After about 30 minutes of looking for lesson plans I realized if I went with my initial plan to just fire off the first ten lesson plans I found I would not feel comfortable using those lesson plans with an actual class. This is because the majority of the lesson plans tell students what to do and leave very little room for their own creativity.
I believe times when students are given an art activity they deserve to be able to choose how they want to express themselves. I recognize that there are certain creative elements in the Ontario curriculum that students have to meet, but these are broad enough that students don't have to be given step-by-step instructions on how to regurgitate exactly what the teacher is expecting. In most subjects students have to follow exact instructions be it structure writing in a specific way or complete a math problem following exact steps. So when students are given a chance to do something creative, they deserve the chance to actually be creative.
It was difficult for me to remember to leave room for students' creativity when choosing lessons. Often I would think a lesson would be good but I realized all students would end up creating almost the same thing, something I noticed in my placement classroom.
This is a picture of the art students in my placement classroom did before I arrived. It didn't leave a lot of room for creativity, because they had to follow the same tree shapes and the same colouring scheme. When I was picking out my ten lesson plans I did my best to pick out lessons that would allow students some more creativity than this.
When I have my own class I will do my best to expose students to numerous types of art activities so they can experiment with many new types of art forms.
I feel everybody should learn traditional and modern techniques of art. I always teach my little students different art types and tips for creating that easily. Recently I am teaching them modern Aboriginal Art.
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