Category: STEAM

STEAMing Up the Art Room: Specimens

3/13/2018

I can’t wait to show you some of the awesome items that I received from our local education foundation! I started adding some STEAM resources in my art room earlier in this school year. You can read about it here in my October 2016 EdCloset post. Creating and learning with awesome and “STEAMy” resources in the art studio is very exciting!

Illustration by a 5th grade artist

SCIENTIFIC STUDY IN THE ART ROOM

I attended a symposium at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum called “Full Steam Ahead” last September. I got a fabulous idea for adding STEAMy resources to the art studio for my students from the director the Nature Lab at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Nature Lab is a natural science collection and lending library where students have hands-on access to specimens such as shells, taxidermy animals and skeletons. There are live plants and animals to support visual inquiry into biological and natural sciences.

If college students could have hands-on access to natural specimens, then mine should too! As budding artists and scientists, students need to practice careful observation. Insect specimens encased in clear acrylic immediately popped into my mind. I found out quickly that they are really expensive! After checking with educators I knew on Facebook and Twitter, I was able to include appropriate scientific specimens for a K-5 art room in my grant.

I found these beautiful and durable specimens in acrylic were made for young students. Perfect! My students love them and think they are cool…or they are a bit creeped out! I have to say when I unwrapped the large spiders (3 inches across!) they actually took my breath away.

STUDENT OBSERVATIONS

Students touched, magnified and investigated all of these new resources. Some students drew what they saw, others needed to observe with a magnifier. Many had questions, others had exciting finds to share:

“What is on this insect’s leg?”

“Why does that spider have so much hair?”

“Hey! I think that this caterpillar pooped in there!”

“Mrs. T… Allie and I saw that scorpion’s leg MOVE! Twice!”

A side effect of making the art room a place for students to create, explore, learn and solve problems, is increased student engagement.

I am convinced that it our job as educators to encourage students to grow as artists, scientists and problem solvers.

What do you think?

Have you written any grants for STEAM, STEM or the arts?

What did you include, and why?

This post was first published on Education Closet, February 2017

This month, The Art Ed Blogger's Network is writing about STEAM/Art Integration. Join us on the first Tuesday each month for new projects, ideas, and inspiration.

Participating Art Teacher Blogs:

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STEAMy Design in the Elementary Art Room

1/31/2018

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An open ended challenge for second grade students: Create a pencil holder that will hold a pencil as you walk across the room. The classroom teacher and I decided on an assortment of supplies: paper, oaktag, clothespins, yarn, cardboard tubes, packing “triangles,” plastic rings, tape, glue and staplers. Students generated questions and tested out the materials before deciding on their final design.

Second grade science curriculum focuses on matter. The STEM lesson this class worked on a few weeks ago was introduced in a video on Mystery Science, an online science curriculum for grades K-5. For that lesson, students tested different properties of materials and created a hat that would shield them from the sun and absorb sweat.
In our HOT Block arts integration class, we decided to give the students another STEM lesson that added art and design to create some STEAM. The students wrote questions and planned their pencil holder. The only rules were that it had to hold at least one pencil, and they needed to use the materials provided. For this challenge, we decided to leave it open so students had room to explore, design and create.

Building on prior experience, defining problems and asking questions are important skills to practice. Having the opportunity to develop a new pencil holder (or other object or tool) helps students investigate different materials and create objects they can actually use. These tasks align with NGSS, Common Core State Standards and the National Core Arts Standards. See below for some that were addressed in this second grade art lesson plan.

How can you help students learn through the arts and science?
Have you taught any steAm-y lessons?
I’d love to hear about them. Share in the comments, below!

National Core Arts Standards
Conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work.
Anchor Standard #1. Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work. Anchor Standard #2. Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
Anchor Standard #3. Refine and complete artistic work.

Next Generation Science Standards
Students who demonstrate understanding can:
K-2-ETS1-1 Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.

Common Core State Standards Connections
ELA/Literacy
RI.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text. (K-2-ETS1-1)

W.2.8 Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question. (K-2-ETS1-1)

This blog was first posted on Education Closet

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STEAM in the Art Room

8/17/2017

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STEAM? Yes, please!

STEM is great, but STEAM adds an “A” for Art and design. While teaching twenty-first century skills, art and design should be integrated with science, technology, engineering and math. Students need to create and design objects that are functional, look good and work in an innovative, elegant way. Adding some scientific resources to incorporate STEAM in art will make learning while creating a natural combination for young artists.

Nature photo and student pastel

Young learners need to make cross-disciplinary connections: that’s why my art room will be a lot STEAMier this year. I’ve started using a different instructional approach called Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB), a nationally recognized choice-based art education model to teach art. My art room is now called “Art Studio 139” and has centers set up to explore drawing, painting, collage, architecture, and 3-D construction. Each student artist is responsible for his or her own materials, set-up and clean-up. The students will be working like “real artists” and will be given choice in the projects they create.

Throughout my years of teaching, I have been offering more and more choice within art lessons, so TAB is a natural extension. I also believe that children need a place to be able to create, explore, solve problems and succeed. I am excited to see how my students will flourish and grow as artists and problem solvers during this school year.

Arts integration has always been a necessary part of my teaching and learning throughout my career. It didn’t matter if I was teaching Kindergarten, first grade or elementary art. It just made sense.

Why try to compartmentalize disciplines when they overlap and complement each other?

Last month, I attended a symposium at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum called “Full Steam Ahead” with two colleagues. I got a fabulous idea for adding STEAMy resources to the art studio for my students from a session by Neal Overstrom, the director the Nature Lab at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Nature Lab is a natural science collection and lending library where students have hands-on access to specimens such as shells, taxidermy animals and skeletons. There are also live plants and animals to support visual inquiry into biological and natural sciences. There are almost 80,000 individual specimens in the collection.

Pages from old nature books are a great visual resource

WHILE I WAS LISTENING TO NEAL, MY TAB ART ROOM AND ARTS INTEGRATION/STEAM SIDE CAME TOGETHER WITH A GREAT IDEA…If RISD students could have hands-on access to natural specimens, why couldn’t mine? Elementary students would LOVE examining natural materials. I started to make a list of items that would be appropriate scientific specimens for a K-5 art room:

Insects – how about some real specimens?
Animals – realistic plastic toys, I have some in the cellar (Don’t tell my son!)
Photos of animals, plants, etc – I have collected old books for this purpose.
Leaves – it is fall in New England, that one is easy! (Just collect some :)
Gourds, fruits and vegetables – the art room has these already.
Feathers – I’ll need to find some clean, natural feathers
Bones – I have a Mr. Thrifty skeleton already!

Students love the plastic fruits, vegetables and gourds. Imagine for a moment, twenty children setting up their own small still life at the same time! It is really something. Mr. Thrifty, the skeleton, will make his appearance this week. I wonder how the students will react to him. Some of the other items I plan to ask for in a grant from our local learning foundation.

Grade 3 student working on a still life

What do you think? Do you have any other ideas to add STEAM in the art classroom? What are some simple, inexpensive things you can do to promote the “A” in STEAM in your classroom or school? Let me know in the comments below!

*the links provided are through the Amazon Affiliates program.

This blog was first posted on Education Closet, October, 2016

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Amy Traggianese

Visual art and arts integration with a techie twist!

I don't like disclaimers, but: none of my ideas expressed in this blog post or website are supported or endorsed in any manner by my employer or anyone else. I just write it as I see it, and that is that.

STEAMing Up the Art Room: Specimens

Participating Art Teacher Blogs:

STEAMy Design in the Elementary Art Room

STEAM in the Art Room

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