Mr. Mills Blog

The 5th graders have finished their public service announcements, and I can definitely say they are excellent. With all the information I threw it them over the past few weeks, they handled it very well and came up with some great projects. I was particularly impressed with the music choices for their commercials. I will be showcasing these projects at the CUIP Tech Expo next Thursday at King High School. Twenty students from the 5th grade will also be attending the fair. I plan on putting all of the projects on the Murray site, but I have three on there right now. Check them out here.

The 4th graders are also in the middle of a similar project creating poem videos. I expect these to be just as excellent.

On to fine arts…

The 3rd graders took their final trip to the Smart Museum this week. They discussed several different principles of art this week including repetition, pattern, composition, emphasis, and movement. They are really expanding their “visual” vocabulary. We will be doing one more short project next week before they have their final event.

The 4th graders were doing a little cleanup this week. We put an end to their CAPE project by watching a video that Ms. Walsh put together that chronicled there project from beginning to end. The kids enjoyed seeing their photographs and hearing about all of the work they put into this project since the beginning of February. Ms. Gorman’s class also finished up their prints they were working on with Ms. Lager. Next week, we will continue with the surrealism project we started at the end of March.

The 5th graders began a new project making mythical creature sculptures out of clay. Ms. Tepper from the Hyde Park Art Center showed both classes on Tuesday how to mold, attach, and form their clay. They learned how to keep it “mooshy” even though they were not going to be working on it day after day. The creatures are really coming along great. They will be finishing them next week, so they can be fired in the kiln over the Memorial Day holiday.

Finally, the 6th graders finished up their relief prints this week. We are starting our final unit on graffiti. This week, the students are painting a brick wall on cardboard that they will use as a background for their design. I’m very excited about this project because I have a lot of great images for them to see and the students will get to use an airbrush.

Finally, for the midterm, I gave every student a “/”. With the new IMPACT system, this was used in place of a “P” for pass. I will have a more complete rubric for fine arts in the fall.

Until next week…