OSTP Season in Oklahoma: What to Teach Instead of Drilling

Quick answer: On a four-day calendar the OSTP window costs proportionally more, because a lost morning is a quarter of your week with that class rather than a fifth. Well over half of Oklahoma's districts run four days, so plan art around fewer, longer meetings: work that fills a long block, finishes inside it, and yields a mark against the Oklahoma Academic Standards before students leave.

What does OSTP season look like on a four-day week?

The Oklahoma School Testing Program covers grades 3 through 8, with end-of-course exams in English II, Algebra I, US History and Biology further up. A five-day calendar absorbs a testing morning without much drama. On four days it removes a quarter of the contact time you had with that class, and there is no Friday sitting there to catch up in.

Where the week is four days long, the days themselves tend to run longer, which is good news for making and bad news for interruption. A single block lost to proctoring or to a make-up session takes an entire project stage with it. Write your sequence in stages that each fit inside one block, and a lost day stays contained instead of spreading.

What fills a long block during a testing week?

Choose a project with staged, visible progress and a real endpoint inside the block. Students walking in from a test session have no patience for setup; they want to be making within five minutes. Lay the materials out before they arrive, demonstrate once at the front bench, and put your instructions on a card at each table so latecomers can start without you.

Carnival Mask Craft – Printable Worksheet for Grades K–4 does this for kindergarten through fourth grade: cut, decorate, assemble, wear. The whole arc fits one long period, and because it runs from a printed sheet, a class arriving late from a make-up session still leaves with something finished. Use it on the days the testing calendar looks worst, and save messier projects for a clear week.

What can high school students do around end-of-course exams?

End-of-course exams take your older students out in blocks, and rarely the same students on the same day. A project built on repetition handles that better than one built around a single precious outcome, because a student who makes six repeats instead of ten still finishes with a set on the table and something to argue about in the critique.

Andy Warhol – Pop Art and seriality is built around exactly that idea for grades 9 through 12: seriality, repetition, and what changes when an image is made again. Students work in short bursts, compare the run at the end, then write about the differences they can see. It also gives an absent student an obvious way back in, since the next repeat is the next task.

How do I keep a year whole with fewer contact days?

Count your actual meetings before you plan anything. A four-day calendar with an OSTP window and two assemblies in it leaves fewer art periods than a curriculum map assumes, and the honest response is to teach less and go further. Pick fewer projects, push each one harder, and record the Oklahoma Academic Standards as you cover them rather than reconstructing the list in May.

If you would rather start from a finished sequence, BUNDLE XXL: Complete Art Curriculum for Grades 5–9 – Workbook, Projects & Activities covers grades 5 through 9 with projects sized to fit a single long block. Oklahoma teachers wanting material by grade band can begin with the lists on Oklahoma Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12). Anyone timetabling across state lines will find the comparable testing windows collected on State Standards Navigator: Teaching Resources by State alongside this one.

Frequently asked questions

Does OSTP test art?

No. The program covers the tested academic subjects and the four end-of-course exams, so nothing in a score report speaks to studio work. Your evidence for art is the record you keep: dated rubrics, photographs, a short reflection per project. On a four-day calendar that record matters more, because the year holds fewer finished pieces.

Are these units aligned to the Oklahoma Academic Standards?

They are written as general art units, and you map each project to the standard it serves, which is a line in your planner. These are independent teaching materials. They are not affiliated with, approved by or endorsed by the Oklahoma State Department of Education or any other education agency.

What do I do when a class is canceled outright?

Build one deferrable stage into every project, usually the decorative or finishing pass, and drop that stage when a block disappears. The work still reaches an end point and the sequence still makes sense. Tell students which stage was cut and why, because it teaches them something about deadlines that a smooth term never does.

Related reading

• Oklahoma Art: Planning a Unit to the Oklahoma Academic Standards
• Oklahoma: Teaching Art with Multilingual Learners
• Oklahoma Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12)