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 = link to high school example |
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| Digital Age Literacy |
| Basic, Scientific and Technological Literacies |
| Visual and Information Literacies |
| Multicultural Literacy and Global Awareness |
| Effective Communication |
| Teaming, Collaboration and Interpersonal Skills |
| Personal, Social and Civic Responsibility |
| Interactive Communication |
| Inventive Thinking |
| Adaptibility, Managing Complexity and Self-Direction |
| Curiosity, Creativity and Risk Taking |
| High Order Thinking and Sound Reasoning |
| High Productivity |
| Prioritizing, Planning and Managing |
| Effective Use of Real World Tools |
| Ability to Produce Relavant, High Quality Products |
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| The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. |
| The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer. |
| The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. |
| The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed but change with circumstances and opportunity. |
| The arts make vivid the fact that neither words nor numbers define what we can know. |
| The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. |
| The arts teach students to think through and within a material. |
| The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. |
| The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling. |
| The arts position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important. |
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Understanding What Quality Means |
Understanding what constitutes quality is an open question, the kind of question that requires deep thinking. Much art in the post-modern era forces us to reassess our approach to the evaluation of art and its relationship to culture. Students are presented with art from many cultures and time periods and asked to examine both form and context and make reasoned determinations as to what constitutes quality. Students also read articles by artists, designers and critics to learn what criteria are applied when judging quality. At the end of each project is a reflection which guides students through the process of self-examination not only of their own studio work, but of their understanding of the Essential Questions presented at the beginning of the project. Wrestling with these questions promotes a type of thinking transferrable to every aspect of our rapidly changing world.
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| Realizing Quality Results | ||||
At the outset of a project students are taken through the Enduring Understandings, Essential Questions and Objectives for the project. Whether a formative or summative assessment, students are taken though the assessment rubric before setting off to complete an assignment. Students share examples of their written work and critique the structure and logic of each other's arguments. Throughout a project students are encouraged to try multiple solutions and build upon previous ideas. Regular referral to exemplar images during the studio application phase takes place. In the Reflection phase students reflect on how they achieved, or fell short of, a quality result based on the aesthetic criteria, and their own internally developing standard of quality, set up in the project.
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| What Students Are Saying | ||||
Finally, I think that my reflections have improved because now I understand what it takes to make quality work and how I see my self as an artist. Now, I can look at paintings and models and talk about the line, shape color and texture and think about how I can incorporate it into my own art. I believe that now I am aware of what is necessary for my work to look good and what I need to do to make it look better by simply thinking about the principals of design and seeing what is missing or what needs to be added. - grade 9 student Other projects we did that helped us apply various skills were plaster relief (using color and thinking further), renaissance portraits (overlapping colors to make it more realistic), and architecture (knowing to use knives and cutting cardboards with clean edges). Through these projects, the way of thinking has changed me as an artist. - grade 9 student I have also progressed in my reflections this year, I know understand myself as an artist and understand what it takes to make quality work. Art is never about perfection, it is about expressing yourself and the style of art you art trying to follow and quality art is more important of quantity. I have also grasped the concept of giving my self constructive feedback to help myself improve in the future. - grade 9 student |
In the central column below are the guiding principles that inform the curriculum connection highlighted on this page. The 21st Century Skills and “Ten Lessons” that are woven into these elements appear in white in the corresponding columns to the right and left. Links to teacher and student generated material illustrating how these guiding principles take form in the classroom can be found below as well.
