The pupils started with a first draft and made a drawing of a sunflower, looking at Van Gogh's sunflower paintings for inspiration. Then they asked each other for feedback, with a special focus on shape and size. Only friendly and kind voices were used in the classroom during this activity and the helpful comments given were clear and useful. Using this feedback they then tried to improve their work by drawing the sunflowers a second time. They asked for feedback again and then drew sunflowers a third time.
Austin tried to draw a certain butterfly and he had to try six times before he was happy with the result. Our pupils were inspired and quite impressed with Austin's approach. He didn't give up!
This is the type of butterfly that Austin wanted to draw. Here are his butterflies! 
Van Gogh did not only try once either, he made drawing after drawing of sunflowers. This inspired us too. Today the pupils looked at their drafts and they felt that they all could do better if they tried again, so they did. Again they asked each other for feedback and again they learned more about shape and size of flowers and petals, length and width of stems and the shape of the vase. Our pupils finally decided that they had prepared themselves enough to try to go for a final version. They used really nice paper to draw on, they tried to sketch their sunflower drawing with an as soft hand as possible and then they chose colours and started painting.
The pupils were focused, worked hard, chose colours with care and then started with the yellow sunflowers and the green stems. They then decorated the vases in creative ways and coloured in the whole painting with a safe and secure hand. The result is really nice and Van Gogh would have been impressed with our pupils' hard work!
The paintings are now drying in the classroom; hopefully they are dry enough to put up on the wall in the hallway tomorrow. We hope that you take a closer look at our paintings when you see them, and even more so, we hope that you would like to see all the drafts that led up to the final result!