Eighth-Grade Docents

For this year-long endeavor, we begin at the end of seventh grade with a trip to the Cleveland Art Museum. Starting just before the Renaissance, we travel through the galleries, and students are introduced to the periods, movements, and schools of art, ending with contemporary painting.

Over the summer, students have an assignment that introduces them to researching artists. Each student must choose three artists who were born one hundred years apart and respond to the following prompts:

Define or explain the period, school, or movement. Use more than one source to come up with your own understanding.
What did the artists of this period, school, or movement try to achieve?
To what movement or period/school were the artists responding? For example, Romanticism was a reaction to Neoclassicism. What about Neoclassicism were the Romantics reacting to? Include an example.

Starting with Research
We use Google Docs, and I am available to assist students in their research throughout the summer. The assignment is due the first day of eighth-grade art. Required resources include Janson’s History of Art and The Oxford Dictionary of Art, as well as specific websites. It is important to limit resources since there are so many opinions about certain artists. For example, van Gogh can be called a Symbolist or an Impressionist, but Post-Impressionism suits him best. The resources I suggest have fairly consistent information for most artists.

The second week of the new school year finds us back in the museum. This time we focus on specific painters, once again traveling from the Renaissance to the present. Students are asked to choose an artist they would like to study, present, and emulate in a work of art.

Class Presentations
Once the artists are chosen, with no duplicates, in-depth research begins. Each student is expected to speak in front of a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation that they have created using a minimum of twelve slides to tell the class about the life and work of their chosen artist. If they are going to speak the words, those words canʼt appear on the slide, and images are imperative.

The student audience is required to take notes on each artist. They have access to a study guide, which is a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation of each of the painters being studied.

Following the last presentation, I give them an art history exam with seventy questions that test them on the painter and the period associated with each image projected. The exam also includes student-written questions.

Painting
Following the test, we paint. Students work from a photocopy of one of their artist’s paintings. Since we have no sea or pond and not much of a landscape view at our school, students choose to paint either a portrait or a still life. They are asked not to copy the painting, but paint from life using the colors, composition, and brushstroke of their painter. We use acrylics and 18 x 24" (46 x 61 cm) canvas. Painting takes us through the semester, and the paintings are due the second week of the second semester.

Museum Presentations
Students work on their docent presentations, again on Google Docs so that I may be of assistance. Usually in March or April, we take our third and final trip to the museum. The Cleveland Art Museum allows us to bring their paintings in, and students speak about the life and work of their artist and the process of emulating their work.

Parents, grandparents, and friends attend. We travel as a group, once again starting at the Renaissance and finishing up in the contemporary galleries, entourage in tow. The guards are impressed with our students’ knowledge and maturity. Studentsʼ paintings attract many a passer-by, and their parents are extremely proud, as is their teacher.

Extension
The research that students do on their chosen artists is part of a larger integrated project. Over the summer and in the first days of eighth grade, students choose a theme to study throughout the year in each subject. The artist must somehow fit into this theme. Students spend one month for each subject to create a presentation of their research in social studies, language arts, music, math, foreign language, and science.

At the museum, they include an explanation of what they have learned about their artist and theme in each subject. Aside from music and art, minimal class time is taken for this semi-independent study. At the end of the year, two days prior to graduation, the eighth-graders creatively explain their learning during an evening event—a graduation through exhibition.