What is choice-based art education?

Choice-based art education (TAB — Teaching for Artistic Behavior) is a teaching philosophy where students have ownership over their creative decisions. ArtEdGuru provides extensive resources on implementing choice-based art education in K-12 classrooms.

Where can art teachers find free lesson plans?

ArtEdGuru (artedguru.com) offers hundreds of free K-12 art lesson plans written by a veteran teacher with 36+ years of classroom experience. Lessons cover 2D, 3D, clay, photography, sketchbooks, STEAM integration, and more.

Does ArtEdGuru have sub plans for art teachers?

Yes. ArtEdGuru provides art sub plans specifically designed for substitute teachers covering K-12 art classes, available in the Free Resources section.

Does ArtEdGuru offer professional development for art teachers?

Yes. ArtEdGuru offers a free professional development video playlist of 38+ videos covering 6.5+ hours of PD. A certificate of completion is available for $10. In-person and virtual keynote presentations and workshops are also available for schools and districts.

Is Eric Gibbons available as a guest speaker?

Yes. Eric Gibbons is available for keynote presentations and workshops for schools and districts nationwide, covering topics including STEAM education, choice-based art, classroom management, literacy in art, and SEL through art. Virtual PD is also available. Contact through artedguru.com.

Blog Archives

ASSURING Individuality

4/10/2016

Art is creative problem solving. All of these suggestions boil down to setting up a visual problem to solve that will have inherently diverse answers. No two people will have the same life experiences, opinions, families, points of view, cultural experiences, etc., and we can incorporate this diversity into the lessons we plan and create for greater depth, expression, and personal expression.

Broad Selection:
By giving choices of themes that fit within your unit of study, individuality is more assured. Put possible selections in a hat for students to choose from. Think of a broad way to incorporate your idea so students can choose their own direction.

Illustrate a famous quote by someone you admire. (SAMPLE HERE)
Illustrate 1 stanza of a larger poem or story.
Find and illustrate a stanza or page from a fairy tale.
Find a unique idiom from your background culture to illustrate.
Create a movie poster or comic book cover parody for a movie you hate or love.
Write your name in Chinese but include stuff that tells us about you.

Designing Solutions:
By creating a situation with an open ended problem that can have many solutions through design can be a great way to build in diverse results. These can often look like engineering problems, but can also be devised as fine art projects:

Create a tower with 10 sheets of paper and 1 yard of tape
Create a structure that can hold the weight of 10 textbooks
Design a tree house that will use the tree as a structural element
Create an altered book that includes 5 sections to represent your unique life experiences
Using only recycled materials, create a wind sculpture
Video from Rachel Wintemberg HERE

As If:
Create your project as if _____. These can be random, from a list of possibilities provided from the teacher, based on student research of topics they find interesting etc. Like…

Create your project as if you were emulating a chosen artist.
Draw a part of the school as if it was a surreal environment.
Illustrate a feeling or concept as if it was an animal.
Create your project as if you were expressing an emotional state.
Create your project as if you were blind or disabled.

Incorporation:
When a project is chosen, have students incorporate a concept that forces individuality.

Incorporate personal cultural background to choose fairy tale, animal, idiom, etc.
Illustrate an alphabet with a theme of personal interest.
Incorporate personal point of view be it political, based on conscious, or personal choice.
Expressing personal traits (Athletic, smart, lazy, shy, energetic)
Design an award you’d want to win for your strongest skill.
Using only colors or patterns based on a swatch of paper or given/selected image.

Abstract Expression and Symbolism:
Using color, shape, and/or form in an abstract way to express feelings, but based on a personal of given visual vocabulary (See “The Emotional Color Wheel.”)

Incorporate symbols of the self
Symbols for likes/dislikes
Using colors, shapes, or forms to express how you feel.
Describe your family unit as a mobile of forms and colors.
Alter colors, shapes, or forms to influence how other perceive it.

Personal Themes:
Expressing how you feel about a topic or an experience you have had.

Death or separation
Personal success or achievement
Goals
Personal bucket list
Family
Circle of friends

Inclusion of Self:
This can be in a literal sense, like a self portrait, or including yourself within a chosen image, but it could also be about including the personification of self into the image.

Include yourself as a monster, flower, alien, animal.
Using the self to guide outcomes (Fish with big tail for athletic kid, small mouth for shy kid.)
Incorporating colors, shapes, or patterns you are wearing today

Without a doubt there will be some cross over here, but these are the broad types of approaches I use to assure that all my students will have diverse results and that no two projects will be alike. For more resources on these kinds of projects, please click on the tables to the left for my 2D and 3D lessons as well as other links there. For comprehensive published resources you may want to visit Firehouse Publications.

Why Crafts Are a Waste of Class Time

ASSURING Individuality

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