Day 2- Choice-Based classroom (2nd grade)

Describe the class: Today I had students continue their drawings begun on day 1. Before they got there I had looked closely at the day 1 drawings to see what they explored in their drawings. Most stayed within their categories. A child who liked cars chose the car visual resource and drew new cars in his sketchbook. Another child who liked aliens used the visual resources to further enhance their original ideas.













What worked: 1. One thing that worked was printing new slightly varied visual resources based on their interests. They were fully engaged in the lesson and I had very few behaviors concerns. 2. All materials were in sets. of up to 3 or more containers so that children would, without confusion, grab their drawing material and sit preventing a traffic jam. 3. Another thing that worked was going around and asking children to tell me about their work. I then asked if it was okay that I transcribe  their words in their book. Although all could have written those words themselves if asked, me writing it allowed them to have the maximum amount of work time available to them, plus it allowed them to see how much I valued their ideas behind their work. 3. The additional and varied resources allowed students to further explore their own interests. For example, the student above loved drawing monsters. Once he had a visual resource that showed various possibilities of what a monster looks like, he expanded his drawings and even had a running narrative that expanded thanks to the inspiration brought about by these new images. 

What needs to be tweaked: 1. The dispersal of visual resources in a way that is efficient and allows maximum use of class time. I might simply split the set of images between the 6 tables and then rotate them mid-class. 2. 

Next Steps: 
* Show them images of art works that tell a story. Most of these drawings began to tell a story. When asked, each child would tell me about their drawings and its relation to other drawings on their page. Therefore, naturally, the next step would be to look at pieces of art that visually leads one to compose a narrative in their heads. 
* I will allow one more day in drawing just so these narratives will fully become finalized and solidified. But before work time I will lead a small session of looking at a piece of art that tells a story and have students guess and imagine what the narrative in the painting/art might be. In doing so children will start to identify a visual set of clues which they will use to look at all art, even their own. 

One of the biggest changes so far has been the freedom to choose materials. Students have been enjoying this freedom with abandon. I do not yet know if it's the independence which breeds higher levels of expression or vice versa, but I do know that students appear to be more mature when allowed to work in this setting.