Day 2 of Vocab in the Art Classroom

On Day 2 are agenda was as follows:

Jeane, an art colleague, demonstrated how she uses vocab cards with her students. The large cards feature an illustration and the word she's teaching.

The card is held so the word is covered then the fold is opened to show the corresponding vocab word.

In addition to showing the card & pronouncing the word (breaking it into syllables) she uses TPR - Total Physical Response by creating a gesture to go with the term. So students would associate the visual - word and illustration - and experience physical movement with the word.

Paper in different colors are designated for different vocab - for example: artists, basic art terms/principles & elements and media/materials.

Our district uses a 'grammar wall' in every classroom to help develop English vocabulary.

This 'wall' can be used with our vocab - using sticky notes, we can post our words after we identify its part of speech.

Our groups began typing up the word lists and matching with illustrations. Those who weren't typing began folding the stacks of paper, cutting up the word lists and gluing everything together...busy, busy, busy...

Day 1 of Vocab in the Art Classroom

We covered so much this past week, that I thought I would break down what we did in separate posts. Here's our agenda for Day 1:

Our group of 12 art teachers split off from the larger group which included PE and Music teachers. We studied our pacing guides (developed over the past 2 summers) to work on our basic vocabulary lists. Groups of 2 - 3 art teachers concentrated on the various grade levels - I worked w/Jo and John to write up the list for K-1. Others wrote for Gr.2-3, 4-5, 6-7-8.

There were great discussions on what to include, what to leave out for now and how to write it (ex: media/plural or medium/singular). Once lists were created on this day, vocab words were written on large index cards to keep handy in classroom to review and to use for quick vocab games which we learned about on Day 3. Cards were labeled and sorted by both grade level and grading periods.

I chose to write my words in color according to grade level (K-yellow, 1st-orange & so on thru the color wheel) so as to readily identify them. Grading periods are written in upper corner.

I have a 4x6 metal index file box & dividers gathering dust on a shelf in my room that will be put to use as soon as I can get to it...

Here's a summary of our first day...

Art Vocabulary Games

My brain is pretty much fried after 3 days of classes on incorporating more vocab into our lessons. We have been busy building our vocab lists based on our state standards and pacing guides...

Today was entertaining though, because we learned some new word games - Save the Pig looks interesting & fun - a PC version of hangman...

Draw a pig, then the blanks for the word's letters. Kids name a letter - if correct it goes on a blank & they get to guess the vocab word. If incorrect, erase a part of the pig hence the name "Save the Pig!!!"

Art Vocabulary Class

Started a class today on using vocab in the artroom. We're using the book Building Academic Vocabulary by Robert J. Marzano and Debra J. Pickering.

Today was spent getting to know the other Art, Music, Band and PE teachers in class from across the District. Making posters with our small groups that summarized a chapter...

We also put together a first draft of our proposed art academic vocabulary. More to come in the next few days...