Companies are responding to changing demographics at the PK level to help ensure some of the changing needs (ie. ELL) are being met. Read about it here.
0 Comments
Interesting piece by Idaho Ed News about the teacher shortage in Idaho. "More schools are being forced to make non-traditional hires, even as Idaho is in the midst of a five-year, $250 million plan to boost teacher pay."
Check out this article in the Boise Weekly: Major Grant to Idaho Voices for Children Addresses Gap In Behavioral Healthcare Access. This is a step in the right direction in improving mental health access for Idaho.
I moved to Boise this summer and have been so excited to explore the art scene here. As we moved, we also took a trip to Alaska. My very talented friend Liza McElroy lives in Seward and although we didn't get to see her, I got to see some of the murals that she worked on and we took a Seward mural walking tour with The Painted Whale, which I highly recommend if you are ever in the area. They do a great job of communicating so much of Alaska's vibrant history through public art. It definitely inspired me to find some projects to start getting involved with here in Boise.
heI attended the NAEA Conference in San Diego for a few days. I had never been to San Diego so it was great to visit a new place that was sunny and warm, a nice vacation from cold Chicago. I spent Friday on the beach and was ready for a fresh start on Saturday. Below are a quick summary of my sessions. I went to the student roundtable presentations on Saturday night, and gave a presentation of my integrated math and art unit and lesson plan: Multiplying Polynomials with Paint. I got to attend three other sessions. I went to a session about increasing your online presence, and I definitely have a little website updating to do. I really liked the idea of adding museum websites and artist websites to my resources page! My favorite session was a talk by Phil Hansen (philinthecircle.com) that wrote the book, Tattoo A Banana. He talked about his quest to access student creativity in various ways. He also talked a good deal about his project Goodbye Art. If you haven't already seen his TED talk, "Embrace the Shake," you should definitely check it out. He has projects that are temporary, often made from simple materials. He has just released a new site, gbaacademy.com, which has so many resources for teachers, and inspiring students to create. I am using the video on value this week to teach value. There were plenty of vendors at the conference. I enjoyed the vendor stands that had activities, like Michaels, and Blick. I discovered a 3D material called Sculpt-It, which I really enjoyed using. I saw plenty of watercolor pencils I enjoyed playing with and other coloring materials. The pictures shown above are from a session titled, "So You Think You Can't Draw." We did a series of exercise that I can use in the classroom to increase confidence and an open mind to drawing. We started with an exquisite corpse, and as you can see, people got pretty creative. We also talked through some other exercises with still life drawings that are some what collaborative. The one shown here is from an activity called a "Non-Still Life." It serves as a good exercise for contour lines, and also work with foreground, middle ground, and background. Students start at the corner of their paper, and draw an object that would be about two inches from their face. Then they pass the object to the person next to them and receive a new object from someone else. With the next object, they place it behind the first one by overlapping, and to appear just slightly further away, say 10 inches. At the end, you can think of something as up to a mile away. Students can fill the empty spaces in with ants, worms, or whatever else. The leader said she sometimes throws toilet paper in between students for them to draw which will help them break up the space. Great Ideas! We finished the logo projects last week. Students had a few extra days to finish their paint and spent a short day on Wednesday to write up their artist statement. You can see some of the examples of student work below. Kristin and I just finished grading their projects yesterday. Many students still have not finished their projects, which is unfortunate. We graded their projects on a rubric, so students graded themselves and then we graded them in five categories in addition to their artist statement. Student were asked to give themselves points out of fifty both for their five images and their background pattern. They are graded out of forty points for their artistic behavior and following directions. Lastly, they give themselves a grade out of ten for craftsmanship, which we have had several bell ringers and reflections about. Grades overall are low for unfortunate reasons. Students have not finished their images, or were sloppily rushed through and did not pay careful attention. Many other students did not follow directions. There are a few issues we are having throughout class that I see preventing us from maximizing instructional time. I had a similar issue my first year teaching and implemented an incentive program, so I thought I would try again. Students can get a total of five points during the class period. If students have enough points by after the end of ten days, we have a day planned to go outside and draw at Garfield Park, across the street. For the class with the most points, Kristin and I will provide treats of their choice. Classes earn points in the following ways: 1) One minute after the bell rings, all students have a pencil. 2) One minute after the bell rings, all students are in their seat and starting the bell ringer. 3) At the end of the class period, no students have left work, trash, or anything else behind. 4) During the class, there is nothing thrown across the room. and 5) Kristin and I do not have to give more than a warning about the noise level in the classroom. Students get stamps throughout class, and a tracker is provided on the bulletin board so that students know how many points they have. Some classes have been better than others on the third day, but students are having conversations and understand that the simple things that make class run smoothly are not necessarily happening. I started the new unit on Thursday. When students came in, they did a bell ringer, and then I described the activity for class for the day. Students did a gallery walk, where they went around the room and answered questions including: What is a scratchboard? What is value? What is reductive drawing? How did this artist add color? Why did this artist use a scratchboard for this image instead of a traditional drawing? Each question was accompanied by an image or two. This activity was used as a pre assessment for the unit, so I each student went around the room and gave me at least a sentence on each question. In many classes, I had students describing the picture, instead of answering the question in a broader sense. If I could do the activity again, I would structure that. I also would have structured their rotations a little differently. Ideally, I wanted students to talk with their groups about the question and look through other responses before writing a sentence. Although I gave students time limitations, I would structure it a little differently, challenging them to stay at each station, or poster, longer and actually discuss a little more. Overall, it was one of the days that students have been most engaged since I have been there. The next day, students started constructing their viewfinders. When we came back the following week, students did popcorn drawings with charcoal. Almost none of the students had used charcoal before, so it was partially to experiment with a new medium, but students are also starting to pay closer attention to darks and lights in their drawings. They chose a couple of pieces of popcorn, and drew the darkest places and the lightest, blending when appropriate, and erasing to show the lightest areas. They also paid close attention to shadows, which we were lucky to see so clearly with the great light coming into the room. Below are a couple glimpses!
We will move onto value scales and scratchboards next! Students had the week to paint. Before they painted, they needed to show us that they had thought through and drawn all of their images and their designs on their logo. Students then could come up for the paint colors they needed. I thought it was interesting the colors they chose. Kristin gives students primary and secondary colors. Students can mix their own neutrals and tertiary colors, but I noticed that most students choose not to mix them. Students were encouraged to use complex patterns; some of the most successful ones are shown above. I left for a the NAEA Convention in San Diego on Thursday evening, so the last few pictures show their progress on Thursday (they have been painting since Friday or Monday.) Students will have until this coming Tuesday to finish their paintings.
First Week at Al Raby HighThis was my first full week at Al Raby and I am exhausted. Students are finishing up their unit 6 project on cardboard sculptures. We teach five classes each day of primarily ninth graders, as it is a requirement, and there are a few upperclassmen sprinkled throughout. Students came in with little art experience. Many of them have never had art before this year.
Students designed a logo with their initials. They cut the logo out of cardboard twice and used paper cups to separate the two pieces of cardboard. They then taped everything together and paper machied the entire logo with butcher paper and a paste mixture. When I got in Monday morning, students met in the library, and we talked through their theme for the logo. The entire project is centered around a college and career theme, so they decided if they wanted to design their logo around a particular college, or a career field. Students then used the computer or the provided images to decide on at least five images that would represent their themes. On the back of their brainstorming paper, students decided which images would go where on their three dimensional sculpture. Tuesday was the last full day in class to finish any paper mache that they had not already completed. Students are expected to have finished three layers of paper mache. Because attendance is such a problem at Al Raby, students are at various stages of their projects. Some students were well past their three layers, and some would certainly not finish that day. Kristin offers students extra credit for helping out their classmates. Wednesday I designed a lesson that challenged students to develop complex patterns. I used a Prezi (check it out here) and showed students examples of many patterns using shape and line. I was careful to push students to create beyond simple patterns. I told students that I just taught pattern at the elementary level, where students showed pattern by simple "circle square circle square," or "straight line, squiggle line, straight line, squiggle line." Together we brainstormed what patterns were too simple for students to use in ninth grade on their project. Students had to brainstorm six patterns, using their own ideas or starting from some of the example patterns given. They then picked the one they liked the best that they wanted to use on their project, made any modifications they wanted to, and filled it into a larger box with more detail. Kristin wrote several students up with week. Some refused to follow school dress code or rules, some threatened her. Some refused to do work while being overtly disrespectful. I was impressed with an apology letter I received from one student who had an outburst that ended him in suspension. This student in particular happened to be on the basketball team. Basketball is highly valued at Al Raby and one of the security guards is the coach. He has a significant influence on students and their performance in class. So we were convinced that the apology letter was a result of a conversation that the student had with his basketball coach. On Thursday, students got both their image papers and their pattern papers back with comments and feedback so that they could make any adjustments necessary. They were then able to start laying out all of their images and patterns in pencil on their logo. Many students were skeptical of the need to do more work, but many students were also able to articulate that they needed to plan out their work to avoid big mistakes and to see visually how it would look. I also had a lot of conversations with students about extremely detailed images with lines that were close together. Although I could see clearly what they were portraying from the pencil drawing, I pulled out a skinny brush and showed them that those lines would be challenging by running the brush over them so that they could make some adjustments, mostly making the images larger. Friday, students finished their work in pencil and began to paint. We had just a few students in each period that were able to start painting but most students finished up with their sketches so that they can begin paining on Monday. In the meantime, I am planning for my big unit on scratchboards! Stay tuned! Wrapping Up Seven Weeks and Starting AnotherFriday was my last day at Ogden Elementary. I will, of course head back for the art fair at the end of the year to see how all of the great products from SquareOne Art turned out, and see the masks and children off for the summer.
I was excited to see how students really were their own artists, took their ideas and ran with them. As you can see, they are all very unique. I differentiated instruction quite a bit. Kindergarten through 2nd grade focused on primary and secondary colors, while 3rd through 5th grade worked with complementary colors, and 5th graders were challenged to work with complementary tertiary colors as well. This week was a little hectic in the art room. We did not see any morning classes in the art room because of ISATS. Because my cooperating teacher likes to keep all students on the same day of each project throughout the week (with good reason!) this has caused some issues. The school also wanted us to take our morning classes on Monday and Friday because those students were not testing, but the catch was that we had to go to their classrooms to avoid noisy hallways while other students tested. It would have been tricky to paint masks in their classrooms because of the messiness and all the materials involved. So, first graders on Monday morning played some spacial shape games and learned a little oragami. Kindergarteners learned how to make paper caterpillars to celebrate the beginning of spring (hopefully!) All afternoon classes worked on mask painting and I was pretty impressed with what they achieved. I only gave students red, blue, yellow, and white paint, so younger students learned how to mix colors and I challenged older students to get a better handle on their patterns and the way that they applied the paint. I saw fifth grade twice, so most fifth graders re done with their masks. We had some issues when it came to applying glitter, feathers, sequins, jewels, etc. Some fifth graders can handle it better than others, but I definitely learned the value of explicit expectations with material. I was surprised how many students starting mixing glitter together before they replaced it back in the container. As enraging as it was, I was surprised that some of these skills still need to be taught, and it was a good reminder. Fifth graders also recently learned what tertiary colors, and although all 3rd-5th graders were asked to use complementary colors, fifth grade was given the option of using tertiary complementary colors or primary/ secondary combinations. Other classes seemed to do pretty well. They were able to articulate what was difficult about painting, like mixing colors, and filling in the entire texture of the mask.
Younger students were extremely engaged in painting, and interested in how colors mixed. I also forget that at this age, there are other explicit lessons to be taught that are easily overlooked. The main one is that students are apt to put a dirty paint brush in a pile of pure fresh paint, and then become frustrated when trying to find, for instance, the yellow. We talked specifically about how to mix colors and how much space should be used. I find that at this age, there are few students who copied each others' work, and they had very original ideas. I also had few students who mixed all the paint together on their mask. Although there were certainly some, most students had a good understanding of taking the paint one color at a time. I found that we have some reviewing to do about pattern. I wished I had given students some non-examples of pattern. Many, especially younger, students think that although a pattern repeats, it only needs to repeat a couple of times. Another aspect that needs to be gone over is complementary colors. Although many students are beginning to remember the color combinations, I was not explicit enough in my instruction that they need to be placed next to each other in order to truly complement each other. Many students can tell me about the complementary colors they chose, but they were just included in the mask, and not placed, within proximity on the mask. I was also impressed with the thought process of younger students as they reflected on their plans for the masks. Many were transparent that the drawing gave them a new idea, and saw issues with how small they had drawn aspects of their pattern. Despite talking about that aspect in class, it became more tangible to them as they began to paint. However, I thought the students really took the phrase used often in class, "Be your own artist." to heart. I did have students come in each period, though, disappointed that the glitter had to wait for next week. Enjoy! Today first graders began thinking through how they would decorate their masks. We started by thinking through what masks are for, and why we use them. Students generally offered ideas about disguise and costume.
We then read the book Vejigante Masquerade, by Lulu Delacre. We looked through examples of masks and students also learned where the Caribbean is, and specifically where Puerto Rico is located. In the masks we saw, we pointed out different patterns and the vibrant colors. Students particularly were interested in the patterns of dots they saw in many of the masks. Although our masks are made of plaster, and not the traditional paper mâché or coconut shells of Puerto Rico, students were excited to decorate their own masks. Before I had them start painting, I gave them a template to fill in with marker and pencil, to design the mask. I asked students why I had them working with marker on paper before they began their mask, and I was surprised by their thoughtful responses, despite their disappointment that the painting would not begin until next time. Students told me that it was important to practice their design first, that they should look at their color combinations before they decided on what they wanted, and that they needed to make mistakes on the paper so that they didn't happen on their mask. They also mentioned that they might change their mind about what they were working on. Students were asked to use just one patter on their mask, and although I didn't specify with first grade, I encouraged them to stick with just a few colors. I was blown away with how many students have left room for "sparkles," although maybe it had to do with the glitter in my example. I can't wait to actually see them start painting next week! |
AuthorI am a former math and art teacher. I was credentialed through Teach For America and later through the MAT program in Art Education at Columbia College Chicago. I have taught at both traditional and charter schools, in three states and from PK through adult students. I started this blog when I student-taught at Ogden International Elementary School and Al Raby High School in Chicago, IL. Archives
October 2017
Categories
All
|