My course prototype focuses on one strand of Grade 3 Arts Education: Visual Art. The course will provide lessons and activities exploring the seven elements of art: colour, shape, line, form, space, value and texture followed by a final project to tie everything together. The course will also connect with the Saskatchewan curriculum Grade 3 Arts Education theme: Environment. All lessons and activities will be within Seesaw activities, including instructional videos that are also available on a YouTube playlist.
Course Website: Exploring the Elements of Art: Grade 3 Arts Education Unit
All course information, including the Course Profile is available on the website listed above. I also provide a detailed outline of the course with links to each focus lesson. For teachers that do not use Seesaw, I have provided screenshots of the activities and direct links to the instructional videos available on YouTube.
Below is a brief screencast that will walk you through my course. I encourage you to look through my course website on your own. Although the course was designed for an online asynchronous environment, the activities and videos can also be used in a face-to-face or blended learning classroom.
My course design and creation served two purposes – to fulfill curriculum requirements for my own Grade 3 students and for my EC&I 834 course prototype project. I chose the visual art strand of arts education because I wanted to explore ways to implement lessons and activities with limited student supplies. Since students are working at home, I am unable to provide unique art supplies, like paint, pastels, clay and different types of paper. Instead, I based all activities on supplies that students would be expected to have at home from a regular school supply list (markers, crayons, glue and scissors).
One benefit of creating and implementing the course with Grade 3 students from the beginning was that I was able to design a lesson based on a specific element of art and then a project to go with the lesson. After the first week of receiving student responses, I made some adjustments for subsequent lessons based on feedback from my EC&I 834 classmates and student work. One example was to include a self-assessment piece for all art projects to encourage the best quality of work from my students. I think designing the entire course from start to finish without involving students would be very challenging, so I enjoyed the opportunity to work through the unit at the same pace as my students.
Each week I recorded an instructional video based on an element of art and I tried to maintain the same theme and opening montage. I wanted to be able to produce a video playlist at the end of the unit that fully covered each element, and I am very happy to report that I achieved this goal! I feel that the unit is very comprehensive and succinct and could be adapted for use in different grade levels as well. It is my hope that any teacher could use this course, even if they do not use Seesaw with their students. The instructional videos and art projects were designed to be used in all learning environments.
I hope you enjoyed exploring my course!
Until next time,
CATHERINE READY 