The teacher for the job was New Richmond Elementary art teacher Amy Cholkas, who has worked with the Art Museum for years writing lesson plans to show classroom teachers how to use the collections of the Art Museum in their classrooms.
New Richmond art teacher Amy Cholkas (right) gets her students, surrounded by the CET crew, ready for filming of a segment for CET's Geometry Meets Art. Students pictured (from left) are Cheyenne Young, Maggie McDaniel, Jacob Noble, Lily Jones, Gabriel Miller and Cade Heflin.
“We chose New Richmond because of a recommendation from the Art Museum and the teacher, who had a strong understanding of art integration so we wanted to bring her kids into the project,” noted Lauren Hess, Art Projects Manager for CET.
Cholkas, who is in her 12th year at New Richmond Elementary and regularly shows the art work of her students at the Art Museum, didn’t hesitate when asked to take on the project. The relationship between math and art fit her perfectly.
(From left) Adriana Solis, Chris Cooper, Ella Calhoun and Griffin Saunders listen to instructions before filming of a WCET segment of Geometry Meets Art.
(From left) Antonia Wills, Bronte Reinert and Aaron Prescott wait for filming to begin of a segment of CET's Geometry Meets Art.
“I often address the art and math standards in my class,” said Cholkas, who wrote two complete lesson plans for the project.
The Geometry Meets Art project, funded by a grant from eTech/Ohio, called for taking a fresh look at K-2 geometric concepts with artwork from the Cincinnati Art Museum and is now on line at http://www.cetconnect.org/vertices.
Cholkas is featured in two 5-minute professional development videos in the recognizing geometric shapes and creating 3-d object segments.
“CET made a few modifications to make sure we were addressing all the standards of the grant,” said Cholkas.
The parts of Cholkas’ lesson plans not included in her videos were used in video clips recorded by the Art Museum for the project.
The two 5-minute videos were condensed from five hours of filming over two days last winter at New Richmond Elementary featuring 13 first and second-grade students selected by Cholkas.
“I was asked to choose children who would be interested and could follow the directions of the TV crew as well as my own directions,” said Cholkas., who selected Cheyenne Young, Maggie McDaniel, Jacob Noble, Lily Jones, Gabriel Miller and Cade Heflin for the first day and Chris Cooper, Adriana Solis, Antonia Wills, Griffin Saunders, Aaron Prescott, Ella Calhoun and Bronte Reinert for the second day.
“I think it was a great experience for the children who were involved for three hours of filming and they all were great,” said Cholkas. “The only exception I have was I felt there was a little more showing of me when there should have been showing the kids.”
Cholkas’ segments are available online at http://www.cetconnect.org/MediaPlayer.aspx?vid=4185&topic=0 and http://www.cetconnect.org/MediaPlayer.aspx?vid=4184&topic=0.
