Art
The Orinda Union School District Elementary Art Program offers a comprehensive educational experience through weekly classroom instruction for all students. Our program follows the California Arts Standards for Visual Arts to provide a rich and engaging learning experience.
What We Learn in Visual Arts Class
Our visual arts program empowers students to be creative thinkers, skilled makers, and insightful viewers of art from various cultures and times.
In the studio, students develop skills through hands-on practice:
- Mastering the Tools: Students learn to safely and properly handle a diverse range of art materials, tools, and equipment, gaining true hands-on mastery.
- Creative Design: We tackle creative design problems collaboratively, brainstorming and combining fresh perspectives to generate innovative artistic ideas.
- Creating Original Work: Students use various media to create original designs, fueled by their unique questions, interests, and curiosity. We even teach them to upcycle and repurpose found objects into brand-new art!
- Creative Process: We engage in collaborative art-making to solve artistic challenges, starting with careful observation and investigation to build a strong foundation for their pieces.
- The Vocabulary of Art: Students learn to articulate their entire creative process, using specific art vocabulary to explain and defend their aesthetic choices.
Students learn to look critically at their own work and the work of others:
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Revision: Students revise artwork in progress on the basis of insights gained through peer discussion.
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Comparison: We compare responses to a work of art before and after working in similar media, describe what an image represents, and compare images that represent the same subject.
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Evaluation Criteria: Students recognize differences in criteria used to evaluate works of art depending on styles, genres, and media as well as historical and cultural contexts. We explore how to explain why some objects, artifacts, and artworks are valued over others.
We explore the big ideas behind why art is made:
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Cultural Context: Students investigate and explain how and where different cultures record and illustrate stories and history of life through art.
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Purpose of Art: Students identify a purpose of an artwork and understand that people from different places and times have made art for a variety of reasons.
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Historical Context: Students recognize that responses to art change depending on knowledge of the time and place in which it was made.
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Community Art: Students create art that tells a story about a life experience, create works of art about events in home, school, or community life, develop a work of art based on observations of surroundings, and create works of art that reflect community cultural traditions.
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Viewing Surroundings: Students apply formal and conceptual vocabularies of art and design to view surroundings in new ways through artmaking.
We discuss the world of art beyond the classroom:
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Exhibition Concepts: Students categorize artwork based on a theme or concept for an exhibit.
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Presentation: We investigate and discuss possibilities and limitations of spaces, including electronic, for exhibiting artwork.
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Preservation: Students explore how past, present, and emerging technologies have impacted the preservation and presentation of artwork.
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Roles in Art: Students define the roles and responsibilities of a curator, explaining the skills and knowledge needed in preserving, maintaining, and presenting objects, artifacts, and artwork.
Many thanks to ONE Orinda and the Lamorinda Arts Council for their ongoing support with our art programs.
