Today was the last day of this odd week with crazy schedule changes. Today was pretty nice, yet confusing, because my cooperating teacher had several free periods due to schedule changes. The 2nd Grade students had a field trip today, so they did not go to art class during our first period of the day. My cooperating teacher then told me that the 3rd Grade students were practice S.T.A.A.R. testing and she heard that they may or may not be coming to art today. She also heard that they may be switching with 4th Grade, our last class of the day. The passing period before the 3rd Grade class, my cooperating teacher and I had no idea what to expect. 5 minutes after class started, however, no students had arrived and we concluded that the 3rd Grade students just weren’t coming. This gave us another free period.
Another confusing schedule change possibility resulted when my cooperating teacher received a text from the Music and Gym teachers asking if we should have the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Graders partake in Fitness Friday. Because Thursdays are a rotational day for these grades where they attend a Specials class for the second time that week, the Gym teacher thought that they should participate in Fitness Friday. My cooperating teacher does not like Fitness Friday, though, and already planned her day. Because the suggestion was so last minute and there were already so many schedule changes happening, my cooperating teacher convinced the other Specials teachers not to go with this plan.
On top of everything else, my cooperating teacher hasn’t had any lunch duty all week due to the S.T.A.A.R. testing, so we had another extended lunch period. All of this free time gave my cooperating teacher and I time to lesson plan, create examples, change the bulletin boards, prepare for the day’s classes, and prepare for the upcoming Art Show. It was incredibly helpful and it made me wish my teacher normally had a Conference period during the day.
I used some of this free time to continue working on my teacher-made example for the next 1st Grade lesson. Because the students will be outlining their works, I outlined my sketch in ink. The students will also be depicting their dinosaur in an environment, so I challenged myself to add a background, something I don’t do often. I am incredibly thrilled with how my example came out. I love my linework and the detail of my background. I really feel that it adds to my original sketch. Now, I’ll be coloring my picture with crayons, focusing on using multiple colors and blending them together. Hopefully the finished piece turns out successful.
Unfortunately, the principal decided to hold an assembly today because tomorrow is Good Friday and we don’t have school. I enjoy the assemblies, but my cooperating teacher does not as they cause the school day to start 15 minutes earlier, cutting into her before-school Conference period. The assemblies are usually pretty long, too, and since 2nd Grade is our first class, we didn’t get much extra time due to the 2nd Graders being gone on a field trip. We really only gained about 15 minutes of extra time.
The assembly also threw off many of the students. Because assemblies are done on Fridays, several of the students were thinking we were on a Fitness Friday schedule and that they were supposed to report to the gym instead of art class. Because P.R.I.D.E. leader students are allowed to go to class early without walking in line with the teacher, they weren’t led by their teachers to art class. We had to send students to the gym to collect the P.R.I.D.E. leaders, causing our art classes to start late.
Today was just wack-a-doodle!
We didn’t actually get to teach many classes today, just 5th Grade, 1st Grade, Kindergarten, and 4th Grade. It still seems like the students are lacking the benefits of demonstration. The 5th Grade students have been illustrating still lives in the style of Pablo Picasso and have been struggling with replicating his abstracted style. They’ve also been confused on how to add “random lines breaking up the picture.” The Kindergarten students again struggled with tracing their suns for their sunsets in a good spot, coloring the sunset, filling the whole page with the sunset, adding the ground, and adding the silhouettes. It seems like the Kindergarten students have really been struggling with the whole assignment and only find success when my cooperating teacher or myself walk them through each step one-on-one. The 4th Grade students are also struggling to complete their pointillism pictures with so many dots to create. I don’t think the students quite understand the dot concept though as they’re either drawing incredibly large circles, simply outlining everything in dots, or creating spaced-out dot patterns to color things in. I’ve been trying to explain to students that the dots are meant to be squished together and done in random colors with mostly the color you want the space to look, and after hearing that the students seem to be more successful. Many students, though, just want to be finished with the pointillism pictures and aren’t caring enough to work hard on them. They do look pretty tedious and time-consuming.
Sara Bareilles – Brave
Here’s one of the songs that’s played at the beginning of the Friday assemblies.
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Have you thought about having the students arbitrarily drawing lines across the paper before drawing the still life in the Picasso project? They could then pick up those lines after drawing their still life as well as add more. It would act like a bit of a crutch and prevent them from feeling like they were destroying the drawing they just made.
That’s a good idea! Many students would finish drawing their still lives and then not want to add the lines because they felt like it would destroy their work. I don’t think that can be done now that the still lives are already drawn or in-progress, but I can suggest it to my cooperating teacher for next time. Thanks for the comment!
Plus, they’ll resent you if it they don’t feel it looks better. Always have them destroy the paper then repair it. Especially when dealing with Picasso, who said, “every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”