In Aca-Awesome Sean and his students have been listening to and singing songs through a karaoke website. The students are discussing how covering a song can “can make it your own” by singing it in a way that is very different from the original. They have also discussed listening to “old people music” (as per one of the students) which led to a discussion of how much and how often popular music they are listening has been re-hashed from an old song. Sean was able to give them several example of songs they didn’t realize were covers from some of today’s most popular artists.

In Exploring Movement Elective with Miri the students are creating games using pieces of colored cloth. This game was called flag tag. Each person was on their own trying to capture other people’s flags.  In another version it was a similar concept but a team effort. It is fun to come up with active games using critical thinking skills where the games are based on using movement as well as strategy.

Middle school Electives Basketball and Iron Girls are on the bus ready to go to their Electives classes. These awesome electives get to travel to their classes a other venues. The Basketball Elective goes to a super nice outdoor basketball court at the park to develop their skills. The Iron Girls Elective travel to a local gym to learn about Crossfit and workout. They also learn about concepts that develop their minds to be healthy, and worldly young women. 

This year I (Mr. Chris) got to do the original arts project with the Francine Delany Middle School students. We discussed the elements of art: color, shape, line, form, texture, space, and value. We looked at the Art of Hundertwasser and Klimt. Both artist use a great deal of line, texture, patterns and shape to create interesting contrast and space.  We also looked at Mexican bark painting and how there use of bright color and a frame makes a piece of art much more visually interesting. The top image is just one of the ways students utilized the skills and information they received to create something with great visual interest and overall beautiful works of art.