Friday, April 26th was the second annual TEAM SCREEN TEST. Our 5th grade Fugleflick, Different is Good, screened at this event along with student videos from the Chicagoland suburbs. Take a look at the photos and the animoto video to see what the event was like for our young filmmakers.
Trivia: Dryden student filmmakers were the youngest at the festival. All the other students were middle schoolers.

Different is Good tied for best of show at the festival. Our filmmakers will join the other winning team from Quest Academy for a movie and pizza night at the Prairie Center for the Arts in the near future.
Trivia: Dryden Filmmakers won Best of Show in 2012 also. 
See the post from last year.

Different is Good embraces diversity and uses art as a metaphor for celebrating our differences. View the Fugleflick below or at this link.

Elementary Musical, last year's award-winning Fugleflick is in the running for Student Video of the Year 2012 through NextVista.org. This also will be decided on April 26th.

Update: not chosen. View all finalists here.

View all four events in one short animoto video below or at this link.

TWO Dryden Artists have their art featured on the Youth Art Month Poster for the state of Illinois. These posters are distributed to every school building and legislator in the state to celebrate Art Education. We are so proud of our two winners! They were recognized at the school board meeting on March 14th.
See this post for more photos.

A group of 5 students worked on a Fugleflick movie over a period of 5 months that uses art as a metaphor for embracing diversity, Different is Good. This movie was debuted to a large audience as the Cultural Arts Fair and introduced by the filmmakers themselves. Congrats to Isabelle, Marion, Ciara, Ryan, and Brianna (not shown). View the movie and take the quiz here on my previous blog post.

The District's Cultural Arts Fair was held on March 7th. I was not able to attend because I was at the NAEA conference in Texas, but Mrs. Beihoffer (thank you!) volunteered to hang our art banners and photograph the Dryden Artists who stopped by. Congratulations to those with art selected for this exhibit. The beautiful work is worth celebrating! See more photos below.

Four Dryden Artists had artwork chosen for permanent display at the new St. Alexius Children's and Women's Hospital in Hoffman Estates. The organizers wanted local student art and selected Dryden pieces from last year's Artsonia Gallery. The families brought the original pieces in to be scanned and judged by a committee. The ones selected were blown enlarge and professionally displayed in the hallways and/or in the patient's rooms. How wonderful that our wish for the world project inspired by Robert Indiana's LOVE image will be spreading a message of kindness to the future patients of this hospital. Jack's art was a watercolor of fall leaves. See more images from the VIP artist's reception at the hospital on Friday, March 15th below.

Congratulations to Klaudia (4th grade) for winning the program cover design contest. (See all entries) Her artwork (shown to the left) will represent Dryden on the cover of the program handed out the night of the Cultural Arts Festival on Friday, March 8th at Thomas Middle School beginning at 6pm (free admission).
Dryden will also show two banners full of student art (certificates will be sent home with the selected student artists on Feb.22nd. See the banners below show the art chosen for display). That night will also be the big screen debut of the new Fugleflick, Different is Good
and a chance to see our all school Common Core Crazy video which debuted at the District Variety Show once again.

P. S. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the cultural arts festival event on March 8th. Mrs. Beihoffer has volunteered to stand in my place. Thank you! I will be at the National Art Education Conference in Texas to accept my award for Western Region Elementary Art Teacher of the Year. This is the first year I'm missing the event, so please stop by and pose for your photo with Mrs. Beihoffer so I can have some great pictures of what I missed and celebrate with you:)

Fugleflick filmmakers have been working since October on a video that promotes diversity metaphorically using art. Our original song drove the imagery and our understanding of surrealism from last year's work with Rene Magritte inspired much of what you'll see. Students used animation tools in Keynote and green screen effects in iMovie to create this dream-like movie. See if you can identify the 15 pieces of famous art shown throughout the movie. Please give our young filmmakers feedback in the comments area below. Thanks for watching, Different is Good.

Quiz your students by asking them to identify the famous art pieces as seen in the movie.
Click on each image to enlarge them. Then, use this answer sheet to see how you did.

Last night I received some amazing photos from a district wide student art show as it was being hung for their big gala tonight. The photos showed the Different is Good project created by students in four elementary schools in this one district in South Brunswick, New Jersey. 
Back in 2008-2009 I designed the Different is Good project as a way to foster positive conversations with my 2nd graders about diversity while working on a figure drawing with color balance. We read Dr. Seuss' Book, the Sneetches and learned that whether your belly had a star or none upon thars a sneetch is a sneetch. And no sneetch is best on the beach. They all embraced the message as they worked on creating a self-portrait arm in arm with a very different friend (real or imaginary). I introduced this project again this year when I started receiving feedback that other art teachers are trying it with their classes. 
Here is our newest batch of Different is Good.
Here is our original batch of Different is Good images from 08-09 second graders.
Here is a link to my lesson write up on the Teaching Palette Blog
Here is a link to an animated version of Dr. Seuss' Sneetches on youtube

Take a look our project created by art students from New Jersey schools on display in their art show below: