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Form, Function and Connection
The form of this website is a result of an initial frustration I felt as a beginning Visual Arts teacher. I went from learning with students for nearly eight hours a day to less than 80 minutes a week! In a year's time, I would spend a fraction of the time with each student, plus I had 240 students to see each week.
The questions began...
How will students see progress in Visual Arts?
How will it be possible to interact with so many parents?
How will thinking and learning be recorded over time?
It was then that I had an idea! I would document the academic, artistic career of year groups over time. Just like there are cohorts in Secondary School, we could have cohorts at Primary School as well. The PYP Exhibition is huge at VIS. The opportunity to share, organise and express student learning is, in its own way, a graduation of sorts. With this in mind, I have created a website ORGANISED by each cohort's PYP Exhibition date. For example, the '2017' page on this site functions as a way to share the Visual Arts experiences and artwork of the children who experienced their PYP Exhibition in May of 2017. As follows, all other cohorts are named according to their Exhibition dates, 2018 to 2023, also known as Grade 5 to Prep.
Within each cohort page there is a brief commentary on the year group, a blog and a gallery that is connected to the blog posts. Mr Somphong and I work diligently to keep these pages current and share all the wonderful happenings which occur in The Arts at VIS. By using transdisciplinary themes to guide us, we collaborate with the teachers and students to create and communicate the learning that occurs within the units. We look to how the elements of art can be leveraged as tools for expression and reflection. As a further step, students inquire into artists throughout history who have used color, line, shape, form, texture and space to create a desired effect. This transdisciplinary, project-based approach lends itself to collaborative group projects in Prep to Grade 2 and independent study in Grades 3 through 5.
We hope you enjoy!
The questions began...
How will students see progress in Visual Arts?
How will it be possible to interact with so many parents?
How will thinking and learning be recorded over time?
It was then that I had an idea! I would document the academic, artistic career of year groups over time. Just like there are cohorts in Secondary School, we could have cohorts at Primary School as well. The PYP Exhibition is huge at VIS. The opportunity to share, organise and express student learning is, in its own way, a graduation of sorts. With this in mind, I have created a website ORGANISED by each cohort's PYP Exhibition date. For example, the '2017' page on this site functions as a way to share the Visual Arts experiences and artwork of the children who experienced their PYP Exhibition in May of 2017. As follows, all other cohorts are named according to their Exhibition dates, 2018 to 2023, also known as Grade 5 to Prep.
Within each cohort page there is a brief commentary on the year group, a blog and a gallery that is connected to the blog posts. Mr Somphong and I work diligently to keep these pages current and share all the wonderful happenings which occur in The Arts at VIS. By using transdisciplinary themes to guide us, we collaborate with the teachers and students to create and communicate the learning that occurs within the units. We look to how the elements of art can be leveraged as tools for expression and reflection. As a further step, students inquire into artists throughout history who have used color, line, shape, form, texture and space to create a desired effect. This transdisciplinary, project-based approach lends itself to collaborative group projects in Prep to Grade 2 and independent study in Grades 3 through 5.
We hope you enjoy!
