Brenda Sanchez

Unit Paper 5
Professor Amber Ward
April 5, 2018

When it comes to standard based approaches in art education, structures and

systems help ensure a strong operational management in a classroom. As Sydney R.

Walker (2001) mentions, to design artmaking instruction for in depth learning, teachers

must first build their own knowledge base about the unit’s big idea to design instructions

that engage students with rich learning experiences. Applying suitable structures and

systems in a standard based classroom can be complex task for educators because as

Sydney R. Walker (2001) mentions, students instinctively look to teachers for cues about

what is expected in artmaking. Having structure and systems as the big idea in a standard

based classroom will help the students learn the key concepts for designing artmaking

instructions. Focusing on structures and systems allows the students to experiment and

take risks in their artmaking when they have questions about the expectation on their

artmaking.

For my future classroom I think applying structures and systems in a standard

based classroom would be a great idea because students will be able to learn the key

concepts in a rich learning experience. Having straightforward instructions in a standard

based classroom will allow the students to have a personal connection with their

artmaking. Applying structure and systems in a classroom give the student’s

straightforward instructions to create artwork As Sydney R. Walker (2001) says, although

artists’ works may be quite different, many of their artmaking practices reveal strong

similarities, and it is these artmaking practices that teachers may use with students to

promote artmaking as inquiry. For my future classroom I would love to modify the
“chance of operation” studio because all students were given the same instructions but

each artwork came out totally different, which allowed each student to experiment and

take risks in their artmaking.

 Reference

Walker, S. (2001). Teaching meaning in artmaking. Worchester, MA: Davis.