The Big Self Portrait Poster Project

As a thank you to parents and the school for supporting me in my Square 1 Art fundraiser, I am going to give the gift of art to everyone. My students are creating self-portraits in various forms. I am going to have grade level posters made of the portraits to give the students. Each student will receive a poster that has their art along with their entire grade level on it. I am also having a mural created with each portrait on it to hang up as a permanent art installation in the school. I varied the types of self portraits the students created. Kinders created Roger Hargreaves inspired "Little Miss" and "Mr. Men" portraits. 1st grade created abstract portraits. 2nd-4th grade created realistic portraits that showed their individual personalities and 5th grade concentrated on their eyes. Some grade levels did my "2 Stars and a Wish" critique after completing the art. They gave great feedback to each other. 

Here are some photos of their incredible and awesome art. 

I love this students interpretation of the eye focused project. He said it didn't show the eyes yet it was all about the eyes. What an amazing thinker. Some students didn't get it but I totally get it. I told him it's an "artist-thing".

2 Stars and a Wish: Art Gallery Walk for Elementary Students

I am starting 2 Stars and a Wish Gallery Walk critiques with my elementary students. We've done formal, all class critiques before but I thought they may like a chance to move about our classroom "gallery" like people do in real galleries. I created slides with art vocabulary to post during the walk with directions to help guide them. This will also help them with spelling.

I will have students walk the room for a few minutes and then stop at one work of art. (One student per art piece so everyone gets feedback). They will then get my 2 Stars and a Wish paper (I made them small enough to save on paper but large enough to write sentences) and critique the art they are standing in front of. If they don't have a wish for improvement, they don't have to provide one.

Elementary students love showing off their art to their peers so this is a quick way to do critiques when you don't have time for presentations. I plan to do this with grades K-5, with plenty of guidance for K and 1st grade. 

See my example below: