Posted October 17, 2011

Art and English classes team up to highlight the work of students in both departments

Students work together during the Life Through a Lens workshop.

The National Day on Writing encourages Americans to write, enjoy and learn from the writing of others. English students at Shaker High School provided that opportunity to community members on Thursday night.

The students took part in writing workshops this week that focused primarily on a variety of writing genres, including argumentation and persuasion, and necessary 21st century skills. The students’ work from these workshops was on display on Thursday ngiht as North Colonie celebrated the third-annual National Day on Writing.

Established in 2009 by the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Day on Writing points to the importance of writing instruction and practice at every grade level an emphasizes the lifelong process of learning to write and composing for different audiences, purposes, and occasions.

This year’s workshops included:

• Advertising in the Film Industry
• Fantasy Character Creation
• Humorous Writing – Even If You’re Not Funny
• Life in Lyrics
• Nature, Noticing and Nano-Fiction
• Poetry Cut Up
• Signed-Sealed-Delivered
• Team Writing
• Twitter Review
• Life Through a Lens

You can read the descriptions of each workshop here.

“Celebrating the National Day on Writing in this way affords students with an opportunity to work with different teachers and students across all grade levels toward a unified goal,” English Department Supervisor Beth Bonville said. “All of the workshops encompassed a variety of writing genres as well as incorporated 21st century skills. It was absolutely gratifying to see our teachers and students come together to work creatively in an exciting and positive way.”

The newest workshop this year was “Life Through a Lens”. In this workshop, students selected a provided photograph and wrote a short essay about it. From there, they took a camera into the halls of Shaker High School and captured an image that made them stop and think. It could have been a locker door ajar that reveals the personality of its owner or the music room after everyone had gone. After capturing the photo, students were asked to write a six-word caption next to the photo. This exercise is similar to one conducted by Ernest Hemmingway who was once asked to write a full story in six words. His answer, according to the story was, “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

“It’s a very visual workshop,” Bonville said. “Through the use of photography, you can really get a sense of what someone is trying to convey."

Art Department Connection

The Art Department joined forces with the English Department on Thursday night to also display student works of art. Their projects center around an event called The Big Draw.

Launched as a one-day event in 2000, The Big Draw is now an annual month-long festival of over one thousand events across the United States and Unites Kingdom. The Big Draw is the Flagship program of the Campaign for Drawing with the goal of bringing communities together in creative ways. The Big Draw is largest drawing festival in the world and North Colonie is a registered participant this year.

The writing workshops are all charged with art-related experiences this year.

"Our charge to the art students was to produce work that involved “drawing” on the workshop themes or was connected to literature and English Language Arts," Art Supervisor Anne Manzella said. "Expressive portraits, landscapes, graphic designs and illuminated letters are some of the results."

Student artwork, both written and drawn, will be on display throughout the evening for community members to view.

“It’s a great collaboration effort between both departments,” Manzella said. “It’s a celebration of student compositions using multimedia in a variety of forms.”