At this time of year – and indeed many times of year – our thoughts turn to mind-mapping. How many mind-maps are produced, do you think, in the course of a young person’s school career? Lots, I suspect, and it is often taken as a given that we (students and teachers) know what we’re talking […]
AQA GCSE exam themes
Preparing for the AQA GCSE exams feels like a bit of a marathon. With seven questions to resource, coming up with artists and ideas can really test your creative thinking! Still, I’ve ploughed on through and finished all seven themes and I’m pretty pleased with the results. Each mind-map is an A3 interactive PDF – […]
How to get the art exam preparation right…
There are a few stumbling blocks to getting the art exam preparation right which I have witnessed year after year. Students taking so long to get going that they run out of time, not enough practical exploration, too few artist links, an incoherent project with not link between sketchbook and ultimate final piece… any of […]
Fragments
A new year, and a new set of Art exam papers appear… Interactive mind-map I’ve done my thinking and put together a set of artist links and starting points for the Edexcel GCSE theme: Fragments. As is often the case, the theme is pretty open and I think there are loads of interesting ways to […]
It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas… or is it?
Christmas art teaching resources How do you incorporate a bit of festive cheer into your art teaching whilst still making best use of the precious lesson time you have with your students? Here I’m posting links to three seasonal art lessons that I’ve put together with the aim of making sure there’s some great learning […]
Art literacy mat
Continuing my recent preoccupation with writing about art (see my last two posts on annotation and vocabulary), I have completed the flurry of activity by putting together a literacy mat for my art class. It’s something I’ve long been meaning to do and now look forward to having it on hand to whip out when […]
Improve students’ art vocabulary
Lots of my resources focus on getting students to be able to think about and discuss artworks in more depth. Rather than formulaic construction of slightly dry sounding sentences about the artists’ use of line, tone and colour, I’d like to see students provided with the language to speak meaningfully about their responses to images. […]
Annotation, annotation, annotation…
Getting students to annotate their sketchbooks well in no easy feat… It’s either too much or too little, to wordy it sounds pompous and impersonal, or so basic it just describes an image with no analysis at all. I’ve tried word banks to help students, and analysis guides cased on the formal elements, but none […]
Easter egg art & maths lesson
A one-off easter craft lesson with art and maths links; making an egg from a net
Earth Day art lesson
This is the first year I have been organised enough to put together a lesson to celebrate Earth Day on 22nd April, so I’m feeling a tiny bit pleased with myself. I also love the outcome from the lesson – beautiful, bright ‘bottle blooms’ (or colourful flowers make from waste plastic bottles). What is Earth […]
Top art teaching books
I’ve never met an art teacher without an amazing library of Art books – I love have a browse through other people’s collections and I treasure my own. It’s also great when I get a recommendation, or find something that quickly becomes a ‘go-to’ for students in my art room. Here are some of my […]
Word search to celebrate IWD
Looking for a quick way to introduce International Women’s Day to your art lessons on 8th March? I have produced a handy printable word search with the names of fifteen exciting women artists from across the globe… And check out my freebie download IWD poster with artist quotes here. SaveSave
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International Women’s Day 8th March 2017
Don’t forget to celebrate International Women’s Day in your art room on 8th March 2017! Even if it is just putting up a poster to mark the day, you will be reinforcing an important message and recognising the cultural achievements of women. To mark the occasion, I have put together a poster featuring inspiring and empowering […]
- KS3 lessons
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5 ways to develop more independent learners in Art
tips for developing resilience in the art room
Handouts to get great artist research & analysis
One simple step to improve artist research in your students sketchbooks: give them the material – text information, images and questions – they need to come up with meaningful insights and high quality responses. Easier said than done, possibly… I have long been perplexed at the lack of writing and publishing on the artists that […]
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AQA GCSE 2017: interactive mind-maps
Interactive PDF mind-maps on the seven AQA GCSE exam themes
- KS3 lessons
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LGBT history month is
February is LGBT history month: lesson and posters for display
Valentine’s art lesson inspired by Jim Dine
Thinking of a fun and timely art lesson to celebrate valentines day with your class?
Why is artist research so difficult?
I love learning about new artists; new ways of doing things, what was going on culturally at the time, interesting personal lives etc. But recently I’ve realised that my enjoyment of artist research is built on many years of accumulating knowledge and that much of the vocabulary and contextual background that I take for granted […]