Creative Amplify Art lessons for middle school.

Over six weekly 30-minute sessions in a half-term, each student draws one object from observation in a new Procreate canvas: a leaf, their own hand, a chair, a shoe. At the end of each session they play back the canvas's time-lapse replay and write one note about their process, such as whether they blocked in the proportions before adding detail or started with one feature and ran out of room. Each week the teacher plays two replays on the board, with their owners' agreement, to compare different approaches. By half-term each student has six drawings and six process notes, and sets a target for the next unit based on what the replays showed.

Tools: Procreate Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

The teacher shows Hannah Höch's photomontages and asks what makes a collage feel like a real place. Over two lessons each student chooses a place in school (the stairwell, the art room, the field), takes three photographs there with no people in them, and draws two elements in Procreate, such as a brick texture or a window shape, to cut in. They assemble the collage in Canva, then record 20 seconds of the place's sound, choosing a moment with no voices, such as doors, footsteps or the hum of a kiln, and add it to the design as its soundtrack. The recorded sound is a required part of the piece, and finished collages are shared within the class's Canva for Education space, where the class views them together and says what the sound adds.

Tools: Canva, Procreate Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

The teacher shows André Derain's 'The Port of Collioure' (1905), and the class picks out how the Fauves used strong complementary colours in place of natural ones. Each student draws a harbour scene from a photograph on one layer, then paints two colour versions on separate layers above it: one close to the real colours and one built on complementary pairs such as orange against blue. They hide and show the layers to compare the two, adjust edges that clash, and choose the version they will develop. In the last ten minutes they add three annotations to the exported image explaining which complementary pairs they used and the mood they create.

Tools: Procreate Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Each student picks a theme from a short list, for example 'traces of use' (worn steps, chipped paint, handles rubbed smooth), and takes eight to ten photographs around the school site or of objects at home, with no faces, names, house numbers or street signs in shot. Over two lessons they sequence the images in an Adobe Express video, write a short caption for each, choose a track from the Adobe Express music library and set how long each photograph stays on screen so the cuts land with the music. They play it back to test the pacing and change the order or timing wherever a picture comes too fast or lingers. Finished videos are shared with the class on the school's learning platform, and each student notes one cut in a classmate's essay that worked and why.

Tools: Adobe Express Nine ideas for your own version in Generate