6th grade is a scary time for many kids. Have you shown him specific ways to
be creative? I have a hard time being creative on demand, and used to hate
it when I was supposed to just come up with an idea on the fly. Then I came
across an instructor who told us that it was perfectly ok to copy your
neighbor - as long as you make five changes. So, if I show an example and
you copy it - if I made my person green then you can make yours purple. If I
put rectangles in the background then you can put stripes. By the time all 5
changes have been made the piece will barely resemble the original.
~Michal
K-12 Kansas Art Teacher
http://www.geocities.com/theartkids
> So I'm having a really big problem with a boy in my 6th grade class
> who refuses to think for himself. He will not come up with original
> ideas for his work, and always tries to copy my example. I've started
> just giving instruction on media and not giving an example for each
> project, and he just copies his neighbor.>>
