Final Class Wrap-up

Although we didn't create an abundance of projects during our 8 weeks of class, we did construct some in-depth ones. Even though we gave our students 2 or 3 class periods to finish them, they were so involved that many had trouble completing them during that time. This was a good thing, though, because we know that they were interested, we kept their attention, they were challenged, and involved and throughtful about their artwork. Therefore, we thought it was only fair to give them the chance to finish any projects that they didn't have time to during the other class periods. We think it's important for the students to finish their work so they learn about perseverance and satisfaction of completing a task. Though they may have gotten frustrated at points, they had the chance to work through their difficulties to get a gratifying outcome. We started the lesson with a review of what we had been working on. I asked the students what the requirements of the project were instead of telling them so that they were involved and I held their attention. They reminded everyone that we were to collage images, changing their meaning or feeling by altering the colors with paint. After that we had and in-progress critique so that students could see examples of artworks that successfully accomplished the requirements of the projects. Melissa led this part and asked students to point out the artwork of their peers which they thought were flourishing and why. I then gave a demonstration on how to make their images blend with their backgrounds better. They seem to grasp this concept better after I did this and their paintings were improved drastically. Some spent the entire class painting, while other moved on to other projects. Melissa had students finish printing their block prints if they hadn't gotten to that point in class. If they were done with this, she asked that they write their artist statements for them. They also created name stencils for the brick wall Melissa will be creating this week. These were both preparations for the exhibit, which I thought was a good way for them to be involved with it. If they finished all of these things, the last thing they could do was to do a little scratch art project. i had bought these craft kits at Michael's a few weeks ago in case we ever had extra time at the end of a class. This was an easy, fun way to end the class and the kids really seemed to enjoy it. I asked some of the kids what their favorite project was and got some good feedback. Some said they liked everything and enjoyed our teaching. One girl said she like that they had a lot of freedom for their own ideas. Only one person said their favorite activity was the scratch art. Therefore, I think the class was a success and we learned as much or more as our students did in our 8 weeks together.