Ms. Cook's Gallery - Grade 6

Shadow Puppets - 2021-22 - in-person learning once again!- It is with absolute delight and gratitude that I attended two trainings this year with shadow puppet guru Daniel Barash. He opened the door for teaching this artform to 6th graders that proved to be engaging, collaborative, as well as rich with both grade-level content possibilities and social-emotional learning skills. For one project, my sixth graders chose to represent Greek myth through shadow puppetry. They learned not only how to create a variety of types of puppets, but they learned performance techniques, effective communication skills, creative problem solving, how to give and get feedback and and experience they won't forget. 
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Symbolic Portraits-(2021-Distance Learning)- For their big research and writing project, 6th graders at our school choose a notable person to research and create a scrapbook as if they were creating the scrapbook of this person's life. That is, they learn so much about this person of their choice that they essentially "become" this person and create artifacts filled with factual detail. This year, I decided to incorporate the Symbolic Portrait lesson into the Scrapbook Project by having the students think of an item or object that symbolized the person they researched and find a quote from that person that exemplifies that trait. Because they "knew" their subject so well, the results of their choices were outstanding! 

Symbolic Portraits - After reading the novel Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, students chose a character from the book as well as a quote exemplifying a trait of that character. Click this link to learn about this lesson.

​Collaborative Art - Completed in the first week of school, this was a wonderful art project to set the stage for working together! Investigative math as well as line techniques are woven into this lesson which my students found very engaging. View this lesson here.