Writing and Art, a collaboration

Gail Bartel is friend of mine who a fabulous artist and art teacher over at my kids' school. She also runs a great art blog that is constantly mined by teachers for original and beautiful art ideas. Check it out at thatartistwoman.org .  The quality of the crafts and art projects my kids have brought home over the past few years got me thinking about how writing is actually a "fine art" not just a "language art," something I think many teachers have forgotten. I know my own son was a fearless writer until grade three and Provincial Achievement Test prep sucked all the creativity out of him.(Imagine a PAT for art- Draw this kind of line, use these colours and it darn well better look exactly like the teacher says. Hmmm.)Gail and I began going for coffee and talking about process - my writing process, and her process for creating art. It's amazing how in some ways, they are exactly the same. We began to kick around ideas for collaborations that we could put out for teachers and parents to use.We have done a few- the first being a Haiku project for grade one. You will find the art instructions at Gail's art blog here. From the writing teacher's point of view, this project needs at least two days. We began with research-the students had the chance to look through bird books (this involved a lot of looking at pictures-this is early grade one remember!) After individual and small group research, we came together as a large group and made lists. On separate sheets of chart paper, we listed types of birds, sounds birds make, colours of birds and all the bird verbs we could think of.After that, I reviewed the concept of syllables-we clapped out the syllables in our names, the months of the year, the seasons. Once they had this down, I introduced the 5-7-5 pattern of a haiku. Each child chose a bird they liked, then from the  four sheets of chart paper, the students were able to create a rough draft of a bird haiku. This was a lot of work, and next time I would enlist the aid of a volunteer to help me read out what they wrote. Once they had the 5-7-5 down, they drew out a picture on a large sheet of paper divided in three. (Storyboarding.)We were also able to introduce curriculum outcomes in technology. The students used Microsoft Word to type out their Haiku. This was challenging for some, but they took to changing the fonts on each line with ease. They used the final written product in the final piece that Gail had them produce.The best thing about this was the discussion with the kids about the writing process and how it related to art: painting the background, choosing colours for painting and weaving details, adding their work from the computer and putting the whole thing together in a lovely mixed media presentation. The weaving was a great representation for the kids-they were able to see how the individual threads made a nest, a home, much in the way that writers draw the threads of their ideas into a concrete scene or character.In future posts, I'll detail how I work the assessment of these projects...I try to include the students in coming up with criteria - usually done by asking the question "What counts?" and letting them run with what THEY think makes a project successful. The best part is that assessment for this included not only Language Arts, but technology and art outcomes, with a bit of science mixed in. It's nice when a teacher can combine all those outcomes into one project.This was a fun project that covered many curriculum outcomes. The time spent on it was worthwhile, and the kids were able to draw parallels between what they were doing with their creative writing at the same time as they were creating a piece of art.I will try to post as many writing projects as I can. Feel free to ask questions in the comment area. Let me know how much more detail you need in a lesson plan.