Writing? In ART?

I did it! I graduated with my Master's a couple of weeks ago. Sorry to be so AWL all year, but I'm hoping to rectify that in the coming school year. 

I have my first ever student teacher in the fall. She came in so we could size each other up meet a couple of weeks ago. She seems nervous (of course) but also like she will be great once she settles into teaching. I just wish it was more than six weeks. With the kids on a six day cycle, she'll only see each class 4-5 times! I'm hoping with a student teacher I will be able to work on curriculum building, assessment, and technology. At least I was, until we specialists had a meeting with our principal a few weeks ago. She wanted to give us a heads up on the new Wisconsin State testing that is coming in two years. WKCE (Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam) is out, and a new system is coming. Apparently fifth graders are going to be expected to be able to sit down and type two pages in one sitting. Seriously, I know college kids that can't do that! Anyway, our principal wanted to let us know what is coming so that we can work on ways to integrate writing in our content areas. As I told her, that's easy in art if I had the time to do it, but with only 25 classes (assuming there's no field trips or snow days) a year, that's a pretty tall order. I have been working on writing integration since our meeting. She said a goal of once a trimester would be a good start for next year. Pinterest has helped me find a few good ideas. I'll share my plans now, in case any of you are also looking for more ideas, and I'll share the results and how it was taught once we do it with our students. 

1. FAKEBOOK: I LOVE this idea! I only have one wish: that I could create a school data base of these pages and the kids could link to each other's pages instead of just having "friends" listed. Perhaps in the future...My concern about this was that a lot of artists have done and said some pretty stupid things publicly that I wouldn't want my students discovering on my watch. Therefore, I am creating a class website on Google sites that has artist pages sorted by years, style, and artists. Each artist page has two works of art, a brief bio, quotes (if I can find any elementary appropriate ones!), and known acquaintances. Kids will use my site to choose an artist, create a Fakebook page and then do a project based on the artist of their choice. I just started working on this, so I only have a couple of artist pages done and none of them are published. When it is complete I will be sure to post the link so all of you can reference it too!

2. POST-IT CRITIQUE: This idea really inspires me. Kids can write a question, comment, or suggestion on a post-it and put it on another student's work of art. I'd certainly have to have strict guidelines about positive comments, but this could be amazing. I was perusing the Lakeshore catalog today and came across these magnetic clips that would be perfect for hanging the art on the white board. I happen to have my tables labeled in the same colors these clips come in. I'm going to order two sets (there's six kids to a table) and the kids will hang their artwork from a clip that matches their table color to make it easy to pass them back at the end of class. I'm thinking everyone puts their completed project up and we start another project. Then the kids go up one table at a time and put up three post-its. One question, one comment, and one suggestion.

3. I also want to start a sketchbook/journal with the kids. I was thinking of using jumbo index cards. The kids can design the cover the first day of class, and each index card can have a hole in the top corner. They'll be held together by a jumpring with a ribbon on it that matches the table color the student sits at for easy passing out. In addition to this idea of images, some days I can ask the kids to compare/contrast two works of art that are on the SmartBoard. I figure it's an easy way to get the kids focused right away when they come in the door, and keeps them occupied while the stragglers come in. With back-to-back classes it could also help with me needing to get out or put away supplies.

4. Finally, I saw this post on Pinterest about weaving with magazines and thought it would be fun to have the kids write a poem or story and weave it into a painting. This is very much in the development stages, and I've been focused on the website so I haven't given it much thought yet.

I'd definitely be interested in all of your writing integration ideas if you have any to share! I found it ironic that I've been working on all of this integration and this week a young student said I'm not a "real teacher." When I asked what he meant he said "Oh, I mean you don't teach the real stuff, like math and reading." I replied "Yes, I do. It's in every lesson, you're just having so much fun you didn't notice."

Oh No

I had one of those moments today. The wonderful anticipation of opening the kiln, to find every. single. project. exploded.

Awesome.

Now, what to do with those cute little kindergarteners that have been anxiously anticipating painting those little clay ducks?

Make new birds, of course! However, with only three art classes left, I knew that we'd have the same results if we tried clay again. It's just too humid in my classroom for those little quackers to dry enough for firing.

So we reviewed color mixing.

And used up some two year old Model Magic.

Each table got individual sized packages of Model Magic in white, red, yellow, and blue.

Students mixed secondary colors when needed and created a bird of their choice.

Then I told them that Model Magic doesn't keep, so they would just have to make more sculptures and use it all up!

They were happy to oblige.

Action Research

A while back I mentioned that I am in a grad school cohort. We met this past weekend, and had to solidify our plans for our Action Research project. The project is in place of a thesis that a typical graduate program would require. We do our first round of research next semester, examine the results over the summer, and modify our plan if needed. Next fall we do our second round of research in the classroom and complete a presentation of our results in the spring. Then we graduate! Yea! Anyway, I have had a really hard time determining what my topic of research should be. First I thought about comparing the learning styles of boys vs. girls. We have to do a literature review of ten relavant writen works, and all of the lit I found on it was debating the use of segregated schools~all boys and all girls. Not really applicaple, since my schools are not segregated, and won't ever be segregated.

So I changed my idea to working with my children with autism. But that is WAY too broad. I had to narrow it down, and I really struggled with this. What did I want to try with these children? How could I help them find greater success~preferably success that they can transfer into lifelong skills? Finally, I have settled on the Action Research question of "to what extent will implementing storyboards in small groups of children with autism impact student independence?" A mouthfull, right? Basically, I will be creating storyboards~or visual aides for the kids that show them step by step how to complete the projects and clean up after the project. The goals being that the higher functioning children can find independence and possibly start coming to art without an aide to help them, and the lower functioning kids being able to do more of the project on their own. Hopefully the lower functioning kids will be able to use the visual to grab their own supplies, or even need less hand-over-hand help. We'll see where it goes from there! I can see storyboards being used for the lower level grades too.

The other elementary art teachers and I have completed a grant requesting document cameras for our classrooms. If we get this grant, this project will be even easier, as I would be able to record myself creating my example and play it back as often as needed! I completed my first storyboard this morning, and will be trying it with the students this afternoon. I'm a little nervous, but really excited to see how they react!