Welcome to My {NEW} Classroom!

Welcome back NY!  Today was officially my sixth day back with students...we had two days of staff development on Thursday and Friday before Labor Day, and then students on Tuesday.  I can tell already that I am going to absolutely LOVE this school year!

First, have a look at my new darkroom!  Well, it's not new...not at all...but this is the first time in AT LEAST four years that you can actually walk into this room and see the counters!  Don't even ask me about the mess of chemicals I found spilled inside of those cabinets from incorrect storage methods... ;)  Hopefully I'll be good to go with dark room photography for a few years!  The chemicals are all pretty much expired, but the stop bath all seems fine, and I have powder developer and fixer in there, so hopefully that will all work.  More on my first adventure in the dark room in my next blog post!

Here's a look at my room...before children arrived!  I was allowed to purchase new stools, so I picked out these awesome art benches.  They are a bit low and I was nervous my taller students would hate them, but everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, loves them!  The students can't get over how comfortable they are AND no one is tipping over in them or pinching fingers off!  Seriously!  Those stools you see stacked up in the top right photo were all splitting in the seats and I had a kid pinch off the pad of his finger last year!  We are now going to turn those stools into an art club project. ;)

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In my elementary room, the shelving behind my chalkboards was for storing class projects.  Each teacher had an individual box.  In this room, I'm blessed to be able to use these shelves for resources.  I even had TONS of fabulous art books donated to my room by my past superintendent! My goal this year is to make students use books more for research and inspiration than the internet.  If the last three years have taught me anything about high school, it's that they think if it's on the internet, it's fair game for copying!

My side wall bulletin boards have now been split into six classes instead of 3 or 4...because I officially teacher six different classes this year! (Well, actually I teach 8, but I'll get to that in a minute...)  I am using the bins as Visual Journal storage so that the students don't have to drag sketchbooks back and forth.  So far, they seem pretty excited about their homework assignments for their classes and the bins haven't been too full after each class, but it is only the second week of school! 

I used to have exit slip posters hanging on this cupboard next to the door.  Last year, I kind of got lazy and didn't really use the exit slip, so I nixed those.  Now, homework will be listed here, as well as on the Google Classroom.  Each student in our district has a Gmail account.  As I have learned, high school students don't like to write things down in planners to remember them, and they tend to be glued to their technology, so I'm going to hone in on that this year and utilize the digital classroom.  So far, everyone has been very receptive to it and I think it's going to be successful!

Let's get down to the nitty gritty.  Here is my schedule.  I am sooooo happy with it!  Not only am I down from 13 different preps to 8, but for once, I'm not overloaded every day!  In my union, the contract specifies that teachers will have 6 teaching preps daily, one duty (study hall or ISS duty), one planning period, and one lunch...UNLESS they are a special area teacher or a teacher who has a lab that connects to their class (a.k.a. science and math).  So, in the past, I've always had 7 teaching preps a day, a prep period, ISS duty, and a lunch.  Now, I only have 7 classes two days a week, and the rest are all 6, and GASP!  One day with 5!

My new cohort in my district is K-6 and special education.  She sees Pre-K - 6th grade once a cycle still, and then works in the resource room for parts of her day.  I still receive two classes from the elementary, both of which are the upper elementary special education classes.  Generally, the students are anywhere from 3rd-6th grade in those two classes, and they are some of my favorite students!!  

Other exciting news?  I actually have a common lunch period with other teachers FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 7 YEARS...and I actually have the common study hall time this year too!

I've already got my next two post, well, actually three posts, planned, so be on the look out!  My fashion design class is jumping right into making our own mannequins for sewing and pinning clothes to, and my Studio, Art 7, and Drawing & Painting classes are ALL loving the visual journal assignments that they have received as homework assignments.  Yes, that's right.  They are ENJOYING homework!  More on that to come!

Back to school...three weeks late!!!

I'm still here!!! I promise!!!  The start of this year has been extremely hectic and I'm only now getting my feet under me!!  We are in the midst of a building project and I was unable to access either of my classrooms ALL SUMMER!!  We also didn't have power, lights or electricity for our first day back of staff development!!  It was horrible for my organized "OCD" to have to do everything on the first two days of staff development.  Not to mention, I wasn't able to get much lesson planning done at home with an almost two-year-old toddler!

Ironically, at the end of the last school year, I tore EVERYTHING down off of my walls in both rooms.  I guess I anticipated that the construction project would be a bit more organized...I guessed wrong. ;)  None the less, my No-No Board is gone this year and it has been replaced with my rules (in the elementary room).  I kind of stole some of the wording from Mr. E. :-D

My supply bin organization looks a bit differently this year.  I found these cute, mini-supply totes at Target in the dollar section, plus some pencil pails and rainbow pails.  I decided to use smaller bins to hold the supplies so that students don't have everything at their tables all at once.  In particular, I was thinking of those 1st graders and Kindergartners who tend to be distracted by the markers and want to use them, even though they aren't supposed to be.  I also made some simple, laminated place mats and taped them down to the counters, and I included a picture on the window for how the supplies should look like when they are returned.

My go-to bulletin boards for the first two weeks of school are minions.  Yup, straight from the art teacher's Facebook group.  The kids loved it!

For K-2, we traced, colored and cut out our hand prints for the first day of art class and I created this bulletin board.  We, of course, returned to school BEFORE Labor Day this year, so we had school on Thursday and Friday, no school on Monday, and then resumed classes on Tuesday.  Essentially, my first week and a half was just rules and hand prints with the younger students and we have only now really started to dive into our projects.

Last year I shared a bit about using sketchbooks in 6th grade, as well as my high school classes, and this year I'm increasing that usage a lot more.  We are using sketchbooks in grades 3-6, as well as in Art 7, Studio Art, my Printmaking elective and my Ceramics elective.  All is going well so far!

Speaking of my classes, I'd like to give you a glance at my ridiculous schedule this year.  I sort of did this to myself a bit this year by taking on an extra class.  My union contract states we teach for 6 periods, have a prep, a lunch, and a duty.  Well, at the end of the year last year, things got changed around and classes shortened a bit to add a 9th period into the schedule to create a common study hall time in the high school.  

I was beginning to have such high requests for electives that I wanted to offer two.  (Secretly, I'm hoping that they will be willing to hire a part-time, elementary teacher for next year to free me up for more high school classes...we shall see how that pans out!)  My numbers have increased drastically in the high school classes since I started teaching them two years ago, so fingers crossed!!

You'll also notice that I have THREE 12:1:1 classes this year...we added another teacher in our district.  AND, we added a third Kindergarten and third 1st grade teacher...those classes come combined to special, which really stinks for numbers and the amount of space I have in my room.

Needless to say, with the increase in numbers in our district, this is another reason I think hiring a party time teacher will be feasible for next year...hopefully!  Oh, and I'm doing art club this year AND I'm the VP for our teacher's union!!  That's it...I stop the ball there.  I'm not putting myself out there anymore this year.  If I do, remind me to say, "No!"  I'm still working my Jamberry business at home, and I plan on posting here once a week.  I know I won't be able to afford more then that, so one post a week is my goal!!

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?

No-No Board and the Colored Pencil Test

A while back I did a post comparing Prang markers to RoseArt...today's post will compare Prang colored pencils to Crayola's.

Yesterday was our first staff development day, and luckily our administration gave us quite a bit of time to work in our classrooms, which was a relief because I still have a lot to do!  Luckily, I crossed off quite a bit on my checklist (only to find that there was more stuff to do that I overlooked...go figure!), including putting away the remaining supplies in the high school room, cleaning out the last supply cabinet that I hadn't touched yet, and finishing up my No-No Board in my elementary room.

The night before, I pulled out the colored pencils to finish making the pictures for my board.  In case you haven't seen a No-No Board before, I just want to say that the idea is not mine...I found the idea over at Mr. E's blog.  Now, I've noticed there tends to be a bit of a debate whenever one of these shows up in a teachers classroom, but I think it will complement my craftsmanship rubric pretty well.  (Phyl did a post a while back about the controversial No-No Board as well...)

I concentrate in all grades on these drawing ideas ("Y" trees, using a horizon line, etc.).  Don't get me wrong, this is not here to squelch creativity, but particularly with the older students, they should be moving past these drawing cliches.  Unless a project or assignment calls for these "stereotypes" (like cartooning...it's okay to have words in your art!), I'd be more impressed if students were more creative and more mature in their depictions, which is what I aim for.  If you check out my craftsmanship rubric, you'll notice that the things on the No-No board correspond with the craftsmanship rubric descriptors.

Ok, enough of that...onto the colored pencils!

The first thing you'll be likely to notice is that the Prang pencils are thicker and more of a triangular shape...

Next are the colors.  Crayola has two greens, red-orange and a white, compared to the Prang which has a magenta, gold and silver.  I think you get a broader range of colors with the Prang, which is nice, especially with having the gold and silver...not having a white is the only drawback, especially if you like to do projects on dark paper.

Just for fun, I decided to pull out some of my own personal colored pencils, which also happen to be by Prang!  I bought these colored pencils years ago at an Office Max and I can't find them anymore, so I wanted to see how similar the Prang colored pencils were that I got in the mail.

The only colored pencil I'm missing from my personal ones is a black...I used that sucker till it was gone!  At the bottom of the page I did a quick value scale, Prang on top, Crayola on bottom.

Finally, I decided to see how the colored pencils would blend together.  Crayola -is on the left, Prang on the right.

 So, here are my findings:

Crayola
-thinner pencil & lead = easier to break
-thin pencils are harder for small hands to control
+thin pencils fit into most pencil sharpeners
-does not come with a pencil sharpener
-harder lead makes for harder blending
+comes with a white
$2.59 at Office Depot
$1.95 at Walmart (though current school sale puts them at 97 cents)

Prang
+thicker pencil and lead = sturdier
+thick pencils make it easier for younger students to hold and control
-thicker pencils that don't fit into all pencil sharpeners
+comes with a pencil sharpener in the package
+medium lead makes for easier blending
+comes with gold and silver
$1.96 at Walmart
$1.97 at Amazon.com

My Personal Prang Ticonderogas
+thin pencils with a thicker lead (fit into pencil sharpeners, less chance of breakage)
+soft lead makes for excellent blending (no streaky coloring!)

All in all, I'd say the Prang colored pencils are a pretty good deal.  Crayola is a good one to go with if you catch them on sale, but otherwise the price is comparable.  Once I go through the stock-pile of colored pencils I currently have in the next year or so, I may consider purchasing some of these Prangs for my younger elementary kids.  Now, if I could find the Prang Ticonderogas at a decent price, I'd definitely buy them for my high school students!  This year I am trying out Sarget colored pencils with them...

My neglected elementary room...(photo heavy post)

I'm reading all of these posts from other art teachers who have already gone back to school with their kiddos...and here I am, neglecting my elementary art room!  I've spent A LOT of time in the high school room and with a week left before students arrive, I figured it was about time I spent some time in the elementary room!

Since I knew that I was going to be taking on the high school experience, I didn't take down the decorations or posters in the elementary room.  Though it's going to bug me to not have much of a change in that room for two years, I'm just going to have to deal with it.  (I'm one of those peoples who has to rearrange my living room furniture every few months or I go nuts!)

The first step was redoing my school teacher page.  I've been working on that since Friday.  Our school website was recently revamped by a new website host and the process of doing our teacher webpages is now EXTREMELY easy...just like using Microsoft Word (which is great because it's been a while since I've used HTML coding!)  Then, yesterday I spent about five hours in the room organizing, laminating, taping, and getting ready to do the final touches in the next day or so!

New sink feet to keep those little ones in line at the sinks.  

New table signs.  These are a little smaller then last year's signs.  I've also added numbers that will correspond with the job list.  Instead of each table having a single job at clean up, each student at each table will now have a different job at their own table.  This will hopefully make clean-up going even smoother than before, especially when one table finishes ahead of others.  I was smart this year...I made an original, black and white and brown paint palette and then made colored copies.  This way, if I have to put a new palette sign out, all I need to do is copy off a new one, color it the color it needs to be, laminate and change it!

Since I'm only seeing students once a cycle on the elementary end, I changed my Artist of the Week to Artist of the Month.  Just did a quick rewrite on white paper, taped it over the word and re-laminated the sign.

I finished putting away my art supplies...I strongly suggest, if you don't already, writing the date on your supplies when you get them, particularly paint, glaze and gallons of glue!  This way, you can easily rotate your stock and use the older supplies first!  This will prevent paint from getting old, separated and being thrown out and wasted.

My tempera paint cabinet is quite full this year...The short bottles on the bottom are extras that have been given to me over time by other teachers cleaning out their rooms.  I don't order the small bottles (except for the gold, silver and fluorescent temperas).  If teachers come looking for paint, I usually give them the small bottles to use.  I can guarantee that if you pulled out this paint, it is completely rainbow organized and everything is dated on the cap!

Just as a side note, using these paint containers last year was the BEST decision I ever made!  I wasted very little paint!  My tempera cabinet is extremely full and I probably won't have to order much paint for next year!  We always have to do our requisitions for the following year around February, so it's always a bit of guess work on the amount to order.

I purchased this set of tempera cakes for my classroom...I've never used them before and any input would be greatly appreciated!  

The supply bins weren't really that beat up, so I decided that they didn't need a new coat of spray paint this year.  They are all organized and ready to go for the new school year!

The kids will be excited for new scissors!  The old scissors weren't very sharp anymore and even students who had a good grasp on scissor skills struggled with cutting sometimes.  I bought new Fiskars for this year.  I also added some skinny markers to the bins.  I bought new Mr. Sketch skinny markers to pull out on specific projects, but I still have about 3 1/2 bulk boxes of used skinny sketch markers, so I decided to put them out and let them be used for free draw assignments.  It's time to start letting go of some of those older supplies!

Each pencil bin has four pencils, four erasers and a hand-held pencil sharpener.  The kids end up using the loud sharpener too, but this at least lessens the line at the big sharpener.

I pulled this paper organizer from another teacher's hallway trash this summer.  One of the supplies I ordered this year was a class pack of construction paper crayons.  Since I have such a surplus of construction paper, I think I'll gear more of my projects to involving crayons on construction paper, at least for the K-2 kids.

These are my bulletin board signs.  I made fresh ones for this school year since we have new elementary teacher assignments and new elementary teachers.  I simply created these in Word and made a sign for each classroom teacher.  I also made signs for each grade level.  Then, all I do is write the project title and staple the sign on the board with their projects!  Makes for less paper waste.

Finally, the last thing I accomplished, with the help of my hubby, was turning some of my chalkboards into white boards.  Am I weird that I can't stand the feeling of chalk on a chalkboard?  Or on paper for that matter!  I don't think I will EVER do a chalk pastel project!  I hate the sound and that feeling of chalk...so I bought a roll of Go Write! Dry-Erase Paper on-line from Walmart.  This is definitely a two-person job!  Here's how we did it:

First we unrolled the paper and cut it to size of the chalkboard.  We peeled back the plastic and bent it to show the sticky surface.

We attached and aligned the plastic on the chalkboard (of course I couldn't buy a roll big enough to cover the board in one piece, so I had to use two here)..

...and then slowly, I pulled the plastic backing down while my hubby used a straight edge to bring down the bubbles out of the paper as it stuck to the chalkboard.

The elementary white board is complete!  This is now where I will write objectives and have the job list.

We went down to the high school room to do the same, but ran into some problems.  We wasted about 4' of paper.  As we got to the end of the roll, there were more air bubbles already in the plastic.  When we tried to smooth them out using the same technique as before, we stretched and wrinkled the paper on the board, so we had to change tactics.

This time, we used a razor to score a line on the back plastic.  Instead of going horizontally, against the bubbles, we went vertically, with the bubbles and wrinkles.

Then, I pulled the plastic, one side at a time, off as hubby vertically used the yard stick to press out the air bubbles.

Since we wasted 4', we couldn't cover both boards, but I think I like them like this.  I haven't decided yet, but I will probably use the colored duct tape to make a border around these.  Home Depot has circle dry erase stickers that I may purchase to put below the white dry-erase space (though they are quite expensive, so it's a distant thought at the moment).  My thinking is that one board will be the 7th grade board and one will be the Studio Art board.  If I purchase the circles, one circle would be that class's bell ringer, one would be their exit slip question, and one would be their homework assignment.