Here’s a great lesson seed…  Ask students questions about the importance of art or the role of art-making in their life. The clip below inspired a variety of individual investigations in my classroom to answer the question, ‘What does art mean to me?’. Using Haiku Deck (see example ‘Art is…’ below) students created a presentation that unpacks this statement with strong words and visuals to construct meaning.

This is a great activity to add to more formal investigations, particularly when discussing the big question, ‘What is art?’.  You can use something like this as a simple brainstorming opportunity, a vocabulary builder or as part of a visual literacy task.  Very young students can be encouraged to use and describe art and grapple with art-making terms. Older students could be involved in creating a presentation that requires higher levels of production to effectively engage their audience. The possibilities are endless! We would love to hear your ideas, so please leave a comment and tell us how you can use this lesson seed in your classroom.

Why Art Matters To Me

Art Is…

Haiku Deck would have to be one of the simplest ways to create a presentation, and best of all, the Creative Commons licensed images are searchable in-app. Check out this post on using Haiku Deck if you haven’t used it in your classroom (yet!).

We used ‘TagCloud’ to visually collect vocabulary words.  It’s a useful app because you can feed in words manually or choose selections from web pages and the app will do the rest.  There’s a wide range of styles to choose from and you can add emphasis to the key terms with a touch.

 
And by the way, I can’t ever imagine a world without art…