Drawing Tonal Starter for Tonal Drawings

I just wanted to share a teaching resource that has had a large impact upon the way I teach KS4 (14-16 year old students)drawing, more specifically tonal studies and the way my students learn. This teaching resource can be found here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mark-Schmidt as a freebie. It's called

Another One Point Perspective Tutorial

Looking to boost students abilities and self-esteem in drawing?
Want students to produce a high quality outcome?

I have found being able to show students and have them follow along line by line when drawing increases their self-confidence and allow them to achieve a higher quality outcome. It has also given me more time to go around and give selected students more guidance when drawing, showing them the proper techniques and guidance on the rules of perspective.

I have found that students have even gone home and tried drawing in perspective because they felt enabled. If students have a good time doing something and feel that they can achieve a quality outcome in, they will be much more focused in lessons and keen to show others. For me this project is about building confidence. Yes, learning to draw in perspective is good as well but I feel enabling students is worth much more.

This is why I have created my second follow along, line by line, one point perspective power point. Please check out the power point here:
www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/One-Point-Perspective-Bedroom-Step-by-Step-Draw-Along

More details about how to use this power point and how to take it further can be found in the above link. One perspective drawing can also be found in the link.

Thanks for viewing and I look forward to hearing about how this power point has impacted your students.

Thanks
Mark

Video by students for exchange trip fundraising

I'm so proud of my students preparing to go on thier exchange to Canada to perform drama pieces in a festival. They have raise half of their target funding and are pushing towards the rest. They have just released a brief video attached to their crowdfunding pitch.
Please have a visit and share this link with many others.
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/investment/artistic-exchange-1083

Thanks
Mark

Rule of Thirds Power Point

Do your art students draw very small?
Do they draw directly in the centre of their page every time?
Want to know how to help them create interesting compositions?

I just wanted to share my latest resource called 'The Rule of Thirds'. It's designed as a power point with a printable drawing guide and a lesson plan ready for you to tailor with your specific classes names. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Rule-of-Thirds-Power-Point-for-Drawing-and-Understanding-Composition

The idea is to get students starting to think about where they position their subjects when drawing. Using the Rule of Thirds to help break up the page and allow students to find the points of interest will enable them to structures their pictures in a more creative way. We all know that one success will lead to another and soon the students will be exploring more complex compositions.

Anyway, I hope this power point on the Rule of Thirds helps and I look forward to hearing how this has helped your teaching in your art classes.

Mark

Canada - UK Arts Exchange

Hello Everyone,

I'm quite excited to announce the culmination of the last three months of hard work and long meetings. Below is a fund raising website to raise funds for two students from my school to participate in an arts festival in Canada. Therefore it is an international exchange between schools from Canada and the UK.
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/investment/artistic-exchange-1083

Please have a browse of the website to find

Making Phone Calls Home!

Howdy,

I am looking at tracking my phone calls home this year digitally. We all know how important it is to make phone calls home to parents about behaviour (both positive and negative, but I really can't stress how important those positive phone calls can be) and to log or keep track of them. New teachers may ask here why? me keep track of calls I make even if they are positive?
Yes for a number of reasons. It shows you have been making regular contact with parents and it could also save your butt one day ( I hope it never goes there). What I mean is:

• What if a student or parent accuses you of not making a phone call home to let know about the progress of their child?
• What if you need to recall a specific phone call to a parent?
• How many times are you going to call a parent regarding a particular student in your lesson before taking the matter further?
• How will you prove to your line manager that you have made very effort possible to provide for a student

These are just a few issues that I have had to deal with so far in my teaching career. Keeping records of phone calls home to students is something I started early on in my career and has helped me out a couple of times thus far. If you aren't recording your calls you might want to think about it.
I have included in this post a link (hopefully it works) to a simple but straight forward excel spreadsheet that I am going to be using this year to track my phone calls. There are prompts in it to help make it a bit easier imputing the information. Here is the link http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Call-Log
I will take you to my TpT website to where you can download it for free. Feel free to have a browse of some of my other teaching resources while you are there.

If you would like to make that excel spread a bit more user friendly here is a slight modification you can do. It adds drop down menus from two columns that should make imputing data a bit easier on you.
Step 1 - open document and click on sheet 2 in the bottom left corner
Step 2 - click on the first blank space under 'Reason' 
Step 3 - click on the 'Data' tab across the top of the page
Step 4 - click on 'Data Validation' and a little screen will pop up
Step 5 - in the drop down menu where it says 'Allow' select 'List'
Step 6 - click in the blank box labelled 'Source' (it should have just popped up)
Step 7 - click on sheet 1 tab in bottom left
Step 8 - click and drag under the heading 'Reason' to highlight the text. You should notice that the 'Source box has now been filled with your selection from the highlighted source. Click 'OK' and you are finished. Under your sheet 2 you should now have a drop down menu with selected options for you to select. This should make your phone calls go a bit quicker. You can also do the same for the heading 'Reaction'.

I hope you enjoy this product and it works well for you. Let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements or how it helps you.

Mark

Let me know how this works for you

First Day Of School

Well school is only a week away from starting again. I use to get excited and look forward to going back to school when I was a student even though I was nervous about it. Funny enough it is still the same today. Standing on the other side (teacher) I have to admit that I look forward to going back to school to teach and work with students but I am always very nervous the first couple of weeks. I guess it is the unexpected that makes me feel this way. What will my students be like this year? What is my room going to look like? How am I going to