Day 10 Practicum Experience- Day 7 of Lesson (10-16-13)

Today was the last day of our lesson and it was critique day! We had all of the students grab their work and sit quietly at their tables while we explained how the critique was going to work.  Some of the students didn't seem too happy about having to talk about their work but they all sat quietly and listened until it was time to start going around the room.  We started by saying why we chose the flower we did, what 2 techniques we used on the flower, and what our favorite part about the lesson was.

One little girl was eager to start the critique and she wanted to go first.  She said that she had chosen a lily as her flower because that was her sister's name and she wanted to make it for her.  I thought that was so sweet and i was glad she had put her own meaning into the art work instead of just doing it because it was assigned.  She use the techniques of salt, and variegated color.  They worked really well with her color choices and her painting was done very neatly.  We continued onto what her favorite part of the lesson was, and she said it was doing the flower.  As we continued through the class we let the students ask any questions they had of their classmates and they had a nice discussion about each others works. We got about half way through the class when it was a little boys turn.  He didn't want to show the class his work.  When I asked him why he didn't want to show everyone he started to cry.  It was really hard to see because I had previously seen his work and it looked really good.  He said he didn't like it and didn't want anyone else to see.  At that point my CT stepped in and just had us move on to the next student and she went and calmed him down.  Besides that part of the critique it went really well.

The flowers turned out so cool.  I was impressed
with all of the students' work. And was very
glad to see they enjoyed the projects as well.

Here are all of the students' works hanging up in the hallway.
The colors all look so amazing and they look great
all side by side like a garden.

After we had seen everyones work we gathered them all and went to the hallway to display them. The students were really excited to hang them up and they liked that we chose to hang them up like a quilt on the wall.  After hanging them all up for display, it was time for them to clean up their cubbies because their term was almost over.  They all just cleaned up the room and the closet where they kept all of their supplies and projects and that was the end of the day.  They all thanked my partner and I as they left the room.  I even got a few hugs which was really sweet.  I am really going to miss coming into the classroom and being with the students in their environment.  I had a lot of fun and can't wait to get back into another classroom to help teach more lessons.

Day 9 Practicum Experience: Day 6 of Lesson- Does CT teach Art Criticism/Aesthetics (10-14-13)

This lesson is so much fun! I can't wait to teach it in my own classroom.  Today we are finishing up our flower paintings and they all look great! They all have so much character and interest in them that it really helps me to see the student in their work.  A lot of the students didn't want to stop painting even though they were out of room on their flowers.  They also had the opportunity to outline their flowers in sharpie markers so that the petals stood out from the background.  They looked really nifty and sharp  with the lines added.  Once they had finished their flowers they had the opportunity to keep painting on little mini sheets of paper and they could do whatever they wanted.  However, they each needed to fill out and turn in a rubric to me, before they could get a mini sheet.  This way it was mandatory for them to finish the flowers and rubric before they had free time.

Here I am helping a student with his Sharpie lines.
He wasn't sure where to draw his lines, so I gave
him some guidance and help to choose the spots.

The flowers were all put onto the drying rack while the others finished up their work.  It was a full day of finishing up the flowers and filling out rubrics.  One student needed help filling out her rubric so I went over and helped her read through it and fill it in.  She wasn't sure if she could circle all of the elements on the rubric because she had used them all in her project.  I told her absolutely, and she was glad to fill them all in. And I was happy that she knew that she had used them all, meaning that she in fact had learned what each one meant.  That was really cool to see.

The flowers all looked so amazing and I was proud of each and every one of my students!  The next time I am in with them we will be going through a group critique so I am excited to see how that goes.

Today I also had the chance to as Mrs. M if she does any work or lesson with art criticism or aesthetics.  She sadly told me no.  She used to work a bit with aesthetics, but due to cuts she no longer has time to work with her students on this topic. She only gets 6 weeks for each class, so she is cut really short for time.  She sometimes adds a few bits and pieces in here or there if she can, but she has no formal lessons or discussions about either topic due to time restraints.  This saddened me greatly.  I hate the fact that art teachers are losing valuable time to work with their students and teach important ideas and lessons.  It makes me really want to help change that!  That is why I want to be an art teacher, to be able to work toward the rebirth of art in schools and to help shine the light that it truly is important and needed in our classrooms both today and in the future.

Day 8 Practicum Experience- Day 5 of Lesson- How CT decides Curriculum (10-9-13)

Curriculum was the topic I was able to ask Mrs. M about today.  Mrs. M has her curriculum based off of what she was left from the previous teacher.  She was left a big binder full of lesson plans and teaching materials and ideas.  She has made a few changes here and there, but it is solely based off of the previous curriculum.  She also tries to incorporate the elements of art and design into her projects in fun and interesting ways where possible.  She puts her projects into a scope and sequence order as well to build off of their prior knowledge.  This is a great way for her to help her students grow and develop as artists and students.  By using what they already know and have some information on, they are able to continue on in their learning and generate new ideas and make connections to old ones.

Mrs. M doesn't really write out full lesson plans either.   She has a few single sheet plans with titles, material lists, and objectives, but she doesn't write it out with all of the domains or daily scheduling.  She said she never wrote out full plans because they always need to be adjusted for individual students every year.  She said they change too much to actually get benefits from writing it all out.  This makes some sense to me about them having to be adjusted and changed, but I feel that it is a good practice for us as teachers just to plan and get the ideas down on paper to be able to fully teach the lesson.

This little boy decided to use
his finger as a way to apply the paint.
The idea was so cool and it really
added to the inside of his sunflower!

We are continuing work on our flowers today.  Many of the students ran into the classroom because they were so excited, which made me excited and eager to start.  We did a quick review of the different techniques and had  everyone grab their flowers and begin work.  Walking around the room was really neat.  So many students were really engaged in the painting that they didn't even notice me standing above them.  Lots of different techniques were being used and they were turning out really cool.  I was really glad we had chosen this lesson because it was a blast to do.

So many new ideas were being used, and it made me really proud to see the students using their own creativity and original ideas to add to their flowers.  I felt like I had really inspired them to make meaningful art to them, which was awesome!!  We worked for the rest of the class period and had to clean up.  The flowers were really starting to come together.  They look great so far!

Day 7 Practicum Experience- Day 4 of Lesson- How CT assess student work (10-7-13)

To begin the day in the art classroom we asked Mrs. M some questions about how she assesses artwork and participation in the classroom.  She also let us see how she enters her grades into the computer.  She has one rubric that she follows with all of her students.  She doesn't make an individual one for each lesson.  The rubric she wrote has 6 categories and each students fills out the rubric on their own, circling the number they feel they deserve. Each category is as follows,

Showed skill with media 20 19 18 17 16 15
Was organized/creative 20 19 18 17 16 15
Understands specific Elements of Art 20 19 18 17 16 15
Line-color-shape and form-texture-value-space ( circle the answers)
Effort: Took your time, good use of class time 20 19 18 17 16 15
Attitude and Behavior (In class) 20 19 18 17 16 15

Total: 100 points  Your Score:         Letter Grade:

She has each student fill out this rubric individually about their own work.  They assess themselves first and then Mrs. M goes through and looks at the work and the rubric and adds comments and adds a final grade.  She often gives an A to all of the students.

To me this doesn't seem like the best way of grading.  I feel that many of the projects should have specified criteria that should be followed and assessed.  She also doesn't often do group critiques, which allows for the students to discuss their work with the class.  She goes mostly off of how well the student participated and put effort in to the work, which I do agree with; however, I do not feel that all of the students should be getting A's all the time if their work doesn't merit an A.  Letter grades to me don't even really make sense at this age either.  But she has made this system work for her so maybe there is something to look into from that.

After asking a few questions and getting Mrs. M's responses, it was time for us to begin our lesson continuation.  It was the 4th day of our teaching and the students were starting their flower drawings.
I gave a demonstration about how to place the windows on the magazine image of the flowers and how to use what I saw in the window to draw on my sheet.  I had all the students gather around me for the demonstration.  They were all very attentive and answered a lot of my questions.  I asked them what types of element I was using while drawing the outline of my flower and they all took turns answering, with line, shape, space, and form.  We also discussed how the other elements such as texture, value, and color would be used once we started adding paints to the flowers.

During the demonstration I felt really confident and had a good time showing the kids how to draw lightly and how to do clear contour lines of the flowers.  Once the demonstration was over, I helped the students to get their flowers picked out and windows taped down.  Some of the students had a bit of trouble trying to get the window the way they wanted it, but figured it out with some help.  Once they had their flowers and paper ready they began to sketch out on the watercolor paper.  This didn't take them very long and some of the sketches were really nice.  After the sketching my partner did a quick painting demo and the kids were off! They began doing some of the techniques they tried on their charts.  They weren't able to paint a whole lot however because class was about over.  They cleaned up their spaces and packed up their paints.  Most were really loud and excited and didn't want to pack up, but keep painting.  We got them all to clean up and sent them on their way to the next class.

I was really happy with how today went.  The demonstration was great and I loved how excited the kids were to start working on their flowers! I can't wait to get back in the classroom and help out some more.

Day 6 Practicum Experience- Day 3 of Lesson- How CT addresses safety (10-4-13)

Today we worked with our students on their watercolor charts.  This was one of my favorite parts of our 2 part lesson, because it really showed all of the originality of the students.  Seeing them trying new ways to apply the paint was really refreshing and exciting.  I gave a quick review of what types of techniques available to the students and then asked if they had questions.  One little girl had the idea of putting paint down and letting it dry, then putting tape over it and using it as a resist for the next application of color.  It was great to hear her new idea and I was very impressed with her creativity.  Many other students had ideas and they tried them out on their charts, which turned out awesome!  They really had fun practicing all the techniques and it was really fun to walk around the room and help them out as needed.

Here is one student working on a chart.

This little girl worked really hard on her chart and she
enjoyed getting to try her own ideas on it as well as
techniques I taught in the demonstration.  She told me
 that she had a lot of fun working with the watercolors.

During this visit I was able to talk to Mrs. M about how she approaches safety in her classroom.  She told me that she hands out a sheet at the beginning of the year and that each student has the opportunity to take it home, review it with his or her parents, have them sign it, and bring it back in to class and they would receive extra credit.  Each sheet states the classroom rule and regulations for safety.  Each student is also reminded throughout the term on proper use of tools and the importance of cleanliness to keep accidents from happening, such as spilling water and slipping.  Mrs. M does a good job of enforcing her rules in order to keep all of her students safe in the classroom.

The way Mrs. M approaches safety in her classroom is in my opinion a pretty good way of ensuring the  safety of all her students in the classroom.  She is responsible and takes action when needed if there is a safety threat or issue in her classroom setting.  By offering a take home sheet for her students, she is also involving the parents of each student to create a more tied unit from the home to the classroom.

During work time I was able to ask one little girl how she liked the project so far. She said she loved it!  She really enjoyed getting to choose her own techniques and have some freedom as to what she could paint.  She told me she also really liked her clay project.  She said art was one of her favorite subjects along with math.  When I asked her why she liked art she said because it gave her time to do whatever she wanted to do.  She loved the freedom of her own creativity.  She also said she liked to get messy and that she couldn't do that in her other classes.  That really made me smile and I encouraged her to continue getting messy and having fun in her art classes.

So far this lesson teaching experience has been a blast and I can't wait to start getting into the flower painting part of the lesson with my students.  Mrs. M said that we have been doing a great job so far with the lesson as well so that is very reassuring and helpful!

Day 5 Practicum Experience- Day 2 of Lesson (10-2-13)

Today was a lot of fun working with the kids. We began the second day of our lesson with discussing what they had learned from a video they had seen on watercolor that Mrs. M had shown them.  We learned that they saw techniques such as stamping and dry brushing.  I asked the students if they were ready to start getting their hands dirty and they all shrieked with excitement.  I was really glad to see how ready they all were to start the project.

To begin our demonstration of the charts we had all of the students gather around the front table while my partner and I took turns demonstrating one technique at a time.  The students were very attentive and good listeners which made it very easy to talk about how to do a certain technique.  They didn't ask as many questions as I thought they would either. But at the end they did ask a few if they had some.  One part of the demonstration that I really enjoyed was when we did the straw demonstration.  They all got excited to see the paint flow around on the sheet when it was blown on by the straw.  Once we had gone through the whole demonstration the class period was about over so we had to clean up and get the students ready for their next class.

It was a pretty fun time doing all of the techniques for the students and seeing how they lit up when they saw a technique they liked.  I am really anxious to see the charts once the kids get the chance to start working on them.

This is what the charts look like.  They are divided up with tape and each square has a space for a technique.  This is one of the student's works, he really liked the crayon resist and he also used it on his final piece.