I dared to ask my kids what art forms they wanted to look at, and the general consensus was on street art/urban art which is great because there is soooo much out there and there are also a lot of Spanish artists producing amazing street art.
Day 2 of the Art Unit, we looked at an artist named El Tono. After a short intro/listening activity where I spoke about him and they simply had to understand what I was saying, we went on to look at his work. He has uploaded his portfolio in .pdf format, describing his many international exhibits in Spanish with pictures. I gave each student one of those which they had to read, understand, then explain in English to their peers.
They enjoyed finding out from each other what his different projects were and it was fun talking about the motivation behind them.
I have to admit that it is not easy for them to express themselves about all this, but they are attempting with a solid use of Spanglish. I'll take what I can get. (It is officially only their 3rd semester of Spanish.)
Click on the image to access El Tono's art portfolio which I found on his website here.
My grade 12s (which in reality are part of a split level Grade 10/12 class, talk about being super organised!) have started the Art Unit. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to approach this unit as I am in now way, shape, or (artistic) form anything close to an art teacher. I don't know how to critique, what makes one painting worth millions as opposed to another, and I just don't get some a lot of it. All I know is that I like a lot of colour and I like to understand what is going on in the piece, but that is neither here nor there.
On that note, I didn't want to focus on the "traditional" stuff, but rather, I wanted to actually engage my students and not talk at them about the techniques, blah, blah, blah. We have focused on a lot of Arte Urbano o Arte Callejero. And it worked! From the get go they were interested. Phew! It's been a lot of work, and it's not over. I am changing things daily, and just spending a lot of time preparing, but it's worth it. I will break down some of the activities I have been doing to give you a taste.
