"I think we read the book because we've been learning a lot about art and public art. It connects because the book is about the artist Vermeer." ~ Priya
"I think we did this book because we were learning about artists and Vermeer was an artist." ~ Bianca
"It connects with riddles. It helps us with our brains." ~ Jaxton
"I think it connects to the class because at the beginning of the year, Ms Elder said we'd be learning about people. I think that might have something to do with our history." ~ Abigail
"It connects with mysteries because there was an art crime that happened." ~ Ina
"This book can help us throughout our lives if we need to solve some problems." ~ Desiree
"The book connected to patterns. There were pentomino puzzles and things that would happen over and over, or kept popping up." ~ Jasper
"There were multiple 12s in the book and frogs." ~ Gaby
Teacher Reflection
We started
the year by reading Chasing Vermeer
by Blue Balliett together. This is a wonderful story that provokes critical thinking skills, as well as
engaging students in an art mystery. There are connections to Math through the
pentomino clues given in each chapter (Geometry), as well as the patterns
and codes that are used to solve the crime (Patterns).
The book
launched us into discussions about What
is Art? We brainstormed different
forms of art (ex: sculpture, painting, installation, pencil sketch), and
students brought in artifacts from home that they felt were art (Visual
Art). They presented their artifacts for the class and we documented
how our thoughts about art evolved (Language Arts).
Each of our Guided Reading groups read a different non-fiction book about
art, and keeping track of their learning. They collaborated to create a
presentation for the class, making connections with what we’ve already learned
(Language
Arts).
This
learning has already prompted students to question the art they see around
them. In reference to Public Art, students pondered, How are pieces chosen? What is it made of? How expensive is it? Who
pays for it? Why do we have Public Art? This drove us to research on the
City of Calgary website and discover how citizens are a part of the decisions
about public art (Social Studies).
Through our
research, new facts were brought up that we needed to understand, such as 83% of Calgarians said we should spend more
on Arts and Culture. This brought us full-circle and we were back to
creating visual representations of data (Statistics and Number Sense).
So, in fact,
a simple conversation about What is Art?
can drive a deep, cross-curricular inquiry!
~ Ms. Elder
