Creating Artist Statements Using Google Forms

One of the best things about my being on sabbatical this year is the opportunity to volunteer in my son's 4th grade classroom.  As a classroom teacher myself, it has been the very rare occasion that I have been able to be a part of his school day.  This year I will be teaching an art lesson in his classroom once a month. He and I are both very excited about this arrangement!

Our first adventure in art was a relief Leaf-Printmaking lesson that focused on the elements of texture, value and color. I was inspired by one of my favorite art sites: deepspacesparkle. Students choose a variety of leaves, and then printed them onto black paper with white ink using rollers and deckles. 

After the printing process was complete, students choose either warm or cool color acrylic paints to sponge in the background. 

The most innovative aspect of the lesson for me was the opportunity to try out using Google Forms to have the students create artist statements for their artwork.  I learned about the process here.  After creating this template,

I brought it up on each of the classrooms' five desktop computers.  As students finished their art, and cleaned up their workspace, they sat down at the computers and began to reflect on their work. 

The beautiful thing about using Google Forms is the spreadsheet that is automatically generated as students complete the form.  Instead of typing out each students work, I simply had to cut and paste their responses into a blank table.  After editing for spelling and conventions, I was able to print out & cut apart each artist statement.  This entire process took me less than 30 minutes from the time they walked out the door at the end of the day.