1st Grade Crazy Pumpkins, Part 2

Here they are...our finished crazy pumpkin collages!

Some students elected to add crazy eyes and mouths to their pumpkins to create jack-o-lanterns while others decided to keep them simple pumpkins.  To finish up the collages, I passed out white drawing paper scraps for students to create eyes, mouths and as some did, moons to add to their collages.  I passed out a piece of brown art paper for them to make stems.  Once these were all glued on, students added a few more blades of grass from their green paper scraps and they were all finished!

1st Grade Crazy Pumpkins, Part 1

Once again, I'm changing it up this year for 1st grade.  This year's group of kinders and 1st graders are a bit lower developmentally and behaviorally than in the past, so I have to start a bit simpler this year.  For our first project in 1st grade, we are reviewing basic color theory (primary and secondary colors) as well as talking about what a landscape is.  To tie it into the fall season, we are incorporating pumpkins!

This project has turned into a three day project.  It probably could have been squeezed into two, but the students were actually taking their time to cut and glue the pieces that I didn't want to rush them!  Here is what we did in the first two days.

On day one, we reviewed the primary and secondary colors.  They learned this in the beginning of kindergarten last year and periodically reviewed it through the year.  Each student received three pieces of Manila tag board and wrote their names on the back.  I held up yellow and blue paint, asked the students to share at their tables what color they thought those would make when mixed, and then went around to each student and put a squirt of each color on their paper.

The students then had to mix the paint on their paper while painting the entire thing.  This was also a great review right out of the gate on how to paint properly with tempera paint...no banging the brushes on the side of the water container (wipe on a tissue or paper towel), periodically dip your brush in water to help make the paint spread easier on the paper, etc. etc.  We repeated this until we had painted an orange, purple and green paper.

Purple is always a hard color to mix.  I found that when the students used the fluorescent blue and red, the purple was really pink, which you can see in the pictures below.  With another class, I gave the fluorescent red and regular blue tempera and the purple turned out darker, like my purple in the picture above.

On the second day, I demonstrated how to cut thin, tall rectangles out of the green paper to make grass.  I had students glue a row of grass onto the purple paper.  Next, I asked them to cut out a small, medium and large pumpkin out of the orange paper.  We discussed a little bit about how pumpkins can be different shapes...not always perfect circles...to ease their minds about not being able to cut a perfect circle.  We glued these on next.  (If I had more time with the students and had thought about it sooner, I would have incorporated the book, Spookley the Square Pumpkin...it's a super cute book and there is even a cute, video version of the book.)

Lastly, I asked students to cut out more grass and I showed them how to put grass on top of the pumpkins and behind them to make it look like the pumpkins are sitting in tall grass.

I don't usually start the first project of the year in 1st grade with paint, but I must say that I am extremely happy with the results so far.  This project doesn't require detailed painting so it's a great way to review how to paint with tempera from last year (no banging brushes, swish to rinse, no bad hair days, etc.).  It's also an awesome review for scissor safety and for using dots of glue instead of globs. :)

Lots of students asked to be able to put eyes and a mouth on their pumpkins.  Since 99% of the school population in my district does participate in Halloween events, I can and will allow it.  I won't require it however, in case someone doesn't celebrate Halloween or simply does not want to add eyes and a mouth.  I even had a student ask if he could make the eyes on his pumpkin yellow so that it looked like a glowing jack-o-lantern!

Revised APPR Assessments Part 1: Kindergarten

I didn't really share the outcome of my post-assessments last year, mainly due to the fact that there was some confusion around them with calculations.  In the end, I "passed" and did all right, but my results weren't exactly where I wanted them to be for the post-assessment scores.  Thus, I revamped two of my assessments.  Last year, I did my SLO assessments in 5th, 2nd, 1st and Kindergarten.  My LLO was in 4th grade.  Lucky for me, I have one less to do this year!  This year, my SLO assessments are with Studio Art, Art 7, and 1st grade and I chose to use Kindergarten for my LLO so I could revamp my rubrics.

Today is our first Staff Development day and luckily, I have no place to be except in my classrooms working on my SLOs and LLO, which are technically due today!  In the next few posts, I'm going to share with you my old assessments from last year and what I plan on doing differently this year.  I'll also share with you how I am setting my goals, as I am doing something completely different this year as well.

Last year I did a cutting and gluing rubric and I had a 97% success rate at students passing, which was great, but made it seem as though the assessment wasn't quite as rigorous as it should have been.  So, this year, I changed up my plans for the Kindergarten assessment, and I've actually changed my mind twice about the pre-assessment.  Back in September I shared a post with my ideas for this year, which you can see here.  I originally gave students a shape sheet with fewer shapes and then a quiz that quizzed them on shapes, lines and basic color theory.  I was struggling to figure out how I would make sure those kinders could read their color words by the end of the year to take a "quiz" (since I would essentially have to create a test bank), and then I decided to scratch that idea, after I had already given out that assessment.

Now, I've decided to continue using the shape sheet for cutting and gluing but also the Hey Diddle Diddle Shape Cow project we just did.  This way, I am still assessing their cutting and gluing skills, but also their ability to draw shapes, their use of crayons and how they color.  As I looked at all of these projects, I realized that even though I was trying to teach them how to use the shapes and how to color properly, it's going to take a while for them to improve, so I should still be able to show growth.

  

These are the two activities being used for the kindergarten pre-assessment...

And these are the two rubrics being used for the kindergarten pre-assessments...

At the end of the year, students will then be assessed on cutting & gluing, as well as their coloring and shape skills all in one project...the primary playground project!  In that project, students have to cut out their own shapes and create a playground.  It will assess their ability to cut out shapes that are discernible from one another, how well they glue the shapes down (still using the dot glue method), and how well they utilize their entire paper.  Last year I did this as a review projects for primary colors and shapes, but it'll make a great end of the year assessment, I think.  Instead of having the students do it on 9"x12" paper, I'll give them the bigger sheets like I did for their pre-assessment cows.

 

Two kindergarten examples from last year, done back in February.

And this is the revamped rubric for assessing the post-assessment.

I know these rubrics are hard to read...I'm doing this at school right now and don't have a nicer way of taking a screen shot, so you can find them on the SmARTteacher.

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?

Kindergarten Post Assessment Results

I am happy to say that I reached my 80% goal in the growth department for my kindergarten SLO!  My goal was stated something like this: "80% of students (39) will reach a score in the satisfactory grade level (72%-80%)."  I did low-ball it for the grade level that they would reach, but that's what we were told to do.  I almost think that next year I'd rather state my SLO's more like this, "80% of students will score 6 points more on their post-assessment."

That being said, I will share that I was successful on my 5th grade SLO at reaching my goal as well.  Only about 65% of my students reached the goal on the 1st grade SLO, and less than that on my 2nd grade SLO.  After discussing it with the art teacher who graded my assessments, we both think it's because the scavenger hunt was just too difficult of a task for their level.  My 1st grade rubric for the 6-square drawing assignment also needs to be revamped into more of a check-list.  It was hard to grade the post-assessments based on what the rubric said because many students had great horizon lines and backgrounds, but weren't as successful with the subject matter.  My rubric dealt more with the subject matter and didn't allow for points to be scored for the craftsmanship in each square, if there was any.  But more on that SLO in a later post.

I posted about my SLO's when I started blogging back in July...you can see my original post here.  I did have to change my grading rubric due to the changes in how our assessments had to be graded at the end of the year.  Since I had to swap assessments with another art teacher, presumably one who does not work in the district and would not be there to observe student's cutting skills, I had to take out any observational categories in the rubric (such as students knowing what hand to hold their scissors in).  Here is my updated rubric that I used for the pre- and post-assessment.

The following are examples of student's pre- and post-assessments.  The pre-s are on the left and the post-s are on the right.

Improvement at being more precise.

             

Improvement with composition as well as preciseness at cutting on the lines.

Improvement at cutting on the lines more precisely.

Another improvement with speed and also the length of the snips with scissors.

This student had really great control over the scissors at the beginning of the year, but took too long to cut things out!  She always needed an extra day on projects in order to finish them, but she was able to finish her post-assessment in one day!