Help me give my students a chance to work collaboratively on large scale murals. These canvases can be painted in the art room and installed in various locations around the school.
My students are part of a very large, diverse elementary school; we are nearing 900 students and still growing rapidly, especially with the recent movement of families due to hurricane damage. We are a semi-rural county and the majority of students receive free or reduced-price lunch. At the same time, our community also is home to several golf course and beach neighborhoods. While my school and county are very supportive of the arts, there will always be a need for additional supplies due to the nature of art: almost everything is consumable and needs to be replaced every year.
With all the pressure for academic success through testing, my students love that the art room is a place to learn through play and the creative process.
We work hard every day to internalize that we are all individuals with different strengths, but that learning through mistakes is the best way to learn. When I hear my students sharing ideas and explaining that their differences are what make their artwork special, I know that we are making exactly the right progress.
My Project
Since my students have such short periods of art on long rotations, they have not had the chance to work collaboratively on large scale projects. With the limited amount of time in each class session, it would be completely ineffective to try to have classes work on location in the school to complete paintings. With these mural panels, we can work as grade levels on each mural, completing designs in the classroom before choosing locations to display them.
Our murals would include subjects such as habitats and STEM topics as well as ideas to promote literacy; each topic would be connected to a grade level curricular focus.
Students would get to help pick the ideas and finalize the composition while learning about the job of a mural artist.
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