Studio Thinking 2

Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veenema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan,Studio Thinking 2: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 2013).

I was introduced to this volume my one of my graduate professors at the Academy of Alaska Fairbanks.  (Hey Joan!  Thanks for making me read this book!)

The authors argue that visual arts educational activity is valuable, not for the learning that transfers to traditionally cadre subjects, but for the blazon of thinking it encourages all by itself.  Students acquire things in visual arts classes that they don't always learn in other places at school.

According toStudio Thinking ii, at that place are four studio structures for learning:

  • Demonstration-Lecturewhere the teacher delivers information that is "immediately useful" to students
  • Students-at-Work where students are engaged in creating while the teacher consults individuals or groups
  • Critiquewhere students reflect on and discuss their own art and that of other students
  • Exhibitionwhere students plan, install, and exhibit displays of their piece of work

The starting time 3 structures share a chapter at the beginning of the book that outlines elements of each structure.  A full chapter is devoted to Exhibition.  At the end of the book, each construction gets an entire chapter to explore how to infuse the structure with the Studio Habits of Listen.

The authors identified eight Studio Habits of Heed that serious visual arts classes develop in students:

  • Develop Craft- conventions and utilize and intendance for tools, materials, and space
  • Appoint and Persist- focus and perservering through difficulties
  • Envision- mental pictures of possibilities
  • Express- convey ideas and feelings
  • Observe- look advisedly
  • Reflect- question, explain, and evaluate one's work
  • Stretch and Explore- try new things and learn from mishaps
  • Understand Art Worlds- interacting with other artists and society

Each Studio Habit of Mind gets its own chapter with examples of the habit in practice and development from existent art classrooms.

I'm not an art teacher, simply I still constitute this book to be very useful.  The iv structures for learning can easily transfer into my Language Arts and Social Studies classroom.  I often begin grade with a sit-in/lecture that introduces and models the day'south skill.  Students-at-Work is similar to independent or group work fourth dimension applying the skill.  It may not be a sculpture or painting, but it might be categorizing principal and secondary sources or analyzing documents.

Critique is something I'm working on with my students.  We've started reflecting more in their interactive notebooks about what they learn, but there'south potential to practice more.  Critique is an peculiarly useful structure in the Linguistic communication Arts classes every bit they arts and crafts essays and narratives.

My Exhibition structure is ordinarily pretty weak.  At all-time, I display student work in the classroom or on a bulletin board in the hallway.  Sometimes students help me staple things up, but they're not involved in any thoughtful planning or curating.

Creating things with an audition in mind could be so powerful.  My students could assemble sources related to the 1918 Flu Epidemic in Brevig Mission and share them on a website.  They could write letters to the editor of the regional newspaper.  They could compile prove to submit to the schoolhouse board almost why Brevig Mission needs a new school or more teachers or a bigger gym.Studio Thinking ii inspired me to remember of all the possibilities.

I love the book's definition of a studio assignment.  Studio assignments "specify or propose the range of materials and tools to be used, and they pose i or more challenges that are open-ended and result in varied solutions" (page 17).  I want my students engaged in these types of assignments!  I don't desire them to acquaintance history with endless worksheets and powerpoint presentations.  I want to teach them some skills and set up them to work on meaningful things they can go excited near.

The Studio Habits of Heed are good habits for life.  They may be more important than most of the content I teach.  Is information technology really of import that my students know the year that Earth War I started?  Is it of import that they can recite the presidents of the United States in order?

Perhaps not, but it will matter if they can reflect on their own life and the results of their choices.  Information technology will matter if they persevere in the face of adversity, envision a better time to come, pay conscientious attention to the globe effectually them, intentionally express emotions and messages, etc!

Studio Thinking 2 likewise gave me bang-up mental forage for doing fine art projects in my history classes.  I always connect the projects to content, merely I could be doing more than.  I could connect each project to a Studio Habit of Mind to teach explicitly and encourage in my students.

I may not use the instance projects inStudio Thinking two, but there was plenty in the book that made information technology worth reading and enjoying.

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