Art Journal #5, 11/09/2020
Last week, the 26th-30th of October, I taught the second week of my lesson on 1pt perspective and graffiti/tagging. The lesson ended well, with the students having a meaningful discussion on the differences between graffiti and tagging, and when graffiti isn't illegal. The discussion also led to respect for surroundings and art being a conversation, adding value to the places it is at. Because tagging is not starting a conversation or adding value, it is not art, as the students concluded. It was really neat to see my lesson come to fruition and have the students discuss Banksy and graffiti, as well as use their 1pt perspective drawings to graffiti and tag on.
The plan for this week, the 2nd of November, was for me to begin teaching 2nd grade while teaching the same lesson to the next class in 4th grade. I realized and notified my mentor teacher, Lindsey, that if we moved forward with adding kindergarten on the week of the 16th, we would only have one class with the kids on Thanksgiving week. Because of this, I am teaching fourth, kindergarten, and second grade as of the 2nd. Kindergarten is art on a cart so that our room has time to be sanitized, and the lesson I am teaching is a tissue paper exploration and discussion on surrealism. I noticed from this first week that teaching kindergarten in a small class size and in their own room helps with classroom management as they are more comfortable with the rules and systems in their own room. These twelve 5-year-olds lined up perfectly socially distanced to wash their hands with little instruction needed, which would have been slightly more chaotic if they were introduced to a new room. This week was also the first week these kindergarteners had art this year, so it was a major learning curve in general for them. The second graders had a lot of fun this week in their lesson about Native American art (more specifically, Mimbres pottery) and how they used bugs and sometimes anthropomorphized bugs in their art. The students then made two bugs, one that is from observation, and one that is creatively engineered. They then cut the bugs up by their thorax, abdomen, and head, and next week they are creating sculptures of the amalgamation they receive, contributed by the whole class. The students were incredibly interested in this lesson so far, having learned about insects in their curriculum before and adding much knowledge to the discussion. It was nice to practice scissor skills with them as well because some of them were on different stages of development for the fine motor skills involved. Overall, the interactions with students have been positive and I have been able to redirect behaviors to be engaged and respectful. The lessons I made have engaged the students, and so far all of them blend math, English, and science curricula with art in varying degrees allowing for a mixed perspective in the arts. I would like to spend more time working on outlining my lessons or improving my focus, as I lose my trains of thought often while teaching. Due to advisement from my university coach, I will attempt sticky note reminders of where I am at in the lesson to encourage my focus. In my efforts to not lose focus, I think it's important to put the student engagement first and not ignore any derailing but relevant conversations; perhaps I will circle back to those conversations once we get to a stopping point however to acknowledge the student engagement. Something that I improved between last week and this week was my work on the lesson plans, adding more depth to the planning of each day in the plan to make the plan seamless. It is unfortunate that we are teaching in a pandemic, especially to the younger grades, as the students are missing out on some crucial socio-emotional development between facial expressions to sharing. |