Orange Shirt Day 2020

Residential schools were church-run schools where approximately 150,000 Métis, Inuit and First Nations children were sent between the 1860s and the 1990s. The schools harmed Indigenous children by removing them from their families, forcing them to speak English or French instead of their ancestral languages, disconnecting them from their culture and traditions and forcing them to adopt Christianity in order to assimilate into Canadian society. Many of the children were abused. The government has since acknowledged that this approach was wrong, cruel and ineffective, and offered an official apology to the Indigenous people of Canada in 2008.

Orange Shirt Day was started in 2013 by residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad, who went to a residential school in Williams Lake, British Columbia. The day is named after an experience she had on her first day of school when she was just six years old. She arrived wearing a new orange shirt that her grandmother had bought her, but school staff stripped it from her. To Phyllis, the colour orange has always reminded her of her experiences at residential school and, as she has said, “how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.”

The event takes place on Sept. 30 every year because it’s the day that many 

Indigenous children were forced to leave their homes. 

The message that Phyllis wants to pass along on Orange Shirt Day — and every day — is that every child matters. Orange Shirt Day was started by Phyllis to educate people about residential schools and fight racism and bullying.

Many schools across Canada now recognize Orange Shirt Day. All students and staff wear an orange shirt. This year, every homeroom in our school received a large t-shirt cut out of orange poster board. My class (Grade 6) went with the idea of "Students at school should feel...."  They brainstormed different words.  

I printed out a template of feather shapes. I used the template found HERE from the Wedding Chicks website.  Then tinted them a natural colour using liquid watercolours. 

Students wrote their words on the feathers and cut them out.

I then glued them all over the t-shirt.

Please visit https://www.orangeshirtday.org/

 for more ideas on how to get involved in this day. 

 

Figure Drawing for Beginners

This is a great way to introduce basic human proportions to middle school students. I was gifted a whole bunch of those wooden mannequins. I've also seen them at IKEA as well as some Dollaramas. 

Grade 4 - 6 students had alot of fun putting the mannequins in different poses then drawing them from observation. I now keep them in a box in the Art room for students to use when they have free time. they really like using them.

 

Marker Styrofoam Leaf Print

This is a project I swore I would never teach again as I didn't have great results the first time and many students really struggled. But I'm stubborn and thought I'd find an easier way to do this as I think the effect is quite nice and its a simple way to introduce monoprinting.

See my first post about this project HERE.

The main difference is one thing I changed and one tip my students figured out. 

Instead of styrofoam sheets, I used fun foam or craft foam.  You can buy packs of 4 x 6" craft foam at the Dollar Store. Students drew a big leaf shape, with veins, onto a piece of craft foam. They pass over the lines with a dull pencil to create indented lines. 

Then they colour in the leaf shape with water-based markers. 

Dampen a sheet of cardstock with a damp sponge. Immediately place the leaf upside down and- this is the tip the students invented- use the bottom of their water bottle to press down the foam. This weight helped create a more crisp monoprint. It takes a few attempts to find the right combination of paper dampness and pressure. So I'm always encouraging the students to keep trying even if their first prints don't look that great. 

Keep coloring and printing the leaf until the paper is filled.

Once dry the next class, carefully cut them out leaving a thin white border around each leaf. Glue stick onto dark coloured construction paper. 

Some Grade 4 - 6 finished pieces:

 

One Point Perspective Pumpkin Patch Landscape

This is one of my favourite annual Fall projects I do every year with My grade 6's. It teaches one point perspective as well as the idea that objects get smaller as they get further back in the distance.

I posted this lesson previously HERE.

We start by reviewing one point perspective. hey practice drawing a filed on scrap paper and show me that they understand the concept. Then they practice drawing both a barn and a scarecrow. Once they're all warmed up, they start drawing their good copy.  

If we do this lesson closer to Halloween, many kids make theirs 'spooky'. 

Sketch it all out, outline in thin tip Sharpie and then use the bleeding marker watercolour technique. You could of course also just colour these with coloured pencils or markers or regular watercolours. 

Some Grade 6 results: