Name: Phillippia Fuqua Role: Visual Arts Teacher, Alabama Grades Levels: High School (9-12) I teach visual arts to high schoolers. Every year I will have a few strong artists in each class, but the majority of my students haven't consistently drawn since elementary school. To help my beginner artists develop stronger artwork, one of the skills I emphasize is using color properly. During the first few weeks of class, we look at color temperature, saturation and value as great ways to add depth to drawings. One of the first activities that we do is a coloring page. Students will complete a coloring sheet of their choice as a bellringer and then turn their work in to me. This initial coloring sheet works as a sort of "pre-test" that allows me to see where the student stands artistically. When looking at their work, I am checking to see if they colored inside the lines, if the coloring looks messy and if enough color was added to smoothly cover the whitespace. After this informal assessment, we get into our color lessons. I teach students how to blend multiple colors to avoid flat coloring. We also look at how light or shadow hitting an object will change the colors. After these ideas are introduced over a week or two, we complete another coloring sheet during class. This time, students are instructed to blend their colors and to burnish their artwork. Using a coloring page for this allows my beginner students to just focus on demonstrating the coloring skills they've picked up without also worrying about how to draw an object accurately. Since I started using coloring pages in this way, I have found that my students have more confidence when they go on to use colored pencils for their independent drawing assignments. A piece of blank white paper can be intimidating to many new artists. Using a coloring page to introduce a complex topic like color to my students has made it seem less intimidating. My students go into learning color theory much more relaxed, oftentimes not even realizing how complex what they are learning is. Using coloring pages also saves time when the skill I am solely focused on is color, since students don't have to draw things out first. This gives us more time to apply multiple layers and improve craftsmanship. This results in my student's coloring skills being much improved, which also ups the quality of their final artwork. I keep a supply of coloring pages in my room now because my early finishers will request them.