First off, if you have not met with me to register for next fall, please sign up on the bulletin board next to B-12.
For this week, we will give updates on our schools.
For next week, I would like you to watch the documentary, Where To Invade Next by Michael Moore. You may or may not be a Moore fan, but politics aside, in this documentary he travels to Europe and Africa and asks people their opinions and experiences about things like jobs, schools, lunches, homework, learning, prisons, drugs, etc. What's amazing in this video are the people's responses from many different countries in terms of how they do things. What's surprising throughout the video is where these nations and people originally say they got the ideas of doing schools, jobs, learning, etc. from...it's the US.
I have three copies of the documentary in B-12 where the books are. It's also on Hulu. So, watch it in B-12 or check it out overnight and watch it at home. What I want you to do is to mostly listen what Europeans are saying about life, learning and living.
This week I will be asking questions about curriculum and lessons. We will continue reading the Yeh book after next week. I am enjoying your posts about what is happening at your placements.
Ask your teacher about curriculum and where they get ideas from. What are you seeing in terms of curricular planning and lessons?
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DeleteI did not see this question until I had already visited my school but I remember at the beginning of the year talking to her about how she got the ideas for her amazing projects. Some she remembered doing herself and others she has collected throughout the years. I believe that time is the ultimate teacher that helps to develop ideas and lessons that will help the student grow. It is a constant wonder if a new project will fail or take a new life that will continue on to other classes but I believe that is what makes a teacher great. Gaining experience from just teaching a project will build on skills for when you teach it again. The curriculum I looked at a few weeks past and saw the specific requirements that are given through Irons Middle School. It is a template that must be filled out stating what they are having the students accomplish, how they are integrating technology, and what skill sets and vocabulary they will be using. To me it is insane that they only have one template for the entire school when each class (especially art) is very different from the other.
DeleteAs far as curriculum goes, my teacher doesn't teach to a specific lesson plan. What she told me is that all of Lubbock ISD does is give a theme, and each teacher is free to create a lesson plan involving that theme. I really like that idea, because that way the individuality of the teachers can shine.
DeleteShannon at Bowie Elementary said she wasn't given any specific curriculum from LISD and so she thought it was important to base hers off the principles and elements of design. Each project has a conceptual theme paired with an emphasis on one of the elements or principles. I was curious as to where she gets her ideas and she said she had done them herself, learned them in a workshop, or found them on Pinterest and tweaked them. I really enjoy every project she has and just about every student does too. They are very serious about their work for the most part and eager to see what they're doing next.
DeleteMy teacher uses youtube a BUNCH for her class. A lot of her lessons are accompanied by videos that can repeat the lessons and show the kids how to do the projects step by step. She plays the video once or twice and then pauses it step by step so the kids can follow along.
DeleteThere were a lot of benefits to this, but sometimes the kids would get discouraged if their projects weren't matching what was on the screen. Lots of balled up paper and pouty children.
Mrs. Thomas sticks to her own curriculum and teaches certain mediums then sort of goes over some Elements of Art to focus on or just reiterates what some of the important ones are for that specific project. She says in middle school, she expects them to know, for the most part, the elements and principles and doesn't want to keep going over the same things over and over. She told me how she wants to structure her teaching in the future and how she hopes LISD will change the way it's curriculum is set up. She also said that maybe next year, she would set up her lesson plans for advanced a little differently and let them have more freedom in their art making choices while helping them continue to learn. I love the way she teaches and it's hard to put it all into words but she has a good system, especially since middle schools seem to be very hard to structure. She assigns them one homework assignment for each week and they are all really fun drawing ideas, just to keep their imagination active; for example, draw your best friend as a Kung Fu master, draw a man-eating plant, or draw a president as a zombie. She said the homework assignments also give her more grades than she needs so it gives them plenty of opportunity to do well. In class is when they work on projects and she teaches as many different mediums as she can and gives them fun projects that aren't all about still life's and portraits.
DeleteI actually got to see mazz make their curriculum plan for next fall because it had to be approved before the school year was over. With them having it put in before the school year was over it also made it to where as soon a the school year started they where able to touch the budge and not having to wait.
DeleteNoelle has shown me many different websites she gets her ideas off of. She is very creative and puts her own twists on them. She also incorporates interesting videos or shows that go along with the lesson to keep the kids focused. Noelle showed me the exact guidelines they must follow and its pretty strict and specific. There are a lot of requirements they must meet with every lesson.
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DeleteGive us an update of what happened this week at your school.
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DeleteToday I visited Irons from 10-1pm. For some reason the kids were all over the place and very talkative. We were able to get them to work on their stuff but it took a while to get them in the right mind set. I helped Mrs. Holley cut final colored paper for the beginners' Egyptian project. They have started on their final sarcophagus and will trace it onto the colored paper. The next class was the paper mache mask. At this point the entire class is on different levels, some showing tremendous process and others looking like they barely started. During this class I helped tear up pieces of paper for their final layer of the paper mache. Her advance class is the same as the intermediate in having people at different stages of the project. Some have completed their final drawings to go on the oil pastel backgrounds and glued them down, while others are still working to shade in the final project. All throughout my time there, I helped Mrs. Holley with the sketches books and putting stickers on them to show completion. Ultimately it was a great day but chaotic. Mrs. Holley kept jokingly asking if it was a full moon because that seemed the only explanation haha.
DeleteThis week I have/am visiting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 2-3:20. So far, I have seen three different classes. They have been working on linear perspective, the difference between back, middle, and foreground, and finishing up their paper mache projects. The paper mache class has definitely caught on to the fact that if they talk and waste time at the end of class, they go home with gluey hands. The linear perspective class was confused at first, but they have improved exponentially since the first day of that project. I am so proud of all the kids because it is very obvious that they are doing their best and learning so much!
DeleteThe kids have done a lot of clay projects! They LOVE clay. It's so tactically pleasing and relatively easy for them to manipulate. Even the 5th graders have issues holding and controlling their pencils and markers, but everyone can roll clay into balls or snakes or fangs.
DeleteThey made some totally awesome pinch pot monsters. Since my teacher loves clay too, her enthusiasm and creativity reaches the kids and they make all sorts of wild monsters and some really surprisingly sophisticated animal sculptures. There were like 3 minions in the kiln room too.
This week Mrs. Thomas introduced an I Am poem project for her intermediate and advanced classes. I thought this was a fun idea to sort of collaborate with some writing. They first wrote down their I Am poems and then she gave them long papers and the instructions were, the paper is 18 inches long and there are 18 lines in the poem so they were going to write out all of the lines but separate each line in the poem. The paper had to have a color scheme and each section needed to have value change in the color. She also wanted them to try a fun font. Her example that she made herself turned out pretty good and, overall, the kids seemed to have fun with it. She gave them a week to finish.
DeleteThis week we started mona lisa projects for the beginning classes. These projects wherre done by they had to color the mona lisa's in a cerertain color skem. nuetral, one color, primary, and so on. Afterr they finished the coloring part they got to make and symetrical or assymetrical boarder for the piece which would them be hung up in the hall. They also learned how to make tages for the pieces.
DeleteThis week I did a short lesson with pre school because they finished their big projects for the week. They were learning about Texas history so I had them do finger paintings of bluebonnets. They didn't quite get what the flowers were supposed to look like; they made big blobs of paint, instead of tiny dots, but the kids had fun.
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