Fifth graders working on self portraits

In order to build students' growth mindset , students have been learning of artists and other famous people who at first  failed, kept trying and then succeeded.

 Students learned different drawing strategies and exercises to improve their observational drawing skills such as  blind contour drawing where they were only allowed to look at the object and not their paper. This strategy helps students to learn to focus on the object and what they actually see versus what they think they see.

Students also did exercises in upside down drawing which confuses your brain so that you focus on the lines and shapes of a picture versus the image itself.

Students also learned that by focusing on the negative space around an object instead of the actual object, this can also help them to draw something accurately.

Students are creating a self portrait where one side is realistic and the other side is surrealistic to represent what is "inside" them such as their values and interests as a person.

They folded a picture of themselves in half and in order to make it symmetrical, they finished the other side. Students did a contour drawing first and then learned to add shading and value by looking at the value on the fact as shapes first.

Here are some in progress