Creative Collaborative Collages

This was a great exercise for my students. We had been looking at positive and negative shape as well as rhythm for several weeks. Students had created stencils of a figure in action, based off of gesture drawings we did from some amazing student models (these kids can hold a pose for ever, aka 1 minute). We had used our stencils to make repeated shapes for some rhythm drawings. But before getting rid off the people that we had cut out to make our stencils, we had this little 50 minute collaborative lesson. 

Students worked together in collaborative teams of 4 or 5 students. They had to pick a setting, and show overlapping. Each team was given an 18x24 piece of construction paper in black or light blue, their choice. Students were allowed to use paper from my scrap boxes, scissors, glue, and construction paper crayons. The people in their collages had to be in action, and they had to present their collage to the class at the end, telling us what was happening in their artwork.

I was slightly surprised how much the students were engaged in this assignment. The one above is of jumping on the trampoline, all the way to the sun.

This one was from my special education kids. They told a long story of one of them fixing the roof of the teacher's house, while tow of them went for a car ride.

The project above is awesome. These students asked if they could make it a sculpture. I said sure. It is a camping trip. They even folded the sleeping bag around the character looking up at the stars.

A little game of street basketball.

This has been the most engaged I have seen my 3rd graders get this year in a collaborative project. At my school it seems rare that I see my 3rd graders in imaginative play. This assignment was a real joy.