My name is Monica Martinez and I'm proud to say that this is my third year at CMS. I consider myself to be extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to teach here for the past two years. Simply because Comfort has the best kids ever.

I've loved art since childhood, and very much enjoy teaching the subject to my students and exposing them to art and artists from around the world.

I'm hoping to make this a fun fun and productive academic year in art class. We have lots to learn and create.

I am also very excited to be teaching 8th grade social studies this year. My bachelor's degree is in history and art so this is the perfect situation for me.

In addition, I will be coaching UIL Art Smart and Maps, Graphs, and Charts.

I'm always here if you have any questions. The well being of my students and their educational development is my highest priotity.

Art can be interpreted in many different ways to different people. What constitutes art to some may not be to others. However, it is my goal in this course to stress that we all have the ability to be artists. After all there is room in the art world for all of us.

In this course, art will be a visual and spatial form of self-expression. That is to say that we will be studying past artist and practicing our own skills of drawing, painting and sculpture making. My students are expected to improve through out the year. Grades will reflect overall improvement, completion of the assignment, implementation of the assignment requirements, and effort. My students will not be penalized or judged on how “pretty” their project is.

I love history. I just couldn't get enough history courses into my schedule during college. Even now, when I'm not working on a art project, I'm reading history books. I find the subject truely fasinating.

My class will be covering Early American History...so basically from the great migration over the Berring Strait to just after the Civil War. The information that my students will learn in their 8th grade year with me will be seen repeatly thoughout their school years on TAKS tests, so its important that they learn and retain this information for the future.

CMS Vision Statement:
Comfort Middle School will provide differentiated instruction
designed to facilitate the desire to become lifelong learners and productive citizens
through excellence in academics and extra-curricular programs

CMS Mission Statement:
Using teamwork with an emphasis on superior performance
in academics and athletics, Comfort Middle School staff and parents will guide our
students to become productive citizens in their community

The students gave their input for the items found in the still life. We even placed the class mascot, Esteban the Rat, in the still life. (He's at the top of the higher level, near baby bones's head.) The Art I students got a chance to just the drawing pencils, and stumps to help them create value changes in their designs. Art II and III students used colored pencils, which are harder to create a value change with, to complete their final project.

The students used their hands to help their choose the best are of the still life to draw. So they experimented with different design ideas by drawing little sample ideas of their design, which is called a thumbnail sketch. They could zoom in or out as much as they liked. Then I choose the strongest design to be enlarged for their final project.

The students were asked to sketch a representational image of the hallway using single point perspective.

This is the hallway that they sketched.

The students were asked to create a realistic single point hallway with a surreal object outside the school. Surreal means dream-like, so the students had to come up with a dreamlike image for just outside the school.

For Halloween the art students worked in groups to create these life size monsters for the halls and cafeteria of CMS.

Also, pictured are some of the autumn still life's.

The legend of the long living crane goes back hundreds of years in Japan. The story promises a granted wish if one makes 1000 origami cranes. So as an overall idea of wishing good health for those who suffer from cancer the students have folded 1000 cranes like the one shown in the picture.

I wanted to show off how tiny some of my students are able to make these origami cranes.

These cute little guys inspired our fundraiser.

The origami ornaments fundraiser:

Isn't that amazing! The students were able to fold tiny cranes to fit into glass ornaments and sell the ornaments for $2.50 each.

Our fundraiser raised money for Relay for Life, $0.50 per ornament sold was donated. The rest of the profits will go towards art shirts for CMS art students.

Thank you to everyone who purchased an ornament. The fundraiser was a complete sucess. We raised about $250 dollars.