8th Grade Painting

In this class, 8th graders had an opportunity to experience the subtleties of color mixing by creating copies of master works. When they felt comfortable with color, they created original works using photos or their imagination.

7th Grade West African Masks

This project was the result of a grant received by the Salem Foundation for Public Education. It was part of a unit I co-taught with Ellen Finn, the Derby music specialist. The students learned West African drumming, dancing, and singing along with mask making. These masks are clay replicas of contemporary hand-carved masks from Ghana. The students worked very hard on these, using hand building techniques they learned last fall. Click on each picture for a closer look.

6th grade Fear Masks

These 6th graders were asked to think about their fears and to draw a monster to represent them. They then created monster masks so that they could take ownership of those fears.