Key words: Taiwanese public school art education, 台灣小學藝術教育 This article presents my experience of art teaching and examples of my students' works. I worked at Sin-Pu Elementary School, a K-6 elementary school in Taiwan, for six years prior to studying abroad. The school is located in a mixed residential and commercial areas in New Taipei City, Taiwan. The students' families represented a wide range of socioeconomic status, particularly middle-class, working-class, and poor families. In addition, about 20% of the student population was children of immigrants from countries of Southeast Asia. The school size is considered large. It was composed of more than 3,000 students at the time I worked. There were about 25 to 30 students in each class and around 10 classes for each grade level. Project 1: Break the Ice-Bookmark ActivityI taught art for 5th and 6th graders. By using the illustration book, Who Win the First Prize, I introduced different ways of seeing art to my students (see the video above) in the beginning of each new school year. This book illustrates artworks made by six animals and insects, including a bee, a fish, a dog, a dragonfly, a mouse, and an ant. These characters genuinely depicted the world they perceived through their eyes. The story enlightened my students that our observation on the surroundings could be different from others and unique. After introducing the story, I conducted a quick and fun art activity, Break the Ice, to warm up the class and give students an opportunity to interact with each other. I asked everyone to draw freely by markers on his/her white letter-size paper. In every 10 seconds, I gave them a cue and they had to pass down the paper to the classmate sitting behind them. And again, they drew freely on the received paper. We repeated this process several times until every piece of paper was full of lines, shapes, and colors. Then, I gave everyone a frame to find the best composition within the frame and cut out the section they liked to make a personalized bookmark. Project 2: Self Portrait/Classmate Portrait (5th grade)The Self-Portrait/Classmate Portrait project is one of my favorites to start an art class in a new semester. This project provided students an opportunity to observe the facial features of their own faces or their classmates'. When I placed their portraits together on the blackboard, students were always impressed by the collection of their works. Project 3: Lion Head and Lion Dance (5th grade)This group project, Lion Head and Lion Dance, is related to temple culture and traditional Chinese New Year festival. A team of 4 to 5 students worked together to design and create a group’s lion head. During the process, the students practiced their communication and problem-solving skills in order to reach their common goals. Some students collaborated well with each other, whereas some students learned to address their different opinions, solve their conflicts, and find a middle ground for a shared interest (see the right picture as an example). After the completion, we had a fun activity to assess each group's lion head and line dance and then give a pride to every group. Project 4: Puppet Show (5th grade)Puppet Show is one kind of traditional Chinese folk arts. Classic characters in a traditional puppet show include male scholar, young lady, monster, clown, and others. Building upon the tradition, each student was guided to create a puppet character and design a costume for it. The project integrated art with language art and performance. In addition to creating a puppet, the students wrote scripts and played the plots as part of assessment activities. Project 5: Paper Sculpture (5th grade)This Paper Sculpture project challenged students’ ability of 3D construction. The students experimented how to effectively connect pieces of paper and build a tallest paper sculpture. The students demonstrated their creativity and made incredible works. With one of my classes, we built a 2-floor height paper construction. Project 6: Music & Visual Art Collaborative Project (6th grade)I conducted this music and visual art interdisciplinary project with a sixth-grade homeroom teacher and a music teacher. This project incorporated with sixth-grade students’ cross-grade service learning. The sixth graders played a song and hosted an activity in first-grade classrooms. The first graders were very happy and excited. Although the homeroom teacher, the music teacher, and I spent a lot of time communicating with each other, arranging the activity, and training the students’ performance skills and music instrument skills, it was very rewarding when seeing that the students were happy and appreciated the opportunity. Art AssessmentArt assessment/appreciation is usually subjective. To cultivate students’ art criticism skills and promote diverse perspectives of art appreciation, I applied various art assessment strategies to each art project, including self-evaluation, peer-appreciation, and teacher narrative feedback. My goal is not merely to give a score to students’ works, but I hope that my students learn to appreciate their artworks as well as others’. After the completion of each project, I asked my students to briefly describe their works, reflect on the process of art making, and give themselves a score according to their effort. Then, I asked the students to place their works on the tables and arranged a mini-exhibition in the classroom. The students were asked to walk around the classroom and see other's works. In the meantime, I asked them to choose at lease one classmate’s work that they appreciated and then share their choices with classmates. They were instructed to articulate their reasons for the choices and give positive feedback to their classmates. Through these evaluation activities, I hope to develop my students’ art vocabularies and appreciation. The followings are some other examples of my students' works of art. Hope you find them interesting too!
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魏意雯(Yiwen Wei)分享兒童藝術教育教學經驗。 Archives (by title)
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