Listen. Connect. Empower.

Our school participated in the Students Rebuild initiative two years ago for the first time and I found it to be a wonderful opportunity to integrate picture books and artivism into our thinking. This year's theme "Unique & United" spoke to my heart. This would be a wonderful way to explore identity and community while creating and communicating with each other to raise funds for non-profits. (Through this organization, with every piece of student work that is created, $5 is donated to a non-profit).  While the culminating project (shoe creation) came from the Students Rebuild resources , the opening activities and read alouds were designed by myself and my colleagues. We began with a read aloud. These books celebrate our unique selves. Students were then tasked with creating a self portrait. They could draw themselves as a Lego mini-fig or build a self-portrait with Legos. I was surprised that so many chose the drawing option - I thought for SURE Legos would be an o...

Our 3rd grade students learn about the history of their town and take walking field trips every spring to local historical sites.  This year I chose several books and activities that would focus our thinking on community art, ultimately leading them to a classroom project where they create a symbol for the town based on what they learned.  We began with the book Maybe Something Beautiful  written by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell and illustrated by Rafael Lopez . Part 1 - Laying the foundation (reading the book) After reading I asked students why people create community art.  Overwhelmingly students decided it was to make the community more beautiful and to make people happy, but students had questions.  Was this considered graffiti?  What was the difference between art and graffiti?  We ultimately decided that if someone had permission from an official source, it was not considered graffiti. Part 2 - Digging deeper (meeting the illu...