Art and the Art of Writing

For those of you combining art and writing, I thought I would share this blog with you. Natalie and the Big Picture. Natalie is an art professor at Colorado State and also is a student teacher facilitator. She is blogging hard but not getting much in the way of comments. Here is one section I found very interesting from a post called "Sometimes you have to hide the carrots":

Writing in the artroom is kind of the same way. Seems like the most effective writing applications are fully integrated and 'hidden' in the content of the class. A lesson taught by one of my students at the Lab School brought this idea home. Students made a dwelling and then wrote a story about who might live there. But what filled the assignment with artistic goodness was the way the student did it. It wasn't just a story, it was a story that had to reference how the dwelling came to look the way it did. It had to address the visual elements and not just be a story. YES! Full integration - veggies in the sauce!

The added bonus for me as the observer was that this particular student had been reticent to the whole writing process. When we met in the computer lab for our final assessment she lamented "But you told us we were done with the writing part!" And now here she is, hiding the writing so well I don't think kids were aware they were doing it. The room full of 6th graders was totally silent and fully engaged. The best part was they were all thinking about their artwork. What a delicious lesson.

Natalie really brings home the point that writing is a part of a much larger process of learning in all subjects and not just English. If only we could get that across to all of our student teachers and current teachers. Go read what she has to share and then let her know you are there. Gotta help keep those professors blogging, you know. Thanks to Bud Hunt (CSU NWP) AKA Bud the Teacher for sharing the link via a Twitter post.

And while I am on the topic of art, I have been trying to keep up with the 366photo group on Flickr. The object of these educators and students is to take one photo a day for the whole year. Tag your photos on Flickr with the 366photo tag so we can find them. Also do a tag search for that tag to see what other educators are posting. Pretty cool idea to help us focus on design and storytelling. Here is one of my latest photos of my son (the one above is one of mine as well):


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