Teaching Craftsmanship

Teaching craftsmanship in the elementary art room is all about visuals and easy to follow guidelines. My students and I go by the "AIM FOR 4" rule when we are creating artwork in our classroom.

I got the idea from this poster I saw on Pinterest. The poster was created by Primarily Art with Mrs. Depp.

I transformed the concepts on this poster into a full bulletin board, and added additional concepts. Whenever we begin a project I ask, "What are we aiming for?" and the class responds, "AIM FOR 4!!" As students work, I see them take their projects to the board to see what number they are at. I LOVE this! This means they conscious about their craftsmanship. Occasionally, a student will turn in a project, but I will have the student come with me to the bulletin board to check what number they are at. If we agree they aren't quite to a 4 yet, they take the work back to their seat and continue. I love this bulletin board because it is relevant to ALL the grades I teach and easy for every student to understand.

New this year:

This year, I have created rubrics and self assessments based on AIM FOR 4 for students to complete at the end of each project and for me to have an easy way to grade them.

I also added "EFFORT AND ATTITUDE" to the bulletin board. 1 is the least amount of focus and effort, and a poor attitude, and 4 is great effort and a contagiously positive attitude.

If you would like to use my AIM FOR 4 Bulletin Board in your classroom - please send me a message here, or contact me via my Instagram @missbradyart. I would be happy to send you the document!

The font used on my bulletin board (and other boards throughout my classroom that you can see in my last blog post) is Hello Big Deal font by Hello Literacy. You can find her AMAZING fonts here.