Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 13, 1993 TAG: 9311160268
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By MELISSA DeVAUGHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Little did she know that the program she and art teacher Michelle Saunders came up with would receive national recognition.
It's called ``Planting a Seed: The Blooming of Art Through Literature,'' and this weekend Wojtera and Saunders are in Tulsa, Okla., at the International Reading Association's Southwest Regional Conference to give a presentation on the yearlong project that has turned first-graders into talented artists.
The conference honors teachers who come up with innovative ways of teaching. ``Planting a Seed'' was one of many projects accepted nationwide to be displayed at the conference, but the only one chosen from this area.
The goal of ``Planting a Seed'' is to teach pupils about art, literature, science and other aspects of plant life in one inclusive project.
``With that line - `the fine art of literacy' - I thought we could go so many ways,'' Wojtera said. ``We decided [to study] plants and growing because it is such a wide subject.''
Wojtera and Saunders began by introducing the first-graders to many of the famous artists in history. While studying Henri Rousseau, the pupils learned about jungle landscapes and patterning. Their first exercises in painting used the concept of overlapping and underlapping to create three-dimensional drawings.
The kids learned about Claude Monet and his famous garden. While studying this Impressionistic artist, they created replicas of his garden in the same soft, pastel colors Monet used.
``These are first-graders,''Wojtera said, pointing to a display of watercolor paintings that looked as if they had been painted by a high school student. ``I can't even do anything like this.''
The joy of this project is that the children in Wojtera's class think they are playing, drawing pictures and painting, when all the while they are actually learning in a cross-disciplinary manner.
When introduced to the work of artist Georgia O'Keeffe, the pupils were studying science by drawing flowers and their parts while examining them under microscopes. They were learning about literature by reading about plant life and writing descriptions of what they saw. And they even had some agricultural instruction, planting and growing flowers in the classroom.
``The feeling from the children is what's really amazing,'' Wojtera said of the project. ``They've gone from `I can't draw,' to saying `I am an artist.' ''
The culminating project for Wojtera's firs-graders was a four-piece canvas that represented the entire year's worth of learning about artists, plants, literature and science. It will be the centerpiece of the teachers' presentation at the conference, and once home, they hope to donate it to the new children's wing of the Radford Public Library.
by CNB