The Arts in Marblehead Public Schools

 Music, Visual Arts, Theatre, Dance, Practical Arts

Students at work: Creating, Performing, Responding, Connecting

The mission of the Marblehead Fine Arts Department is to provide a comprehensive program that enables students to express ideas and emotions through the performing and the visual arts.  Goals include helping students develop and expand their abilities to create, perform, and reflect on their artmaking, to develop their understanding of cultural and historical connections to the arts, and to apply and enjoy the arts throughout their lives. The Fine Arts Department believes in the importance of having students participate in a culture that fosters exploration, experimentation, and artistic communication; to publicly exhibit and perform one’s art; and to work with teachers who are life long learners as artists and arts educators.

Visual Arts: Grades PreK-3

By the end of grade 3 students will:

Standard 1: Methods, Materials, and Techniques

·        Experience methods, materials, and techniques through the use of a variety of media including drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, clay and other 3D media

·        Identify the difference between dry and wet media

·        Learn and use art vocabulary related to methods, materials, and techniques

·        Learn to use materials and tools safely and with care

Standard 2: Elements and Principals of Design:

·        Experience color mixing - primary, secondary, warm and cool, and “seasonal” colors

·        Be introduced to the elements and principals of design - color, line, texture, shape, pattern, composition

Standard 3: Observation, Abstraction, Invention, and Expression

·        Create artwork from observation and nature; from memory and imagination, and from personal expression

·        Explore abstraction through the use of material, technique, or theme

Standard 4: Drafting, Revising, and Exhibiting

·        From time to time, use thumbnail sketches before working on final copy

·        Experience having artwork exhibited in school and community

Standard 5: Critical Response

·        Begin understanding criteria and learn how to evaluate one’s own artwork.

·        Participate within group discussions by identifying materials used, describing what is seen in art, and what young artists are most proud of.

Standard 6: Purposes and Meanings in the Arts

·        Begin developing an understanding of cultural and historical connections to the arts and other subject areas

Standard 7: Roles of Artists in Communities

·        Participate in events and artist-in-residencies with artists, performers, and authors, in and out of the community, through enrichment programs to learn about artists’ lives, styles, materials, and cultural connections.

Standard 8: Concepts of Style, Stylistic Influence, and Stylistic Change

·        Create works inspired by historical or cultural styles

Standard 9: Inventions, Technologies, and the Arts

·        Begin to understand that artists are inventors of lots of different ideas.

·        Make discoveries and analyze how materials are used in the introduction of the lesson and/or the reflection at the end of the lesson.

Standard 10: Interdisciplinary Connections

·        Connect art to grade level curriculum areas often leading to student exhibitions of learning (concerts or culminating program of unit of study)

Visual Arts: Grades 4-6

By the end of grade six students will:

Standard 1: Methods, Materials, and Techniques

·        Experience methods, materials, and techniques through the use of a variety of media including drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, clay and other 3D media

·        Experiment with mixed-media projects such as crayon or oil pastel resist

·        Begin controlling