CONNECTING TO COMMON CORE

USING CLOSE READING STRATEGIES

I've been planning this day for a long time. Today's third grade art class included a reading and math lesson surrounding our collaborative art walls.  I had written an article for School Arts Magazine about our LEGO wall and wanted the kids to read it. When I mentioned this, my Assist. Principal suggested we use close reading strategies. So we tried a few. Before we began I had students predict who my audience was for the article by thumbing through the magazine. Then, students read the first part of the text silently. Afterwards we wrote the words on the board that they didn't know. We went back and read the word in context and tried to guess the meaning together. This exercise allowed me to reinforce our art concepts and our collaborative project while helping students practice reading skills (...and bonus, it made me feel good that I had written above a 3rd grade level.) 

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Reading about their project in School Arts

Words students didn't know

FINDING COORDINATES

The next activity was  math and art related. We wrote a random coordinate on a slip of paper with a few parameters. The first number was between 1-32 separated by a ":" followed by a second number between 1-16. Then we took our mat and sat outside our Artsonia Tile Wall. I had numbered all the rows so that each tile became a coordinate. They took turns finding the tile that matched their coordinate and tried to label the art they found as a landscape, still life, portrait, figure drawing, collage, etc. They were very good at finding coordinates because, as they all exclaimed happily, "We did this in math!"
Since I know they understand coordinates, I think I can expand this activity into something more engaging like an I Spy game where students use art vocabulary and coordinates to get each other to look closely at the art.

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Take a look at our Art History Tile Wall and some of the artists that contributed.