Aliens and Abstracts is an art, writing, and technology project. In pairs, our Walter Hays students draw an original Alien. They then write a word description of that Alien. We send the description, via this internet site, to our partners at Hoover School, who try to recreate our original drawing by reading our word description. Both the original and the recreation are electronically scanned and posted on this web site, and we then reflect on the writing that we did. Did it comunicate clearly? What could we have done to make the drawings more alike?
In the second phase of the project, the same process is used, but the drawing is not an original. We copy a piece of abstract art, and then try to describe our copy. Our Hoover partners go through the same process of trying to reproduce our drawing from our words alone. We again reflect on the progress we've made in writing clearly.
This same process, in reverse is happening at Hoover School!
Student Outcomes
Writing
Write a well-planned and interesting paragraph with
sufficient detail
Present information clearly
Present a picture or express a feeling with vivid sensory detail
Edit own and others' work for quality and mechanics
Use the computer as a writing tool
Persevere through the writing process
Evaluate own writing and personal progress
Reading
Extract the main idea or theme from a text
Use prior knowledge/experience and context to make predictions and
draw conclusions and inferences
Art
Identify and describe visual qualities that exist
in significant works of art
Show refined skill and knowledge when solving artistic problems and
expressing ideas and views in original works of art
Technology
Keyboarding
Word processing
E-mail and telecommunications
Graphics manipulation (scanning, editing)