13 MAR 2015

[visit #9]

I increased the amount of comments that I made on the students' work in preparation for this class period. It was interesting working out what kind of feedback to give to the students. With their concrete thinking, I knew they would most likely take any feedback I gave at face value. As I wrote, I found it difficult to walk the balance between saying enough and not saying too much. What kinds of things have helped you to give feedback that promotes and does not hinder learning?

 

                                 

I loved how making comments on each individual's presentation allowed for greater personalization and differentiation in teaching. Not all students are at the same level and I found that if I treated them like they were all at the same point, I would lose large portions of the class. I think that differentiation is an idea that is worth exploring further in terms of my teaching practice, especially in how it is related to integration of subjects. What opportunities or experiences have you had with differentiation in your own classrooms? How has technology or art allowed you to differentiate more effectively?

In addition to the comments, I decided that during this visit I would show the students a few examples of student work that I thought was particularly good and talk about one common element of art that was not present in much of the student work--contrast.

I loved the artistic merit Michael's slide demonstrates.
We also used it to understand contrast better.

Lucy chose her color scheme based on colors
associated with the book/movie.

As I spoke with Vicki Gehring, my mentor teacher, about the outcomes of the lesson, one thing that stood out to me was the level of understanding that I should hold the students accountable for. If they are trying to explain a concept or idea in their own words and I see that they only partially understand, I should stop and go back and explain. I noticed that they were having a hard time explaining, but I honestly did not know how strict to be on them. They started to associate the difference between black and white with contrast, which was good, but the rest was an abstract concept to them. In one of the student examples, I described bad contrast as colors fighting with each other, hoping that would help the students; that was more familiar, but I did not give them any tools (i.e.: color theory) to support them in fixing those 'fighting' colors.

It has been challenging to integrate visual art, technology, and other subjects, but we have not had too many problems. One problem we did have this week was when one young student got a little too 'ctrl+z' happy and ended up erasing all of his slides. :( When he told me, the damage had already been done and would not be undone. He had to start over from scratch which was difficult for him after such a long time working on a piece.

Another success I had today was time management. Usually I get so involved in working with students that I am surprised when class is over! I tried to make an extra effort to pay attention to the time during this visit to the classroom and it was a success!

One final thought: I felt much more at ease when my mentor teacher was here this time as compared to the first week she observed. I feel like more exposure to observation will help me be perform at my normal level instead of worrying about who is observing me.