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Welcome to my student teaching blog!
This is a place to share about my classrooms and how curriculum is present in a classroom.
Entry One: How Advanced Drawing curriculum translates to other classes
This entry focuses on the second project that my advanced drawing students made. I am currently a student teacher at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colorado with Missy Wolf. This was the class that I was most nervous about working with because of my lack of experience. It is challenging for me to give advice to the students, especially when it comes to technical things, yet I have found that this class is one of my favorites. All the students have taken at least 2 previous art classes so they all know what they’re doing. I am frequently impressed with the skill of my students. I am very open that I am not the best at giving advice, I can tell them this doesn’t feel finished or the composition would work better with this, but my mentor teacher is able to give the ideas about what a project is missing. I am trying to learn about what she is sharing with students so that I can build my knowledge.
A majority of finished work displayed on the Art Department's bulletin board.
This was the first group of students to do this project in this style. Previous class had different parameters but it was still called an automatic drawing. These students had to start with 3 cut up images from books and magazines. One of these had to be black and white, one colored and the 3 could be either. Then students choose a colored piece of paper and glued the 3 pieces down. The students started drawing and incorporating the images into a drawing. They are like a stream of consciousness, drawing what comes next to your mind. The reasoning behind this is giving them tools of how to start a drawing because these ideas likely would never have happened without the parameters.
During the project students generally went one way or the other. Some really enjoyed and thrive with the openness but more struggled at the beginning. Students said things like “I just don’t know what to do, this is too confusing,” and “How am I supposed to incorporate this image, I am done with the others but this just doesn’t fit.” These were from the beginning of the project and more about the planning process. Some students redid their sketching and really struggled with starting. There were other students who had difficulty at the end. They used up most of their ideas and got stuck. “I’m so over this, I just don’t know what to do and don’t want to work on it.” Sometimes these students have small adjustments like bringing a color around throughout the drawing to help with composition. Other students hadn’t made any connections. That was one of their criteria, making connections and bringing their images into the drawing. One thing that is super helpful is making photo copies, students can then experiment and try things without doing it on their final project. I know that having a printer for the art office is not always the case but I am starting to realize that it is very useful!
I think this project helped some students really thrive at the start of the quarter but I know some did not like it one bit. I think this is a great project to have students get back in the routine of drawing, it was low stakes and it was very open. The students who didn’t like it mostly didn’t enjoy that there was no clear path. In advance drawing the students have fewer guidelines because their previous guidelines were very technical and specific. For these students I have found it helpful to support them through their thinking, sometimes their planning takes more time then working on the final. For future projects my mentor teacher and I have talked about giving them small guidelines like this but some will focus more on content or material. Like having students make a portrait or use colored pencils. I think this planning helps students find what they like being given, some want to draw everything in graphite but struggle with what to draw, some students only draw people so having them pick 3 cut up images challenges the content and maybe they still find a way to incorporate a person.
I think this style allows all students to have the opportunity to find their own style since they already built the technical skills. I compare this style to our advanced sculpture students. There are only 6 of them and they are in the sculpture class. Those students had a similarly structured first assignment, but now they have to make at least 2 more projects of whatever they want. I think I could translate this to advanced pottery. It might be students who are 2 or 3 times advanced but giving students a few more parameters and by the end students can make whatever they want. This also will support students in creating artwork for shows and portfolios. The images should be original and can’t be taken from other sources. For the AP art portfolio students cultivate artwork all year and it all needs to be original and have a theme. This style helps support the student working towards submitting their art because their inspiration is the world that they have experienced and how it can be represented in art.
Working on my own project, the one that some students continue to encourage me to work on it.
A mostly finished piece made by one of our student aides
Entry Two: Choice Based Learning in a High School Classroom
For this entry I am focusing on choice based learning through my project of object animals. I provided two guidelines to students for this project and the rest was up to them. Students had to bring in a minimum of 3 objects from home the size of their hand or bigger. Then they listed out 5 animals and mixed and matched the two to generate ideas. Most students found an idea they were very passionate about through their sketches. There were accommodations made for those who didn’t. We had an international student who didn't have junk around so they were able to use an object from the classroom's supply, or some student really did not like the guidelines. I asked them to create an animal using an object but they weren’t restricted to what they brought in or their list.
Display case with some finished projects
Progress and final photos of a gazelle
Students became problem solvers to create their animals. Many of them built an armature and then worked toward painting, paper macheing, or finishing the animal in some other way. They made the choices of what to use, how they wanted to build it, and how to display it. It was really exciting for me to grade these and receive the feedback that almost every student enjoyed this project. I am still trying to find a way to meet the wants of the students who didn’t enjoy the project as much. Some students didn’t like any of the projects or the class very much in general, that might be more of the teacher and how it was structured in general but I didn’t feel comfortable letting one student do whatever they wanted while the other had a few guidelines.
Progress and final photos of a pair of wolf spiders
I think one solution I have to this is requiring the use of an object, however they want just like this, but to take away the animal piece. With this I know that for many high school students this will overwhelm them with decisions, so providing both options might be a realistic solution. Many of the students loved the amount of choice I provided so I think it meets the needs of a majority and it was really fun to see their projects and how they all approached it differently. If it was only me running the whole 3D-Design, Sculpture, and Pottery programs then I would structure the sculpture class with more choice than this one had. In the 3D design class there would be more structure so that the more advanced classes were more choice based.
Progress photo of a table and their projects
One student glueing many individual pieces of string
Entry Three: What's a sculpture?
Recently in my kindergarten and 1st grade classes we made zig-zag sculptures. The kindergartens letter for the week was Z and I have learned the reinforcement of that in the art classroom is helpful. Both grades are structured the same with four different centers that the students rotate through. Many of the first graders remembered making these in kindergarten.
The main curriculum of this project was the term sculpture and learning what a sculpture is. We talked about what it means for something to be 3D and 2D. I explained this using flat as an opposite. One day one of my Kindergarten students was getting picked up early and stopped by with his mom and younger sister before leaving. He was showing his younger sister the zig-zag sculptures and explaining what a sculpture was to her. He pointed out the clay animal sculptures that 5th grade had been working on exclaiming that anything can be a sculpture.
Another kindergarten student who is easily distracted and not the best at paying attention was pointing out many sculptures one day. Though that was not what he was supposed to be doing it showed me that my teaching of what a sculpture is was effective which is reassuring.
Finished Zig-Zag Sculptures!
Another fun concept that the kids learned was taking something flat like paper and making it 3D. Lots of the students were surprised to see how folding the paper would change the way it looks completely. Knowing these new skills it might be interesting to see what they would do if they were given paper and just were told to create an art work. I am sure some might just make another zig-zag sculpture, but some students had already started playing with the paper in other ways.
Doing this sculpture project led us into doing clay next. It allowed us to start talking about 3D art and then on to creating more. Many of the students have been very excited to make more sculptures.
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