetry, bookmaking, and printmaking. That’s a lot! We read “Clean Jean” as a class, and brainstormed on imagery from the poem. Questions included; What would Gene’s bubble suit look like? What’s a music tub? We picked one line from the poem, and illustrated it. […]

The fifth grade class worked together to make a thousand origami cranes, while reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. The book follows a young girl, Sadako, living in post-war Hiroshima, Japan. She falls ill with leukemia due to radiation, and is told a legend that if she folds a thousand origami […]

In this unit, students created zines that convey personal values and beliefs through an imagined superhero. Students were asked to think about a problem they see existing in the world around them and to create a superhero and superpower to solve it. We brainstormed as a class together, then students drafted their ideas onto a […]

No Kind Words Weft Behind! Adventures of 5th grade! With every big project comes a lot of brain storming! My 5th graders have been working on semester long project that has introduced them to Pattern, Color Psychology, Peruvian culture, and Weaving! The project started off with an exercise using two pieces of scrap paper. On […]

FIRST GRADE ADVENTURES My oh my are my fabulous first graders talented or what?! With the start of every new school year, it’s always a little nerve-wracking meeting new faces and friends… SO I thought what better way to introduce my students to the classroom than meeting my fantastic friend, ROY G BIV! We began […]