Neurographic Art: Independent Term Project

This year my school adopted a new schedule. Now, instead of seeing my classes daily for 47 minutes, each day we drop one period. In addition, each class has one weekly “long block” that is 68 minutes as opposed to regular 47. The result of this schedule is that it is much more difficult to keep my five sections of 7^th grade classes on the same step of our current project. It has required me to keep daily detailed notes: For example, Each Monday, my period 4 class gets dropped, but I see period 2 for their “long block”… by the time Tuesday rolls around, Period 2 is quite ahead and period 4— well, I haven’t laid eyes on them since the previous Friday!

I decided that in order to keep my sanity, I needed to have an alternate, quality activity that could be independently driven and would allow that occasional “catch up” day for students who needed it. I decided that Neurographic Art would be the perfect solution. I had already adapted this engaging lesson in my regular project rotation last year, and it was very successful! Check out examples here.

For this year, I made a few changes to allow flexibility in how we did this lesson.

I have a “grab and go” table permanently set up with the materials and resources for this lesson. (This may be tricky if you teach multiple levels/sections, but since I only teach 7^th grade art, I could afford the table space!)
I made very detailed instructions and goals which allow the students to always have what they need at the ready: Each set of instructions gets attached to the back of their project as they progress through the lesson.
Rather than having this be a “start to finish” lesson, students worked on this sporadically, (sometimes not for weeks at a time,) but with the understanding that by the end of their 12 week trimester, it must be complete. (While I do devote a full class here or there for this project, it is primarily something they work on when they have a little free time).

BONUS: because it is so structured, it makes a great sub lesson and has saved me a lot of prep time when I have absences.

Here is my Google Slide Document with all the instructions. It is designed to be cut into half-size pages, and attached as needed, as the kids progress through the lesson.

Here is a photo of the back of a student’s work, to give you an idea of how we organize the instructions:

Another bonus of having this be a “side lesson” is that students ALWAYS had a quality option if they were ahead or had a little free time. It also held students accountable for being able to manage their progress independently, as I count this as a regular project grade. The “GOALS” on each instruction sheet are the grading criteria that they are eventually evaluated on.

If you’ve never tried out this lesson before, be sure to check out my original post-— I link a very useful instructional video which we always watch when starting off this assignment, plus there are lots of “in progress” pictures! You’ll also noticed on my original post we used watercolor paints. For this current version, we use watercolor pencils. Clean-up and set-up are easier with the latter, and it’s a bit more of a user-friendly material that doesn’t require as much instruction or oversight for success.

Have fun if you try this with your students!