Saving My Sanity With Name Cards!

Every single piece of great art has the artist’s signature on the front.  The signature alone is often what determines the worth of a painting.  Students need to learn that their work is not only fabulous but also worthy of a signature.  The trouble is that many young scholars need a “line” to help them when they wright their name, also most art teachers have hundreds of students which brings up the issue of “which Mary (or whomever) does this art piece belong to?”

My first year of teaching I quickly realized that all of these things were going to be an on-going problem if I didn’t quickly find a way to not only organize the students work, but also a way for each of them to proudly display his or her name on their work.   I came up with what turned out to be the perfect solution.  I print up pages of what we call “name cards”.  These are 1” x 1 ½” slips of paper with three lines.  The first line reads Artist, the second line is for their section (more on this later) and the third line is the date.  I keep these in a small box on the “supply table”.  When a student has finished a project he or she fills out a name card and then glues it to the artwork.    This also solved another problem, that being “is this student finished or not?”  By affixing a name card to the front the student is telling me that he or she is finished and the project is ready for grading. 

I use this method for my 1^st 2^nd and 3^rd graders.   Many kinders are still learning how to manipulate a pencil, and I have found that the small slip of paper causes frustration (read tears) for some of them.  By the time students have entered the 4^th grade I have them sign directly onto the front of their artwork. 

So what is a section?  A section is a way that I identify whom is in which class, without having anyone else’s name (like their classroom teacher) on the artwork.  Since I only see each class once a week I use a number for their grade level and an abbreviation for the day of the week.  Therefore first graders who come on Monday are 1M, followed by 1TU, 1W, 1 TH, and 1F.  The other grades use the same abbreviations and just change the number to reflect their grade.  If you see students more than once a week, just change the abbreviation to an arbitrary letter. 

This method has kept me relatively sane while grading and sorting the students’ artwork!

5th Grade Painted Spheres

     I find that after summer or winter break it is nice to start off with a "short and simple" type of project.   This is one of my favorites as the kids really enjoy watching their paper "bend" as they progress through the lesson. 

I have the kids use compasses to draw the circles,  some can do this totally on their own, some buddy up with another student, and there are a few that I assist.  The biggest obstacle for this is-believe it or not-hand strength!  Personally, I blame all things with a screen.  When I think back to how my own children spent their early years, their days involved many fine and gross motor skills.  The internet was just getting started, I think there was one or maybe two gaming stations, and those VHS tapes took up a lot of storage space!

The part that I find most interesting is that academic achievement, socioeconomic status,  race, sex, or age seem to have no correlation to hand strength in my students.   Hand strength or lack of it seems to simply come from how students spent their time outside of school, beginning with their pre-school years and continuing on.

The best thing about this problem is that it's easy to help kids improve their hand strength.  Coloring, cutting, and painting are all good things, but remember they mainly work the dominate hand.  Playdough, legos, and other things that encourage the use of both hands are also necessary.  The beauty of this is that all of these activities are not only inexpensive, but can become valuable family time as well.