Portrait

Look up the word "portrait" on dictionary.com and what it says is this: "a likeness of a person, especially of the face, as a painting, drawing or photograph".

In the first few weeks of school I like to do lots of show-us-who-you-are activities. Such exercises are imperative for building a comfortable learning community, help me and the students learn about each other (important before fully planning for the year), and are a great way to engage learners in the thing we all know about best: ourselves!

We talked about our "likenesses" yesterday--the things we love to do that make us happy--recording them on wordle.net to create a word cloud. See mine here.

Today we talked about portraits--what they are, what they can say about a person, what a portrait can represent--how we can tell a lot about someone just from the details in their portrait: where the portrait was taken, how close the person is to the camera, what the person is doing, what we notice about their gaze, what they are wearing, etc. Then we did a bit of a portrait spoof and each donned the same old felt hat from the dress-up box and drew moustaches on our fingers. Once the portraits were shot in a location of the individual's choosing, it was time for a little editing lesson on Picasa, and ta-da!: a self-portrait for every personality.

Here are a couple of our results. We plan on posting them in the front foyer, along with our word clouds and another art project, to greet the visitors to the school. Enjoy.

My portrait is dedicated to Ms. Errin Gregory, who suggested this great 

lesson idea before I started my first year with my own class. You rock Errin!