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Visual Arts Arts and Media Basics:
Production Preparation

Visual Arts Production
Preparation Basics

Some Reminders
Arts production activities involve the affective, cognitive, psychomotor, and critical-thinking learning domains. Clarify your objectives and select activities and evaluation methods appropriately. The objectives of the production activity need to be compatible with the choice of activity and medium.

The Production Process Takes Time
One week of clay is not sufficient to fully explore the medium. It is important to remember that children develop over the course of the year and benefit from repeating the experience. Recent studies at Stanford discovered that the brain develops through practicing a skill over and over. The thinking process is developed by repeating. It is appropriate to come back to a medium and a lesson used previously to increase their understanding of the medium. In planning for the year, expose children to a few media in depth, rather than several superficially.

Promote care and respect for materials and tools.

A General Strategy
[v]Be Familiar with the Project
[v]Provide Examples
[v]Stimulate the Class
[v]Encourage Exploration
[v]Introduce and Demonstrate
[v]Outline Important Steps
[v]Let the Students Work Uninterrupted
[v]Help Students Problem-Solve
[v]Choose an Appropriate Evaluation

Be Familiar with the Project
Consider options and plan/develop the activity. Clarify your objectives. Consider individual differences and needs. Familiarize yourself with: procedures, materials, tools. Always try it out first, no matter how simple it might seem.

Provide Examples
Show the finished product that you are expecting. Student work relates better to students but professional examples are also good if they are only to direct and motivate but not necessarily to be copied exactly. If you use a teacher example, remove it from view once the activity has begun. Clarify for students the evaluation method and criteria you will use.

Stimulate the Class
Relate the activity to what the students know or have experienced. Music, film, reading, and field trips are good starting points. Use a visualization strategy to help get students started—talk about, or relate to a familiar experience. Ask them to close their eyes and plan their drawing or art piece before they start. Next, be specific, ask the students where on the paper they intend to start and with what color, shape, line, or element.

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Encourage Exploration
Art materials can be very seductive. The feeling of the crayon, the excitement of mixing two colors together, the sensation of painting can all make you forget your purpose. Provide the opportunity to use the materials more than once. Allow enough time for the students to fool around a bit with the materials just warming up. One entire session can be devoted to just practicing. Directed exploration can be used to teach students the strengths and limits of the materials. Promote care and respect for materials and tools. After students experiment, focus the students on the project and give directions on any limitations for the use of the materials.

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Introduce and Demonstrate
Introduce and use specific arts vocabulary, terminology, and concepts.Demonstrations take time. Don't rush. Determine that a demonstration is the best way to impart the information.Consider the environmental conditions and maintain student attention (for technique demonstrations, consider separating the demonstration and project by time).Try it out first, practice, and plan ahead.Making mistakes (planned or unplanned) can serve useful purposes.

Demonstrations may be:

  • Product focused - following a specific set of steps where students basically end up with the same product (origami).
  • Technique focused - showing a skill or technique necessary to successful handling of materials. Followed by a project in which students apply the technique and products vary widely.
  • Concept focused - show an unfamiliar concept in a simplified, focused and concrete way, such as in drawing, the concepts of overlap, size, placement on a picture plane.
Show students specific skills for working with the medium.If you are uncertain, one approach is to let the students experiment. Then after a couple of days of experiments, ask some or all the students to prepare a “lecture” of 5 minutes explaining how they use the materials and what they have learned about them.

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Outline the Important Steps
Outline the important steps on the chalkboard. Keep control of the materials until the explanation of the project is complete. Students may forget what step follows the first one—sketching the process out on the board can help. Providing a hand-out with the steps illustrated is another option.

Let the Students Work Uninterrupted
Once the work begins, it is best to talk with students individually helping them make their choices. Feel comfortable with as many solutions to the task as there are students in the class. If everyone makes the same thing, you are not doing Art.

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Help Students Problem-Solve
Don’t make choices for the students, encourage them to choose their own colors, compositions, or materials. Use a questioning strategy to help students make adjustments and decisions about their work. Help students be specific, identify and think through choices.

Encourage Distressed Students
Be specific and authentic in praising their work. Focus may be on the content, visual qualities, composition, skills, and/or affective response. Clarify the students' concerns. Don't assume you know what they are referring to when they say, "It doesn't look right."

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Choose an Appropriate Evaluation
Choice of evaluation method is guided by:

  • objectives of the activity
  • purpose for evaluation
  • type of content being evaluated
  • context in which the evaluation is expected to occur
Visit the Evaluation section for more about evaluation basics.

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