Sunday, September 2, 2012

PDD Banyan Trees


A great resources for Art Teachers is the Pinterest Sight!  As a high school teacher who is constantly searching for new and exciting ideas, I find Pinterest amazing.

Two years ago, I took on the task of teaching two special needs classes.  One class of students have multiple handicaps, are wheelchair bound, and cannot speak.

The PDD class is for students with a Pervasive Developmental Disability.  Most are considered somewhere on the Autistic Spectrum.

As a high school teacher, most of my lessons involve things like perspsective, value, line, sculpture, composition, art history and the like.  To find material for these classes, I frequently look for elementary lessons.   I found this lesson on Pinterest from the website of http://www.amartny.com/student-gallery.html.  I thought it was a wonderful exercise in negative space.  I taught the students how to draw the tree trunk and add branches in pencil.  Then they were to color the negative space behind the tree in very bright colors.
It was a difficult concept for many of these PDD students not to color in the trunk.  Some did outline around the trunk.  I would have preferred that they not outline but I think they still look wonderful!  Enjoy!




3 comments:

dive said...

A great exercise with some beautiful results, Neetzy.

neetzy said...

Thanks Dive. I do think I will change this format. It is driving me bonkers.

dive said...

Ah, That's better. It was driving my poor old donkey-powered broadband crazy; the flipcard page took minutes to load. This is quicker and easier to read. Nice.