Making a storyboard for a movie involves the entire class and combines two visual art forms. Discuss age-appropriate movies with your class and choose one for the project. Dissect the film into various scenes. Each student is given a scene to depict on a standard letter-sized paper, using her own understanding of the material. Allow the students to apply various techniques, including collage, drawing or computer graphics to depict their scene. After completion, discuss the students' interpretations and choices of angles, dimensions, colors and techniques, and place the works of art in correct order into the hallway. Let other students from the school guess which movie is depicted.
Grid drawing is a way to explain to children that art is not only about inspiration, but also involves a certain amount of math and calculation. Ask the children to cut out a favorite picture or photograph from a magazine. They then have to glue the picture onto a piece of white paper before drawing a grid with squares of equal sizes over the cutout. On another piece of paper, they will copy the grid with exactly the same measurements as on the picture. The students then have to copy the content of their chosen picture square by square onto the empty grid. Alternatively, the students can minimize the picture by placing the details into a smaller grid, or maximize it by copying the original picture in to a larger frame.
Some artists use installations to create awareness about social issues. Seventh-grade students can learn this kind of artistic expression by decorating a fishing net with pictures of marine wildlife together with the junk deposited in waterways. Purchase a decorative 32-square-foot fishing net and hang it on the wall. Ask the students to research marine wildlife in a predetermined area and create some of the animals with the help of paper mache, paper or modelling clay. The students then have to find examples of the junk fishermen tend to find in their nets. Junk items can include plastic bags and bottles, drink cans, glass shards and tin foil containers. Decorate the net with the assembled artifacts and the junk to give a visualization of the pollution of the oceans.
You can give the class a really good time, and fulfill the curriculum that requires seventh graders to understand three-dimensional design principles by asking the students to develop a computer game. Various online sites offer free resources allow students to create their own 3D environments, including buildings, landscapes and characters. Before the project can start online, the class has to develop rules, define characters and describe the design. Depending on the amount of computers available, you can divide the class into groups that each develop their own game.