VISUAL ARTS
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Mission Statement | Visual Arts The Middle School Art curriculum encourages personal expression and inventive thinking through the imaginative exploration of art materials and methods. The program emphasizes a genuine art studio experience that stresses visual imagery and the elements of art: line, shape, color, pattern, texture, and space. Assignments encourage students to expand their artistic skills, broaden their visual perception, and develop facilities with a range of media. The assignments are structured and sequential, but they encourage a variety of creative responses. The studio environment fosters a sense of community, compassion, and respect for every student’s work process and creations. By introducing artists whose work is intriguing, we teach art history in a dynamic, hands-on manner. The artwork is visually compelling in its aesthetic and sense of design and diverse in culture, ethnicity, gender, style, time period, and media. We also teach assignments inspired by self-taught artists who are intent on making art despite psychological challenges. Our artistic practice inherently values different voices and is sensitive to others’ perspectives. In the art studio, students “have opportunities to consider other viewpoints” (Kohlberg). As our students become receptive to the vision of other artists, they find their own voice and take risks to articulate their personal aesthetic. In light-filled art studios, teachers who are also artists share their love of making art. They offer every child the opportunity to feel a sense of accomplishment. The rich studio experience exemplifies The Dalton Plan because students build knowledge actively as they work on assignments in class and lab. The Art Department considers every child an artist and honors their artwork by displaying it throughout the school professionally. Our aesthetic celebrates the subtle and beautiful irregularities of art made by the human hand. Students learn to work with focus and discipline, making thoughtful artistic choices about their creations.
4th Grade Visual Arts Skills Fine Motor, Eye-Hand Coordination, Ability to work with a variety of materials and media: • Work with tempera paint, watercolor, colored pencils, collage, pastels, printmaking, and book-making materials (I) • Cut and glue accurately (I) • Use a variety of brush sizes and types (I) • Work with three-dimensional materials such as clay, wood, sewing, and mixed media (I)
Understand and apply the elements (line, shape, color, texture) and principles of art (positive and negative space, composition, balance, unity, repetition, rhythm, and variation): • Represent objects, people, animals, landscapes, cityscapes through drawing (I)
• Compose creatively with shapes in two and three dimensions (I) • Understand the role of chance and imagination in the art making process (I)
Spatial Organization:
• Consider arrangement, balance, and unity of forms within the frame of the composition (I) • Understand scale, overlapping shapes, positive and negative space, background and foreground (I) • Construct interesting forms with wood, wire, cloth, and clay (I)
Observational Skills and Visual Perception: • Use line to delineate forms. (I) • Measurement techniques with hands. (I)
Color Mixing and Color Theory:
• Understanding and applying Color as an expressive medium (I) • Color schemes: Using Warm and cool colors complementary colors (I)
The Dalton School Middle School Curriculum Guide
