Quality Artwork in the Choice Based art room

One of the biggest concerns that art teachers have when transitioning to a choice-based or TAB approach is the decrease in "quality" of student work.  I can tell you with absolute certainty that you will need to think deeply about your philosophy of what quality in student art is (and make a plan to get your community on board). If you are interested in reading more on the topic there is a great blog post from the Trinity Episcopal school on adult vs child aesthetics that can be found here.  I share it every year at back to school night with our parent community.

Just because a choice-based classroom is tuned into child-appropriate aesthetics doesn't mean that we don't teach media-specific skills. In a choice-based art room, craftsmanship does have a role.  Modeling and encouraging the development of technical skills helps students to build their confidence and express their creativity in a meaningful way.  How can one teacher do this in a classroom when students are working with different media simultaneously?  Let me introduce Craftsmanship Posters!

Enter.... Craftsmanship Posters!  I refer to these posters (I created a set of 11 of them) often when I conference individually with students.  When media-specific scales like this are explained and framed in a simple and positive way (no happy or sad faces here) with your students, they are effective at raising the bar in skills.  I always love to tell the story of the challenge that I faced making the #4 example for sewing. I had to try 3 times before I made it to my own satisfaction. I thought it would be easy and boy was I wrong!! The point being, everyone starts somewhere and it's great to have a goal to work towards.  

Maybe you have a student whose cutting skills are at a 1 and her goal is to move them to a 2, that's great! It's important for your students to be able to have an honest look at their own artwork and decide what goals they want to set for themselves.

If you want to get these posters for free, please click the button below!

I hope you and your students find them useful.