Mrs. Bell teaches eighth grade math and algebra, as well as accelerated 7th grade math. All of her classes have recently learned about positive and negative integers. In the art world they call it negative space, so Ms. Bell decided to start an art project related to integers and negative space. (Integers are “whole numbers…that do not have fractions or decimals..[either] positive or negative values”). (Russell, 2020, thoughtco.com) 

Mrs. Bell decided to start this project because as a child, she loved art and anything related to patterns and colors. She started to enjoy math because she realized a big part of math is about patterns. Mrs. Bell started doing this art project for her middle school students. She stated that it has always been “a beautiful success.” 

Mrs. Bell sets up two art projects; one for seventh grade, and one for eighth. The 7th graders did a project using pieces of colorful construction paper. They used two different sheets of colorful paper, one dark and one light. They then cut out and pasted the smaller sheet onto the larger sheet to create negative and positive space. For the 8th graders, she used an art technique called batiks where they used crayons and dye to create trees and backgrounds with unique colors and shapes. 

This project started because as a child, Mrs. Bell loved art and anything related to patterns and colors. She started to enjoy math because she realized a big part of math is about patterns. She started doing this art project for her middle school students. She stated that it has always been “a beautiful success.”  She has been a teacher for 37 years, 33 of those years at IMS.