ART ON MY HANDS: May 2014

Friday, May 30, 2014

Back to Class with AOE!

Showing Student Growth in Art

I just joined the community and gave my introduction bio. Off and running for AOE class #2. I took the Assessment course a couple of months back. It really challenged me to think about my teaching in a new way and also to analyze my feelings about assessment. With the Common Core in place and the new teacher evaluation expectations, Student Growth is something I need to know more about. I'll try to post as much as I can this month, especially since it is our final weeks of school and I will have lessons I want to share but please bear with me if I seem to disappear as the ever studious student. I'll let you know how the course goes but I know I will walk away with new information for the fall and how I will document Student Growth with my students.

Kindergarten End of Year Weaving

Who ever thought of teaching weaving using these materials...Brilliant! I wish I knew who to credit and I'm sure I found it on pinterest so if you read this, let me know and I will give your the credit due. The white fabric is that shelf liner that Contact puts out. It has really big holes which makes it idea for a Kindergarten weaving project. I pre cut the fabric into 6" squares and the gimp into pieces about 8" long. I started the lesson by gathering all the students on my rug in a circle and demonstrated the concept of weaving. Some students had done some weaving but others had never seen this before. For the novice students, we imagined the gimp was a snake darting in and out of the fabric. First the snake pops his head up from underneath the fabric and then he pokes his head back down to hide. I reminded them to not skip any holes and t
o try to weave in a straight line. They were to work in a pattern of their own choice. The above example was one 45 minute class period by a student who was comfortable with the process. I could see this taking several weeks to complete. It is a perfect project for the end of the year when students are getting antsy and unfocused. You could have heard a pin drop for most of the class time. Watching the students work and helping one another was fabulous. I plan to trim off the edges of the gimp next to the fabric when finished and maybe add a line of elmers around all four sides to keep everything in tact.
This went so well with my Kinders, I handed out materials to early finishers in 1st grade and let them begin one, too. Off to the store this weekend to buy more shelf liner and into my basement storage to scrounge for more gimp!

Thursday, May 29, 2014

The thrill of the kiln

This is the best work this student created all year. I was so proud!

Let me just say that I Love being surprised by the creativity of my students. As I've shared with you before, clay is the unit I enjoy teaching most each year. Clay has always been my personal favorite medium so sharing it with my students is the ultimate excitement for me. The best time of the year is opening the kiln after the glaze firing and discovering all the wonderful treasures. There were so many amazing works this year that I decided to just share them all with you. So this lengthy post will be photo heavy. When my students came into class this week their projects were waiting with a rubric to be used for self assessment of their work.

After completing the rubric, they flipped the paper and wrote an artist statement about their work that was to be posted on Artsonia along with the picture of their clay project. This was a very enlightening process for students and myself. I really appreciated reading their own reflections about their work and the writing stimulated many private conversations concerning what might be done differently the next time they worked with clay. This was especially helpful for me as I worked with the fourth grade students that I will work with again next year. I also found that most of the students were much harder on their work that I would be when I grade it. I was thrilled to read most of their comments and to learn more about the motivation behind their choices. These are some of the standout pieces for me. They were all created by 4th and 5th grade students and are representations from the two schools I am assigned to.