10/31/2013

This was the last day of the quarter in the high school, so all of the students projects were due and Mrs. L. was going through to each of their studios and doing a final critique and assessment with them individually.  I went around and did my own and talked to them about where they were in this class, how it went, and where they could possibly go in the future.  Some of the students were moving on to different classes, but the majority of them were going to be in this class again next semester.  Mrs. L. let many of the students experiment with where they wanted to go and let them go on their own and only pushed them slightly to make sure they got their work done, but mainly let them do their own art.  She believes that this experience is very important for the student as an artist to become better even if this isn’t there most successful period.  She is planning on pushing them in a direction that is related to their interests, but will help them be more successful in their future next quarter.

Next we went to the middle school and helped the fifth graders with their symmetrical cut out pieces.  This piece is similar to the folded symmetrical snowflakes that classrooms typically do with students, however Mrs. L. changed it a little bit and made the students use fall colors and glue down six layers total, the bottom being the largest, and the top being the smallest to make a fun, crazy pattern out of the papers.  The students learned about symmetry and were able to work on their craft skills as well as cutting and gluing skills.

The sixth grade class was my favorite to work with this day, as we were doing realistic shoe drawings.  I felt like I was really able to help these students with their drawings.  This piece was very difficult for the students, but they were very on task.  I really enjoyed helping point out where lines were on the shoe and helping them transfer those lines to the paper.  The students later outline the shoe with sharpie and color it in with colored pencils.

Seventh grade was working on some pretty amazing pinwheels.  The pinwheel is separated into four sections: Van Gogh, Mondrian, Op Art, and Georgia O’Keefe.  Each section focuses on some of the main points, like color or line that makes the artist’s work unique.  On this day they already had the Mondrian segment done, and I was able to work on the Van Gogh piece with them.

The next class period with the eighth graders was our first teaching experience this semester.  We are doing a fish or turtle printmaking lesson.  This was the first time we were working with these students as it was a new semester and they were a little wild since we were new in their class, it was Halloween, and the last hour of the day.  These students were definitely willing to test us.  We started off with a PowerPoint of what printmaking is and a little history on it followed up by a demonstration of how to draw out a design of a fish or turtle thumbnail.  We handed out worksheets for the students to work and helped explain to them how the ink will go on the foam and transfer the white area into black.  I was a little weary about how the lesson went since the students seemed to be lacking motivation and didn’t seem to be working up to their potential, but Mrs. L. assured us that it wasn’t our fault, but the students trying to get away with not doing their work.  Overall I think it was a good day and the students will be ready with two thumbnails for the next class period.

We asked Mrs. L. about how she decides upon her curriculum for her art classes and she responded by telling us that the K-12 department meets and decides together how they will do a sequence of their work.  This way they make sure that the National and WI standards are met throughout the entire curriculum.  They took three days out of class and did a lot of research to make the curriculum pan out correctly.

10/17/2013

Today in the classroom we began by walking around the high school and doing studio visits to each of the students in place of their class critiques so each student could get more work done.  The students were moving along pretty well, but I was able to give a couple suggestions for each of their pieces.  I found there to be two main problems with how the students were moving along with their work: either they were not confident in their abilities or they didn’t have enough drive to work up to their potentials.  I tried to work with each student individually to push them in the right direction for where their work was going.

            We later headed over to the middle school where we began by helping Mrs. L. take down student work in the display cases and then grading some of the masks from the week prior.  The bell rang and fifth graders came in.  Mrs. L. had us make our own project sample along with the students of a clay slab fish that bends into a shallow bowl.  The students used a hodgepodge of cardboard scraps, pen caps, and empty thread spools to create patterns and designs on the fish.  The fish slab was then flipped upside down over a paper bowl to give it a bowl shape and then the students put a coil foot and their names on the bottom.

            The next class was sixth graders who were working on finishing up their metal masks and writing a response to go along with it.  The students were still taping leather onto the back of the metal masks and adding string and beads to decorate it.  There were also a few students working either glazing or writing a response to their ceramic animals.

 Seventh graders worked on their still lives, finishing filling them in with neutral, warm, or cool colors of oil pastels and colored pencils.  They were also finishing up their ceramic houses.  Some of the students were still glazing while others were writing reflections on who lives or works in the building and what they like about the piece.

The eighth graders worked on their still lives as well, but they fill them in with patterns and designs using different types of lines.  They then continued to fill in these patterns with six or seven colored markers of their choice.  This class also was working on finishing up their ceramic shoes.  Some were glazing and others were just getting out of the kiln.  Mrs. L. showed the students their finished pieces once the room calmed down enough.

We asked Mrs. L. about how she assesses her students artwork.  She gave us a lot of examples of grading rubrics that she uses and also had us try grading some the students work on our own, and said we did a pretty good job with it.  The only problem with our grading is that we didn’t take each student’s abilities into account (mainly because we don’t know each of the students and their abilities and/or disabilities.)  The students also write a small paragraph or a couple sentences responding to a prompt she asks about a learning objective from the piece.  She looks at each student individually and grades him or her on whether or not they worked up to their potentials.  She brings each of the students up to her desk as they finish filling out their assessment and goes through the assessment with them to make a personal connection and talk to them about what they did well and what they could do better next time.  I really like this personal touch that she adds with the students, and it is an experience I have never had before in my art classes in middle school or high school.  I think this really helps students look at their artwork more.

10/10/2013

Beginning at the high school we did studio visits with the entire class, checking where they were and what was to come next with their work.  I was very impressed at some of the progress I saw just a week later from the students.  Most of them had another whole piece done by they time we were critiquing their work.

            Next we headed over to the middle school where we worked with the fifth graders who were beginning to work on their metal masks.  They were either still pushing their already drawn out pattern into the metal or putting the ink on it to later be rubbed off to show their pattern more.

            The sixth graders on Picasso paintings where they drew self-portraits of themselves in a cubism/Picasso style.  They made their own color wheel starting with the primary colors, red, blue and yellow, and then mixed their secondary colors to make green, purple, and orange.  They continued to color in separate areas of the piece with each of these colors and once the paint dried they outlined each shape of color with Sharpie markers.  I was incredibly impressed with this project and many others of Mrs. L.’s because she really puts a lot of learning and different segments together for one project, which really makes a successful and full learning experience for the students.

            Seventh graders were working on drawing still lives of various scenes throughout the classroom.  Mrs. L. had many set up and they got to choose which still life they wanted to draw.  The students will fill them in with colored pencil or oil pastels using neutral, cold, or warm colors.  Eighth graders worked on their still lives as well, however they were filling in their pieces with elements of design using various lines to fill in with markers later.

            On this day we asked Mrs. L. a couple questions regarding her teaching practice, beginning with why she chose art teaching as her profession.  Her response was that when she went to school there were not a lot of choices for women.  Her options were basically to be a nurse or a teacher.  The impression I got was that if she would be going through school now, she would have chosen something else.  She is an incredibly intelligent woman and has three children going through college now.  She is really pushing them to do what they want through their variety of interests and talents.  Mrs. L. decided that she wanted to be an art teacher when she was in high school, however realized later how difficult it was to be a mother and a professional.  From my experience with her, I am sure she was very successful at multitasking and doing both of these full time jobs together, however I can imagine it was very stressful at the time.  She also hinted that she wishes that she would have gone into something relating to biology or the sciences, but loves being an art teacher because it allows her to be creative.

            Mrs. L. says she defines her rules on the syllabus and essential learning sheet, however she doesn’t make her students go home with this sheet and make the parents sign it like most classes do.  She simply tells the students to go home and talk to their parents to tell them that they began art class.  She finds that the parents and child will have more of a conversation about it this way.  She has the basic rules hanging on the walls in each of her classrooms.  Besides having just the syllabus, she has a separate piece of paper that really highlights what she wants out of the students simply and in bold.  She has the students read this and sign it.  She has five basic rules: 1. Safety, 2. Follow directions, 3. No physical or verbal abuse, 4. Be timely, and 5.  Work hard.  If directions aren’t followed the child needs to tell their parents and have them sign a discipline sheet, which solves over half of the discipline problems in her classroom.  She begins with a verbal warning, then a change of seating, and lastly will send the student to the office if there are discipline issues, however if there is any abuse issue the student is sent directly to the office.  I really like her no-nonsense policy on rules and she really makes her students listen and be respectful due to them.