“I use to draw like Raphael, but it has taken me a
whole lifetime to draw like a child.”
Pablo Picasso
ARTISTIC LEARNING
FRAME
Artistic Learning
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Belief that children can learn and develop artistic knowledge, skills
and reasoning leading to enhanced visual literacy
Guided art explorations provide interaction with the physical and
social aspects of artistic thinking and creating
Utilize Visual Art Standards as a guide for curriculum organization
and explorations
Adults provide models, scaffold learning and jointly pose and solve
artistic problems
Opportunities are needed to work in depth with media, images
and ideas over time within the learning cycle
Utilize a variety of works of art a models, connections, information
and inspiration!
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
How is this memory like learning to teaching?
I was remembering how she taught me that everything, even ink, had a purpose and a
meaning: Good ink cannot be the quick kind, ready to pour out of a bottle.You can never
be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modern ink from a
bottle.You do not have to think.You simply write what is in swimming on the top of your
brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when
you push an inkstick along an inkstone, you take the first step in cleaning your mind and
your heart.You push and you ask yourself,What are my intentions? What is in my hear
that matches my mind?
The Bonesetters Daughter by Amy Tan
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
Artistic Learning
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What can young children
learn about the visual
arts?
What do the visual arts
include?
How do you guide
learning in and through
the visual arts?
What are ways to value
and document artistic
learning?
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
Learning Cycle
Awareness
Exploration
Elaboration
Utilization
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
Artistic Learning
Observing, Assessing & Valuing Artistic Learning
◦ Process and Product Portfolios
◦ Checklists, Rating Scales, Rubrics
◦ Documentation Panels
◦ Individual conferencing
◦ Student Demonstrations
◦ Games, quizzes, library research
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
Artistic Learning Frame
Artistic Learning Needs:
◦ Belief in child’s ability to grapple with artistic ideas and processes
◦ Opportunities to work in depth with media, images and ideas over time
◦ Perceptual exposure to the visual world and a variety of art models
Artful Dialogue:
◦ Engage in joint problem-posing and solving
I’m not sure how to connect these pieces, what could we use?
These colors are very bright, how would we make them softer?
This idea is taller that our paper, what could we do?
◦ STRETCH visual literacy by looking together
I’m not sure how to draw that either, let’s get a picture of one.
Shauna painted one of those last week, let’s ask her how she did it?
What lines do you see in the outside edge of the sculpture? On the surface?
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
ORGANIZATIONAL IDEAS for
ART EXPLORATIONS & CURRICULUM
DESIGN
Elements & Principles . . .
Line, color, texture, shape, form, value, space, unity, rhythm,
pattern, movement, contrast, emphasis
Art Modes and Media . . .
Drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, ceramics, weaving,
architecture, photography, new media
Periods of Western Art . .
Prehistoric art, Renaissance, art of the Middle Ages, Baroque
art, Modern art, Post-Modern art
Art from Various cultures
Art of China, Native Americans, art of Africa, Egypt, AfricanAmerican, Hispanic Folk art
Themes in Art . . . . . . . . .
The sea, art and nature, Mythology, Animals in art, Landscapes,
Portraits, Images of Women, Music
Aesthetic topics . . . . . . .
Beauty, Artist’s intent, Creative process, Art vs. Nature
Landmark Artworks. . . .
O’Keeffe’s Black Hollyhocks, van Gogh’s Starry Night, Egyptian
Pyramids, Hokusai’s The Great Wave
Artists & their work . . . . .
Miro, Mary Cassatt, Romare Bearden, Pablo Picasso, David
Hockney, Michelangelo, Goya, Frieda Kahlo
Art Styles. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Rococo style, Impressionism, Surrealism, Pop Art, Chinese
Ming period, Dadaism, Fauvism
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
“Do not train youth to learn by force or harshness, but direct them to
it by what amuses their minds so that you may be better able to
discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
Plato
PERSONAL MEANING
MAKING FRAME
Personal Meaning Making
Understanding and Imagination
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Child makes visual language work for herself, to construct and
make meaning, to solve a problem, or share imaginative ideas
Demonstrates creative thinking and problem posing/solving
Spark! Ideas for exploration by connecting visual/verbal languages,
challenge aesthetic judgments and imaginative ideas
Encourage intersubjectivity - the coming together of teacher and
child knowing
Take time for reflection, self-discovery, and re-representation
Discover what and how children “know” - Share with parents!
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
Personal Meaning Making
Understanding and Imagination
Observe, Assess & Value Personal Meaning Making
◦ Process/Product Portfolio
◦ Story making to accompany work
◦ Interpretive responses/ open-ended questions
◦ Pair-share dialogues
◦ Celebrations/Art Show
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Visual Verbal Meaning Making
Personal Meaning Making
Understanding and Imagination
Meaning Making Needs
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Look for “grappling”, frustration, processing through
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Encourage co-mingling of ideas between child and teacher, child and child
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Talk through problem posing and solving aloud, take pictures throughout the
process, record comments, feelings
Artful Dialogue
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Spark! Ideas for exploration by connecting visual/verbal languages
“Tell me why you created this work”
“It looks like there is a story in this painting”
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Validate the powerful images and ideas
“This work has some important feelings in it”
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Challenge aesthetic judgments and imaginative ideas
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
“A difference unaddressed becomes a disability.”
James Collins
MODIFICATIONS IN THE
VISUAL ARTS
Modifications for Art
The more you know about the individual child the better you will be able to
assist him or her in learning.
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Strategies to accommodate diverse student needs:
◦ Curricular or Goal Modifications where assignment is simplified or modified
for some students, enriched or enhanced for others providing differing
outcomes to the same basic assignment
◦ Same assignments, same goal with modifications of techniques tool and/or
media to meet a specific need
◦ Alternative goals, same materials and techniques will be explored, but final
product is altered for student success
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Benefits of the arts : Social-emotional, Motor, Sensory Awareness, and
Cognitive development
◦ The arts nurture a sense of inquiry, discovery, delight and build feelings of
awareness, independence, and success as a creator!
Central Instructional Support Center - http://www.cisc.k12.pa.us
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making
The Hundred Languages of Children
by Loris Malaguzzi
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child: that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things that do not belong together.
And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way.The hundred is there.
No way.
The hundred is there.
The child is made of one hundred.
The child has a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening of marveling of loving
a hundred joys for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds to discover
a hundred worlds to invent
a hundred worlds to dream.
The child has a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
But they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
Separate the head from the body.
PPinciotti
Visual Verbal Meaning Making