Help me give my students the opportunity to express themselves in class with their own sketchbooks. Keeping a sketchbook helps your ideas grow and helps you develop new ones while fostering creativity in all students.
My students are K-6 scholars with a passion for art. They love drawing and expressing themselves but often do not have the resources to do so. They are thrilled to show off every assignment they complete and beam with pride when they do so.
My scholars teach me every day how much more I can love art.
They're intelligent and creative and love to rise to the challenge. They have completed projects such as line mosaics, scribble monsters, and will be participating in a collaborative mural! They have also studied more about local artists in Chicago like Hebru Brantley and JC Rivera. The profile pic of this project is the exemplar for our project, learning about symbolism!
My Project
Students will use their sketchbooks for their bell ringers at the very least. This means that during instruction, students will be able to open their sketchbooks and draw immediately while entering the room without wasting instructional time.
Allowing students the space to express themselves is invaluable.
Most students have small sketches in their notebooks or at home, but they are not as encouraged to continue this practice, let alone get serious about it. I can only imagine how transformative it would be to see students start to process through things visually at their own pace.
This is crucial for reflection and creative expression during class, especially as a teacher on a cart. I am not able to pause the class and address some of the social-emotional pieces of being a student (and human being!) as much as I would like, but providing students a space to reflect in a constructive way would be a beautiful luxury, much less a necessity.
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