Last year I stumbled upon this amazing art teachers Instagram @artofteaching (you can click that link to see it) and she had a great idea for printmaking and was kind enough to email me when I asked her about the process, so all the credit goes to her!
Real Talk: I've never done printmaking with real printing blocks and ink as a teacher in my entire 7 years of previous teaching. In elementary it would have been too expensive to buy materials like that for over 700 students. Since being in middle school, while I have taught basic printmaking skills, I never had the materials for an entire class until this year.
So you can see that I was a little nervous and was glad to have the help of a more experienced teacher for this project.
First I began with my advanced students by simply asking them to discuss what they believed a social issue to be. From there we discussed the different types of social issues and where they fit in within different communities within the globe.
A social issue is a problem that influences a considerable number of individuals within a society.
The different areas of social issues that we addressed were the following:
1. Self
2. Family/School/Friends
3. City/Community
4. Texas/USA
5. Global
After brainstorming as a whole, the class then spent time drafting a design based on a topic of their own choice. Once they finalized their art, they then rubbed the pencil drawing onto the blocks and began carving. Students were expected to create a test print, a ghost print, and then two final prints. They were also expected to label them correctly as artist prints and then label the Edition on their final prints.
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This project was done just before the elections in November, so a lot of these were influenced by politics. |
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Printing! |
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Writing an artist statement! |
How do you incorporate world topics and issues into your curriculum and how do you create meaningful discussions? Let me know!
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