Stephanie Corder, Art Teacher
AZ Academy, Virgin Islands
Stephanie Corder
teaches at AZ Academy, Christiansted, US Virgin Islands. She
has all grade levels. She had recently started offering Choice
after being introduced to TAB Choice (Teaching for Artistic
Behavior) through the art education list serves. Welcome to her
art room - shown above is a life size color wheel constructed by
her second graders. Students traced their upper and lower body to
make chart for all to see.
Stephanie has
enjoyed her transition into Choice - merging choice with
teacher directed lessons. To encourage observational
drawing, she had middle school students do a shoe and manikin
still life true to form in their sketch books - then they
were to represent any any part of the still life in any
way they chose on quality paper. Shown left is a student
drawing of the actual still life. Below are some of the
different approaches for the final drawing.
Click images for larger
views
Art
History Research with Choice
Students
take on a creative approach to artist research. Shown is how one
student did his research on Salvador Dali. See Lesson
Plan.
Stephanie
On Choice Art Education
"I introduced TAB
Choice to my 7th and 8th graders last week with a completely open
assignment. You should have seen their faces when I
described TAB Choice and told them that we were going to do it!
'You mean we get to do free art for the rest of the year?'
and I said, 'You get free CHOICE of what you do, you'll
still have assignments offered by me, and it'll be your option to
do them or come up with something that relates to the concept we
are exploring if you choose not to do the project....' The next
two classes I had with them have never been so quiet, so focused
with each student totally intent on their work; it was wonderful! It
turns out, they ARE inspired when they get to self direct!"
See some examples of choice paintings below. See
more on Artsonia
For now, Stephanie
offers her teacher directed lesson idea and allows students to
choose how to use the materials included in the lesson. When
she offered an air dry clay mask project, students could choose
her lesson idea - or any thing they wished as long as they used
the air dry clay or plaster casting (for a sculpture unit).
She has found that some students prefer to do her lesson idea.
That works for her.
In between assignments, the
students have required drawing exercises for the
sketchbooks.
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