Homework in Art?!? You betcha!
This past bimester, I assigned a research project to my seventh graders. Each of them had to learn about a different career that is related to Art and make an informative poster about it. I explained to them that their posters should be geared toward a middle school audience so that all the students in the middle school could understand the different aspects of the career in case it is something they might be interested in some day.
I was a little nervous that they would have a tough time finding information or that they would copy and paste things off the internet, but they did a great job and filled their posters with interesting information that everyone could understand about each career. The information may not be quite as accurate as I would have liked, but not bad for the first time teaching a project!
One thing I really wanted to emphasize to the students was all the different careers that can be related to Art. Oftentimes students think their only options are being an “artist” or being a teacher and while these are commendable careers (obviously), I wanted them to think outside the box and realize that lots of things are Art related. All 97 of my students created a poster on something different and I encouraged them to approach me about a career that they wanted to add to my list of suggestions.
Here are just a few of the final posters that are now hanging around the building for everyone to read.
Click on each one to make it bigger if you want to read the information.