social studies – art room artifacts

Have y’all heard of HyperDocs? They have revolutionized the way I prepare and facilitate curriculum and instruction in my classroom. For me personally, I feel that HyperDocs and blended learning make me a more efficient teacher. Also, it enables me to better accommodate my students and their needs as learners and embed more choice in the art room. It creates autonomy in my classroom and allows more time for enrichment.

You can learn more about HyperDocs here. Simply put, they are interactive documents with hyperlinks to various forms of content relevant to a given lesson or unit curated to engage the learner in an inquiry-based manner.

Here are some ways that my students have explored art through HyperDocs this year:

Recently, I had the chance to collaborate with the fabulous 8th Grade Social Studies team at my school. As part of their curriculum, they discovered the significance of the landscape artists of the Hudson River School. After a brief art history presentation of the hidden qualities of these paintings, students ventured across the country into the pop-up mini galleries. Using iPads to access QR codes, students compared and contrasted selected works of the portfolios Hudson River School artists and journeyed along the path in which an artist made their plein-air sketches before returning to their studio to paint. Students then used formative and extended their knowledge with a S’More.

Finally, students were challenged to take a photograph that illustrates the style of the Hudson River School artists over their Spring Break.