Art
Visual Art at Ross
Art is an integral part of developing students’ ability to succeed across disciplines! Here’s what we believe the arts do at Ross: The arts are a form of communication. They teach students to trust their own decision-making process. The arts demonstrate the role of ambiguity in the process of innovation. They are a way for students to react to and demonstrate their understanding of culture and society. Lastly, they engage students in their own learning through the process of creation. We appreciate and encourage support of the arts as an integral part of student’s educational experience!
Content Overview
PreK-2nd Grade
Goals
The units in PreK-2nd Grade focus on providing students with opportunities to explore concepts and objects around them. It also focuses on growing their ability to interact directly with their environment. There are 6 units that students study across these grades: Community, Contrast, Grouping and Sorting, Patterns and Rhythms, Movement, and Growth/Change. We focus on Social Emotional Academic Development Goals such as confident, efficacy, communication, awareness, avocacy, problem solving and goal setting.
Skills
The PreK-2nd grade skills include mixing colors, creating subjects using space, defining space by using line, and using color to represent a subject. Some vocabulary words we learn include figure, portrait, landscape. We will use a variety of mediums to create art (painting, drawing, sculpture, collage).
3rd-5th Grade
Goals
The units in 3rd-5th focus on teaching students how to use art to act and to do something. They provide students with the opportunity to find agency over their surroundings and shift into themes that encourage students to control aspects of their world. There are 6 units that students study across these grades: Becoming, Perceiving, Connecting, Building, Trusting, and Bridging.
Skills
The 3rd-5th grade skills include creating visual texture, using contour line to define an object or figure, positive and negative space, combining shapes to represent a subject, organizing space through foreground and background, and conveying expression, purpose and meaning in artworks. Some vocabulary words we learn include foreground, background, texture, and the Elements of art: Lines, Perspective, Shape. We will use a variety of mediums to create art (painting, drawing, sculpture, collage).
Kennedy Center Partnership
Last year we partnered with Kennedy Center Artist in Residence, Cheryl Foster! Ms. Foster worked with all students K-5 to create a collaborative work of art focusing on student heritage and family history. Students worked with clay, tissue paper, tyvek, wood, and construction paper to create their work. Each grade had a different theme relating to family history, discovered through student interviews with family members. We will be connecting all pieces and hanging them as a permanent display in the hallways at Ross!
Donations Needed
If you have any art supplies or recycled items that you want a new home for, please send them in! We can use yogurt cups for paint (large or small- large is great for water cups), any containers with lids (Tupperware, ice cube trays, etc), coffee tins, cardboard, wood, scraps from old computers, circle shaped lids or old records (circle shapes are helpful for tracing), glue, beads, fabric, etc. Please make sure any food containers are clean before sending in. If you have something but are not sure if we can use it in art, please email to ask!
Contact Information
Angela Cirillo
angela.cirillo@k12.dc.gov
Ms. Cirillo has been teaching art for 5 years, in Maryland and in DC! She graduated from St. Mary’s College with an Art and Math degree and has worked with students from PreK-12th grade. She finds joy in helping students discover the power of art to give them a voice and to visually represent their ideas about the world around them. She is the Assistant Coach for Cross Country and Track and Field here at Ross Elementary. On Saturday mornings she volunteers at the Hirshhorn Museum, stop by to say hello, and see amazing art! Her favorite mediums of art to work in are photography and ceramics! She is so happy to be here at Ross.
For further information about what is happening in Art, check out Principal Searl’s Weekly Bulletin for monthly updates.