In the Classroom: David Macaulay and Our Year of the Sketchbook

Those are my 4th graders sketching during an assembly with David Macaulay yesterday. Yeah, that David Macaulay.  And, yeah, I’d be jealous too.  That is, of a school that had him coming once a month for the whole year as a visiting artist.  You see, we’ve this terrific program called Original Mind where, well, original thinkers come and work with us in all sorts of ways all year long.  David is the third, following Sarah Sze and Natasha Trethewey.

He’s doing all sorts of things, but for me one of the coolest is that he is getting us sketching.  We’ve all got sketchbooks and are using them in so many different ways; check out this great blog to see some of them.  It is still early in the school year and so I’m still considering all sorts of ideas of how to use them in my classroom, but the kids are already loving them.    You can see their beautiful covers and a few of the sketches they’ve done  here. More, much more to come.