Elements of Art Vocabulary and Bus Stop in Grade 2

This week in Grade 2, students were learning how to describe and discuss visual art in anticipation of responding to artwork they had picked or created on Ms. Anita's class blog.

Last week, using this scaffold originally developed by Marcelle Houtermann, we had practiced writing a full and descriptive personal response to a few artworks.

We first viewed an interactive version of Van Gogh's Starry Night together. This experience was similar to an interactive read aloud, but more like an interactive view aloud. 


Starry Night (interactive animation) from Petros Vrellis on Vimeo.

In viewing this, we discussed vocabulary related to elements of art such as: line, shape, artform, midground, foreground, background, colour, and movement. I thought aloud while I looked at the image. We zoomed into the spatial elements and examined the colour combinations. We also explored what about the image gave it a semblance of motion. I also took the opportunity to model responding by adding to some of our response/comment sentence starters.

Students then shared a scaffold with a partner,  viewed the class blog together with an iPad, decided on an image to respond to, and drafted a written response together.

In looking back over these scaffolds, Ms. Anita and I decided that we wanted students to use a little more content specific vocabulary. Ms. Anita found this blog post by Cathy Hunt on the elements of art which I shared with students, discussing images we viewed together. 

Then it was the students' turn. Rather than just giving students a list of words related to these elements of line, colour, shape, value, and form, I felt that together they could probably create lists of more value and meaning. I informed students that we were going to create some useful tools to help us write more in depth responses to art and that we were going to do this by doing an activity called bus stop. I informed students that they would rotate around at least 4 of the elements of arts posters that I had created. Every group would have to write words they could come up with related to each of these elements. We talked about how we had to write neatly and of normal size so that we could all share in the list generation and use the knowledge we all had together. 

After four rotations, each group picked up the poster they ended at and shared the words on it with everyone on the carpet. 

Students then referred to these words when responding to the artworks of others, usually with an evaluative statement such as, "...I like how you put shadow and make it dark and you also put a basket of fruit beside it and good background and you make the background a pattern."