Saturday, September 14, 2013

First Full Week: Elementary

Wow, so after the first two days and this first full week, I have finally seen every elementary student once!  Today was day 1 in the cycle, so the rotation started again and I saw a few classes for a second time.  I think I'm really going to struggle with getting students to work a bit faster.  I hate rushing them, but we aren't going to have time to do very many art projects this year with the elementary schedule!  I'm always talking about taking their time and having good craftsmanship, but I was trying to push them along today so we could begin the first unit!  (Problem is, they're very chatty right now, so they aren't actually working like they should be.  I know that's why they take so long to finish projects, but they don't know that...they just get confused because Mrs. Impey tells them to take their time but then tells them to hurry up!)  That is going to be my big struggle with elementary this year, I just know it!

Anyways, here are two of my three bulletin boards.  Between faculty meetings, doctor appointments and one-on-one meetings, I'm ashamed to say I still have a blank bulletin board!  Eek!  Oh well, I think I'm entitled to be a bit behind since I now I have three bulletin boards and 2, sometimes 3 display cases that I'm responsible for!

Here is my almost-finished "Art Is..."/"Art Isn't..." bulletin board.  We finished the post-it part in every class, but didn't finish the other illustration part.  I'll be able to fill the rest of the empty spots this week as I see the classes for the second time.  I did this as an opening project with the 4th-6th graders, and the 3rd-6th 12:1:1 class.

This group of 6th graders had the color theory curriculum last year.  I was impressed by the "Art is Cool" one, where the student remembered the cool colors (especially since that student is color blind too!).



And here is the Van Gogh's Vase board.  These classes all finished their flowers...2nd and 3rd graders, plus the K-3 12:1:1 class did these.  I just need to make a sign to hang telling viewers who did the flowers.  (I plan to get my 3rd bulletin board up on Monday...the K-1st graders did Kandinsky circles.  1st graders did cut construction paper and the kinders just did colored crayon circles.  I had to take more time going over the rules with the kinders so I didn't want to change scissors and glue just yet!)

I was particularly impressed by this student...he is in the 12:1:1 class and in the past, has not been very good at concentrating on coloring in the lines.  He spent the entire time working and concentrating so hard on coloring his flower!  This is the best coloring job I've seen him do, and it was only the first week of school!

So, now that I'm finally seeing the kids for their second art class, we're starting to get into our first units for some, and pre-assessments for others.  My kindergarten students will be serving as my LLO this year.  I had a 97% passing rate on my post-assessment with the cutting & gluing exercise, so I want (and my administrator wants) to beef up the assessment a bit, because it is probably a little easy.  So, I've decided to add a simple drawing component and some kinder-color theory.  Since we do primary and secondary colors in kindergarten, that's probably something safe to assess their memories on.  I also do a lot of basic drawings of things like the cows and such using basic shapes...so shape recognition and drawing skills can be assessed at the end of the year as well.

New shape sheet has 7 shapes and one line to cut out instead of 9 shapes and two lines.  The two lines confused the students last year a bit, I think.

This will assess the secondary colors (and if I wanted to, at the end of the year I could assess their ability to read these color words and shape words as sight words).  Also, drawing a square, circle, triangle, rectangle and five different kinds of lines.

My 1st graders will also be making up the rest of my SLO portion with the two high school levels.  With them I cover 54% of my student population based on class level sizes and the amount of time I see them during the school year.  My 1st graders will be doing the 6-square drawing test again, but I'm going to be altering my original rubric.  The alteration is still in the process.  I had an OK success rate with that assessment.  The rubric was the main problem in grading those assessments.  I'm also changing what the students will be drawing.  Last year they had to draw a fuzzy dog, a rainbow, a flower, a tree, their family and anything they wanted.  Of course, the "anything they wanted" part for some was just scribbles.  So, this year, they will be drawing a fuzzy dog, a tree, a rainbow, a landscape, a still life and a self-portrait.  This was, some content vocabulary and recognition can be used as well.  More on that as I redevelop that rubric.

In 6th grade, we will be jumping into cave art.  Last year I didn't do a prehistoric unit with the six graders because by the time we got through pre-assessments and such, I missed the opportunity to match it.  That unit is a quick one in social studies.  So, this year I'm starting it right away with hopes of giving them so background knowledge on the subject to help in social studies.

5th grade will be jumping right into color theory.  I did a little of the color wheel with them last year, so we are starting off by making generic color wheel plates and I'll have them keep track of the color theories that they learn about on the back over the course of the year.  I had been hoping to get tertiary colors painted in the same class as well, but they took too much time (being "Chatty Kathys") finishing up their "Art Is..." illustrations.  We will finish these next class and then jump right into the complementary color checkerboards.  I decided to skip the painted color wheels where I have them make a symbol to represent themselves because that just took way too long last year to complete.

For 4th grade, we are jumping right into using value.  We will do the fall leaves linocut project and the fall tree with value drawing that I did last year.  That project is always a big hit with 4th graders.

Third grade?  Not quite sure what I'm doing with that group yet...but 2nd grade is currently doing the Common Core NYS listening and learning strand about fairy tales, so I'm sure I can come up with something there.  Hmmm...the thought that just came to me is that they just did Beauty and the Beast...maybe some stained glass castle windows?



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