SchoolArts - April 2009

Left to right: Allison Wilhelems, Natural Beauty Collage. Meghan Nygen, Make a Change. Kari A. Goldapske, Guate Scape.

allow students a chance to talk about their collages, and the class should ask questions to promote aesthetic awareness and critical thinking skills.

Evaluation

Students critiqued their own or another’s collage based on both visual qualities and functional aspects such as overlapping and juxtaposing images, using elements and principles of design, balancing between visual images and text, etc. I also encouraged students to write in journals throughout the semester, allowing them to delve deeply into the concept of ecology of place for greater understanding and depth of learning.

Jaehan Bae is an assistant professor of art education in the department of art at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. baej@uwosh.edu

Resources

Anderson, Tom and Melody Mil-brandt. Art for Life: Authentic Instruction in Art. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.

Wachowiak, Frank and Robert Clements. Emphasis Art: A Qualitative Art Program for Elementary and Middle Schools, 8th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2006.

NATIONAL STANDARD Students use subjects, themes, and symbols that demonstrate knowledge of contexts, values, and aesthetics that communicate intended meaning in artworks.