Day 3- Choice-Based classroom (2nd grade)

Describe the class:  today I added collage as an additional center. I introduced the proper way to use glue, how to 'shop' for materials, and said it was an option. Children could continue exploring their drawings in the sketchbooks, use both media or just collage, again, all in their sketchbooks. To avoid the traffic jam by the visual resource box I chose only 4-5 different visuals and just placed them in the center of each table. Most children were not so specific and found inspiration among the images I placed on the table alone. A few lone students came and requested to look though the box for a specific image, but nothing like the traffic jam from Day 1 and Day 
What worked:  
* Calling each table one at a time to get up and go shopping as well as limiting their collage sheets to 2-3 papers each worked to keep hoarding from happening. You know, hoarding; Like when a child takes all the cool papers for herself and can technically never use them all. Limiting them also allowed them to not cause as much traffic as would have occurred had I not had the number limit. 
* Students are just voracious for information to beef up their work. A perfect example is a child in Ms. Parente's class who could not go on until he found out what color Saturn was. I looked it up and placed before him several photograph images of Saturn and he only then moved forward. 
* The level of enthusiasm around each child's work is just contagious. In the 12 years I have been teaching solely art I have never experienced this level of excitement by kids over their art before. I have to admit that all this time it the source of excitement I identified was very much coming from me and trickled down to them. That is good I guess, until you experience this and you realize just how much has been missing. 
* Narratives are forming. Even students that began JUST drawing what they love to draw, as the days pass they begin combining the images together and a narrative emerges. See examples in pictures on this post. 


What needs to be tweaked:  
As the centers begin to offer more and more options I will need to have a specific place for them to 'live'. Seeing as I am only exploring right now I have to set up each center each class and take down after. Nevertheless, I still need to keep both centers apart so that students begin to identify what media belongs in what center. The main reason, for me, for keeping centers separated would be to again, keep centers separated and reduce the traffic jam at the 'shopping area'. 

Next Steps: 
Clear up an area in the class for one center to live. perhaps the counter by the small sink will be a good spot. It has a large accessible counter and I can place all drawing materials there and begin creating a more permanent home for them. This should help with clean up for children will become familiar with where things are and where things should be. 
Begin reflecting what common themes keep coming up in students' art and limiting the topic of the resources but increasing the amount of visual resources per topic. For example, a lot of kids draw outdoor spaces and things found in the outdoors, such as parks, cars, people, sky, rainbows, birds. I need to reflect and come up with a common theme that can tie all these loosely related topics so that I can provide more varied, yet pointed visual resources. 

These were Ayra's initial drawings. I printed out a slew of visual resources and placed them in the box the first day. She immediately got them and began drawing more dresses. (see below)

Her designs became more and more sophisticated. She also began to create a narrative which helped to connect two seemingly disconnected subjects.

Buttons, Cuffs and Shoulder pads oh my....

....and the exploration continues....

This is the child that for three days now has been making a meticulous rendition of the planets. Just Gorgeous work. You can tell how carefully he applied colors to each planet.

 This child was so excited about her second cat drawing.

 This child played with size to create a family of bunnies. Again, a narrative begins forming while playing with size.

In the old art classroom we would be concerned about the fact that these people are stick figures. But the focus here again is on the narrative that is being formed in the child's mind. The image is so rich. See the facial expressions, the action lines, the use of color and pressure on the pen and what they represent. This image represents the beginning of any good story, inspiration, topic of interest and left alone to play with the story parts.....

I have a child who is obsessed with Star Wars in this class. He began by simply retelling the story parts that interested in in his drawings. Yet, as you will clearly see below, he began using the story characters and started playing with the idea of 'what else can this character do?'

 Here is what else this character could do.....

I have no doubt in my mind that every single line in this drawing plays a part in the story in this child's mind.

 Now a perfect example of the level of persistence that exists in a child when they are interested in what they are doing. Below are a series of images.....the child tried to draw this animal six times before he was satisfied with the image. Now THAT is persistence. 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is one of two final drawings using this animal. One has him combined with a hot dog and the child creates a story to unite the two seemingly disconnected images, the dog and the hot dog.
 

Last, this child has worked on the same page for 3 days now. I can tell from her dedication and time spent on this page that she LOVES what she's created. If they were now to write about this page she would most likely have a whole page to tell about it.

 

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. 

Day 1 - Choice-Based classroom (2nd grade)

Day 1:

Describe the class: Today was day one of choice-based exploration. To make things manageable in our 35-minute 2nd grade class we began with just one center, drawing. I went through their previous drawings of "favorite things we like to draw" in their sketchbooks and pulled out some ideas of what type of visual resources I would need to print online to inspire them. I printed black-line images of various flowers, aliens, monsters, clothing, dinosaurs, cars, etc. I displayed and labeled various types of drawing materials such as crayons, pastels, pens, pencils, coloring pencils and markers alongside the visual images in a table I called the "shopping table". Once they sat at their tables and had a few students passing the sketchbooks out I called tables of 4 one by one to shop for their materials and resource images of their choice.

What worked: 1. Students were super excited about being able to draw images related to their interests. Behavior was not an issue and normally this is a very squarely class. 2. children shared images with other children if there were not enough to go around. They took this opportunity to also chat with the child about their subject in common.

What needs to be tweaked: 1. The way in which drawing materials were put away was a bit confusing for kids. Some materials were in separate containers and ready to just be carried off to their tables, while others were in a huge container and needed to be doled out. I need to figure out a way to make all supplies available in the same way to make clean up less confusing. 2. I did not have enough images of some of the "hot" resources such as the Star Wars "how-to's". I need to look over the resources and maybe print more but also perhaps print out variations of the hot topics.

Next Steps: 
* Continue drawing, class is only 35-minutes long and most students did not feel they were done with their drawings.
* In two classes from now embedd a gallery walk in which I will encourage students to walk around and look at other's work and "copy" great ideas from their peers and discuss the idea of "Inspiration". I will also add another component to that where students can go around and write questions on stickies about students' final drawings.

scissor practice for kindergarten

chair design challenge

          The art teachers at Discovery in APS have done a chair design challenge and I wanted to start this year's 4th grade class with construction 3D. We began by interviewing our friends about what types of chairs they would want and shared out their results during a class conference. This was valuable for students got to learn the essential vocabulary within this class. Most of the vocabulary words were adjectives that would be helpful in describing the characteristics of a chair. 

Students interviewing each other about what types of chairs their friends would want. 

This chair has marker tops as legs and packing peanuts for the pillows

This brown cloth material wraps this chair for more privacy 

This chair in the left I a swivel chair. The chair actually swivels!!

The one is a bench with the name and logo of the school on the chair

Two boys worked together to make this comfy chair. 

fine motor skills-prek

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4th graders decorate their sketchbooks

sewing pillows -2nd grade