Totem Pole Art

4th Grade: Totem Pole Art

4th graders studied the amazing Totem Pole art of the Northwest Native Americans. (Alaska and Ontario). They watched a video of totem poles and saw some great examples of the white board. We discussed how tall they were (up to 75 ft high!), the meaning behind them (to communicate stories of the family clan and to pass down from generation to generations traditions, stories of the clan). Many times, the artist would live with the family while they were carving and painting the totem pole. They would learn as much as they could about the family. Totem poles feature animals and people and can tell stories about nature.

4th graders drew their own totem pole on a brown kraft paper (vertical). I gave students reference papers of real totem pole designs and a description of the animal and meaning. I also hung some large posters on the board with some example of totem poles I had drawn. (see towards bottom of this post...I am trying to get better at showing my examples and various stages in the student process!)  We talked about drawing more than one animal/figure into the totem pole, symbolism, (a figure holding fish could mean that family clan fished a lot) and using imagination and your own interests to add to the design. Students drew out their design with pencil, then traced with black sharpie maker. The next day, students added color with oil pastels. This was a free color choice, but I did tell students they had to mix 2 different colors to make a third. I encouraged doing this a minimum of 2 x somewhere in their art work. (We were also learning about intermediate colors and reviewing secondaries). Oil pastels are great for blending so the mixing came out quite good. We also talked about values and using tints. 

These came out really great. Students loved the fact that they could be so creative-both with design and color. Great job 4th grade!

I believe this student was demonstrating the food chain in his totem pole-how cool!

Great use of tints and values!

Posters I hung up on the dry erase board. I drew totem poles as examples for students. This helped a lot!

Students drew with pencil and traced with black sharpie.