Last week, I noticed that some students--one boy in particular--were having a hard time staying motivated with the digital drawing. I took that as a sign to move on from the book covers to the collages. With collages we could tie in appropriation and finding inspiration from sources other than drawing, as well as meet core state standards.
I taught the students a couple different tools that they could use to create their collages: crop, transparency, brightness, contrast, and resetting a picture. They were then given the following project instructions:
Unfortunately, I prepared way too much material and wanted to show them too many processes. I spoke far too long and ended up taking most of their work time. That was not what I wanted to happen! I am seeing that the students need a little exposure to principles and then time to play with that before moving on to other processes.
As I dismissed the students to their seats (using one of the strategies I learned from observing Mrs. Stone), it became obvious that we had spread ourselves too thin on too many ideas. The students got lost in too many processes. One of the main skills I wanted them to develop as they made their collages, finding appropriate images to use to communicate their concept, was clearly not scaffolded sufficiently. They were having a hard time following the process, even though they seemed to understand the process when I asked them to explain it to.
Much of the remaining time (which wasn't much) was spent answering the same question.
Thinking back on this week's class and the sheer amount of time I was asked the same question, I should have gathered their attention again and shown them all the process again. *UPDATE: A few weeks later, one of the students found a simplified way to appropriate images from the internet. His eyes lit up when I asked him to share that process with his peers! I think I will continue to ask kids to help each other!*
Once the students started to understand how to find and copy images, we learned as a class the importance of appropriately using internet search functions especially with images. We had an unexpected and unfortunate situation where a young boy was searching for images associated with "Stone Fox" and ended up encountering inappropriate images. So, be careful with Google imagery! We will have to go over strategies to make searches more focused! What kinds of strategies are there for making searches better?
One strategy that I have thought about already is to brainstorm details from the book with the students. Make a list of important events, characters, or settings instead of leaving the students unsupported when looking for images.Many of the students wanted to use book covers (possibly a carry-over effect from last week?) and exact images from the books. In the case of the student who came across inappropriate images, helping him to pick out imagery or symbols like dogsled, native american, friendship, etc., would have yielded appropriate images, minimized exposure to other images, and tied into lifelong learning goals.
Although the atmosphere in this class was not frantic (unlike a previous failure of mine!), I could tell that these students needed to either (1) be at their desks and follow along with me OR (2) have the chance to explain in their own words more completely. I plan on exploring those in the next class I have with this amazing set of students!
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