Transformation

                Last Saturday’s transformation lesson was an extremely exciting and new experience for our students as well as us teachers. They learned about the transformation process of a caterpillar to a butterfly with the help of performance art.  To add to the backdrop of the lesson, we set up a stage by installing curtains in the front of the room. There were a total of three acts. The first act consisted of us pretending to be very hungry caterpillars while eating our snack (just after we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar book). The second act we broke up into partners and wrapped each other in toilet paper to perform as ca coons. The third and final act was breaking free from the toilet paper and attaching butterfly wings to complete our butterfly transformation. We had learned through our habitat class that the students worked well with partners. For the most part they stayed well behaved through the performances. In addition, continuing to use power teaching helped keep the students on track. With the exception of a few students, the lesson went smoothly. However it was those few students at certain times that held us back, taking up more class time.

                Specifically, our student Trinity was a little more aggressive than usual. We found that when she got frustrated with fellow students, she resorted to hitting and yelling.  The first time we noticed this was when her and Sophie were playing with a small toy that Charlotte brought in. At one point they struggled with sharing and the problems with kicking and crying started. Later on, Trinity acted up again with the same behavior after she had issues with sharing the disposable camera. Originally the first camera was given to Sam so he could keep motivated and participate without any problems. He had been too physical during the performance; pushing others, screaming and running.  Although this appeared to work for Sam’s best interest, it unfortunately distracted some of the other students. Before we knew it everyone wanted a turn. It caused problems with sharing and urged students to take the camera out of their classmates’ hands without asking. I remember specifically Trinity acting out once again and I had to take the camera away. I don’t know if it was just an off day for her or the fact that because not everyone was doing the exact thing at the same time; leaving her to feel left out or unequally treated. Especially with younger students, it is hard to keep the right balance of attention for the best intentions and needs of the students. What works for one student does not always work with others. Anytime you try to compensate for a students learning experience, it can sometimes negativity effect another ones learning process as well. How do we handle students who need extra attention without disturbing the rest of the class? And how do we properly deal with bad behavior that consequently ends up with physical and verbal lashing out?

Books and Buildings

In a small classroom with many students, it can be difficult enough to keep track of what everyone is doing when there is only one project underway. When different students are working on different projects, classroom management can be a real challenge. After our last lesson where we introduced the comic books to our class, our students were all at different stages of production. Some of them were nearly finished with their comics, and others had barely started them. We knew that if we wanted to give them another class period to finish their comics, the students would need another activity to transition to as they finished.

We came up with our city building exercise because we thought it would be a fun and creative activity that the students would enjoy, and because we have not had many projects involving 3 dimensional construction this year. When planning the lesson, we used several strategies to make it easier for our students to work on more than one lesson in a class. We were confident that the city building would be something our students were capable of working on by themselves. The materials provided were versatile and simple to work with. This allowed each student to begin working independently whenever they finished their comic books and stay on task without much direction from the teacher. We felt that the project would be exciting enough to hold the students' attention naturally. We kept our building supplies together on a large table in the corner of the room. This meant that the students who were working on city building naturally congregated around it and separated themselves from the students finishing comic books. This made it easier for the teachers to tell what each student was working on, and prevented students that were working on different projects from distracting each other. We were also concerned that students might rush through the comics to move on to the lesson. To remedy this, we tried to emphasize to students that the comic books were the main focus of the day's lesson. We also waited to introduce city building until several students had completed their comic books to keep them on task. Even though some students were still working on comics, we introduced our city building to the class as a whole so that we would only have to explain it one time. This allowed the teachers to focus on assisting individual students and let the students begin working on the city as soon as they finished their comics. We found our strategies to be very effective; all of our students finished their comics and successfully transitioned into city building. Classrooms can become chaotic when they are full of activity, but careful lesson planning can be used to avoid these problems in advance.

Questions and Tessellations

This week Michelle and I had a wonderful time with our classing thinking and discussing things we question, puzzle us, or just don't understand. We started the lesson by having one of the students read the work sheet we make. Then after a clarifications and group definition, we had the students fill out the work sheet. After the student listed 8 things they were puzzled by, and went into more detail about on particular idea on the opposite side we were ready to do our demo.

Michelle explained demonstrated our project to the students, showing them our tessellations and how they will fill together. As well as some various techniquest on how to use oil pastels. The topics the students chose to explore through their work included, math and geometry, why people where shoes, how do cell phones work, why is there peer pressure in school, why does homophobia exist, and why do I have OCD. So you can see that the topics ranged from fun and inquisitive to deep and personal. After everyone was done making 1 or 2 piece of the puzzle we arranged them in the middle of the floor and sat on the table and discussed what we made.

This week was also unique because we had some of the studetns for an extra hour at the end of class. Because our project have been to complex and time consuming we let the studetns know last week that if they needed some extra time to complete their work we would give them an extra hour at the end of class if they had their partents permission.

Giving Color to our Villains and Ourselves

So this week Kim and I tackled paint with our students.  The lesson was to use the drawings they made a few weeks ago and paint the clay sculptures that we made last week.  Kim began by sitting the kids in a circle on the carpet.  She then talked about using paint first asking if the students had used paint before.  All the students said yes, but the two of us gathered as the lesson went on that might not have been the case for everyone, or their use of paint had been minimal up to this point.  Then Kim proceeded to talk about color mixing.  She would ask which two colors do you need to combine to create __________.  The students would then raise their hand, Kim would call on them hear their answer and if they were correct they got to come up and demonstrate the mixing and put the color on a piece of paper. 

After the demo the students returned to their seats and we called them over in small groups to get their paint palates.  We asked them to consider the colors that they would need to paint their villain and their sample painting.  Our color selection was limited which is why we had the students learn about mixing colors.  Yet they would come up to the table asking for colors we didn't have and then proceed to ask which colors they would need to mix.  It makes me wonder if they really were paying attention, some of them were. It took a really long time to pass out the paints because we were asking each individual student which colors they would need.  If we were to do paint again since we were only giving them a little paint since their sculptures weren't very large I would have probably had the paints already poured.

After getting their paints they were to work on color mixing and using water to loosen the paint and then paint on a practice piece of paper.  After everyone had paint we handed out the sculptures and the kids began painting.  A lot of the kids ended up wearing more of the paint then made it on their paper or sculptures I'm pretty sure.  We should have warned the parents to send their kid in clothes that could get dirty, hopefully none of them hate us too much.  But the kids all seemed to really enjoy the painting and their sculptures turned out really well.  I'd say of all the lessons the students really took their time on this one.  Normally a lot of them rush through.  But with painting they all made sure they had the right colors and were careful about their painting which was nice to see.

Some of the sculptures had pieces that were not securely attached that we will be gluing next week.  But in painting some of the pieces were quite delicate to begin with a fell apart.  We will also have to fix those.  I think if we were to work with clay again a more in depth demonstration about connecting piece would definitely be necessary.  But its ok it seems like they will be easy enough to fix.
I think both Kim and I were glad that we tackled a painting project before we got to student teaching.  Not only did we get some really good outcomes from the students but it was also worthwhile to see just how much goes into a project of this nature with kids of this age.  I'm not so sure if painting will be at the top of my list for lessons I want to complete in student teaching but this lesson was a definite learning experience for the both of us!

Beyond the Classroom Walls

Saturday our class ventured outside the classroom to explore the outdoors. For a little while I have been interested in the connection youth have to the outdoor environment, and how children seem to be spending less and less time exploring and playing outside. I have read several articles on the benefit of spending time outside, and wanted to explore how I could help children become better connected to the environment through art. The class was a little hectic and it took awhile getting ready to go outside. I was a little nervous taking the students outdoors where they would not be contained by the classroom walls, and running the risk of loosing a student! However, with all children accounted for at the end of the day, the risks Alice, Amanda and I took were well worth it. Not only did the students learn about butterfly habitat and being 'good neighbors' to other inhabitants of the earth, they also had the opportunity to take advantage of nature (in a positive way for both people and the environment!) to play and explore. The creativity and enjoyment the students showed during class proved to me that art and ecology can successfully join together, and help students build a better connection with nature. One student even took initiative to build a third, smaller habitat sculpture in which she and other students created a home for the butterflies that even incorporated interior decoration. Visit our blog about the project: http://ecobasedarted.wordpress.com/

Atomic Comics!

This week's lesson was a continuation of our last class where students used Photoshop to design alternate identities for themselves. We took things a step further and had students write narratives centered around the characters they created. They planned their stories out on a storyboard and began drawing comics books that introduce their identities and overcome some sort of challenge. Although the students didn't have time to complete their comic books, they were surprisingly good at outlining their stories using the storyboard handout we provided. We are thoroughly excited to see the final graphic novels the students create next Saturday.

Out students informed us that most of them have had experience drawing comics before. Some of hem have done it in previous Saturday School classes and some of them create comics in their free time. Because the students were familiar with the medium we were working with, they were able to jump right into their work and spend time focusing on writing their narratives. We often try to center our lessons around new skills or techniques, but by starting with something students already know they can put more energy into developing creative new ideas instead of worrying about materials. The only difficulty that we encountered is that students work at different rates. By the end of class, some students were nearly finished and most of the students had just begun their first page. We decided to carry the lesson over to another week because though some students were working slowly their comic book designs were very impressive and developed. We wanted to give them as much time as the need to fully finish their work.

"I am not throwing it away!"

Finishing up the sculptures from the last class, starting a new lesson making a monster painting, and working on the photoshop with the students who missed the lesson, it was a busy day for the teachers and the students. I had to run upstairs and downstairs to see how each student was doing, and with the many lessons mixed up in one class period, I was first worried that students won't know what to do. However, I was surprised to see how they found exciting things to work on by themselves, although some kids were not working on what the teachers prepared for them to do.

From today's lesson, there was one incident which I thought was important to think about. Brendan and Jenna had to finish up their sculpture to work on the next lesson, and Sean and Henry wanted to help them paint. I was happy at first because Sean and Henry wanted to help and work with other students. However, after a while, I saw how Brendan was the only one left working on the project because other kids decided to work on the monster painting. When I went up to him and asked what he wants to do more with the sculpture, he pointed at the trash can. He did not like the finished work of art and wanted to throw it away. I started to talk about what he can do more to it to fix what he didn't like about the sculpture, but I saw how Brendan didn't want to. I right away said, "I am not throwing it away!" but I didn't know what to say after that. The project was to make an abstract sculpture, and I now regret not explaining about how well they depicted the abstraction through the sculpture.

Sometimes, I could see how students feel bad about their artwork and want to throw it away. I think it is an important role of the teacher to lead the students not to get discouraged about their works, but to explore more with their artwork and challenge.