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.