Fun and Games… and Critical Thinking

This is Megan Carr.

If you meet her in her art classroom at Oakhaven Elementary, you might just get an “air high-five” in place of a handshake.

The air high-five is how Carr and her students celebrate success – from a well-executed art project to cooperation during group work. When I visited Carr’s first period class last Friday, the air high-fives were in full force.

But the energetic atmosphere in Carr’s classroom doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a product of careful research and planning.

For her Master of Arts in Teaching, which she’ll complete in May 2011, Carr is writing a thesis on teaching art through games. The idea is that an exciting game motivates students to learn. And there might be other benefits of a game-centered curriculum. “I’m trying to find out if games also help students retain material,” says Carr. She often designs new games so she can observe how her own students respond to this style of learning.

For Friday’s class, Carr prepared a game that would incorporate art vocabulary from previous lessons. Seated in a circle at her feet – almost team huddle-style – her fifth graders fielded questions about “horizon lines” and “perspective.” They popped up occasionally to point to the foreground, middle-ground, and background of a painting propped up on the whiteboard.

And that was just the pre-game review session.

Then Carr laid out the game plan. On each of the room’s four tables, a large folder was waiting. In addition to craft supplies, each folder contained detailed instructions for creating a specific landscape scene. To compose their scenes correctly, the students had to work together to interpret the art terminology they had just reviewed.

Carr started a stopwatch, and the students – who were told each group member should have a role to play – assigned themselves tasks. One student, ruler in hand, designed a road receding into the horizon of her group’s cityscape. Another constructed a snowman (complete with googly eyes and top hat) for a winter landscape. Amid the crafting, conversations buzzed about how to compose all the pieces into a unified scene.

The stopwatch beeped: Game Over.

The class reconvened, and each group presented its finished landscape. This was not just a show-and-tell session, though.  The students were defending their compositions – explaining how they put the elements of the scene together and spiced things up with their own innovations. Air high-fives were given for attention to detail, creativity, and teamwork.

I can’t predict whether Carr’s students will remember the meaning of “horizon line” a week from now. But I can say this about Friday’s class: all hands were on deck, and all brains were engaged.

I’ll give an air high-five to that.
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Amy Barger, a native Memphian, edits The Memphis Upbeat.