How can dance be recycled? Week 7

This week and last week we had a photo center where the students got to take their own photos throughout the two hours.  These are the pictures that have been taken so far.

Week 7, Big Canvas Painting Day 1

This week we started the first day of painting with our students. After sketchbook time Erica took the students into the hallway to see the paintings in the gallery, which ironically where close ups of glass objects. Erica asked them questions about the artwork to get them to think about their own paintings. What color do you think the artist put down first? Which part do you think the artist did last? What size brush do you think the artist used? Meanwhile, I took the free time to set up the large canvases and move the chairs to the side of the room. The students returned and enjoyed snack while they watched the PowerPoint. They learned about under painting and value, and we made the rules of the day very clear..

 

We had a very successful day with both the project and classroom management. We started by giving the students only a few colors for their under painting, and told them to paint section by section. We gave them color copies for them to use as references, and had them raise their hands when they needed help to keep them from leaving their tables. It was a big difference between the problems we had last week. I think we can contribute this a lot to the fact that the students were extremely interested in painting. The day spent tracing had been a long process and students became bored, antsy, and then some even became upset.  We were originally worried that a lack of freedom would lead the students to be bored of this project since the teachers controlled so much of project. However, just the act of painting consumed most of them for an entire period.

 

(more pictures to come soon!)

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Week 6, 4/2, Saudi Arabia

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This week we visited Saudi Arabi, and with out Moni's help I would have been completely lost! This was the hardest place to match an art project to but one talking to Moni, she really helped put things in perspective. Jess and I had talked about doing a tapestry, but realized that would be too big and our format was also not ideal. I had wanted to take sponges and cut out the basic shapes of a rabbit which would reference our travel agency group name the Running Rabbits, but Moni pointed out that they would relate rabbits to Saudi Arabia. So instead we cut the fabric size down to 18in /13 1/2 in. which make a great placemat size. We centered the lesson around calligraphy and Moni wrote all of their names in Arabic for me to use. We snuck their names in their passports as the stamp for that week which saved the time of having them stamp or sticker their passport themselves. After both Moni and I talked a little about Saudi Arabia, she gave a demo on calligraphy/Arabic writing. The kids really seemed to enjoy her using their names on the board as examples. And when writing their own names with fabric marker on their place mats, they did a great job! Some chose more decorative text whiles others went for simple one lined versions. Overall that was the most successful part of the lesson.

After snack I talked about the culture again and gave a demo on how we were going to stamp the animals. The animals were the falcon, the national animal, and the ones humped camel that is used in races. I cut the basic shapes out of the animals so that when layered together it would compose the animal. The idea for this lesson was to share with the small groups of 3-5 they were in and work together to figure out the puzzle. The paint was messy but the students did actually share and they did reference the boarders we were talking about and stamped at least one animal on their place mat.

Getting there attention was again a problem, and I unfortunately found that if I threatened to discipline them, they actually listened and it went fairly smoothly. So next lesson I think we'll have to continue that, keep the rules shorter and allow a wait-time of about 1-2min.

Because this was a challenging lesson for me and came together last minute I'm still pretty happy with the results. And most importantly I learned that they really enjoyed writing their names in that style and seemed very focused. If we can we should definitely incorporate that in the last two lessons.

The BIG Canvas Project

This week we started our "final project" of the big canvases. We used the photos the students took from Jill's lesson last week of the scavanger hunt and put them on overhead projectors with the intent of blowing them up onto over sized canvases. We had our class broken up into 6 groups with about 4 kids to a group and the kids were to trace their photos onto the canvases taking turns in their groups. We had it set up where I would take 3 groups for tracing and Jill would take the other 3 to play a Simon Says drawing game and then the groups would switch.



This week proved to be especially challenging to say the very least. While all the groups were lucky enough to have photos that would work for the project, many that they picked from the previous week to work with came out blurry and were not usable for the project. Therefore Jill and I had to pick photos we knew would work. Some groups were not very happy about that at all. This was only one problem we had this week. Another was that some of the groups were not taking turns tracing their canvases and some felt left out or were arguing. In a younger age group, Olga, ended up breaking down and crying because she said her group told her she "wasn't doing it right." Because I had 3 groups by myself and this project required so much help, I wasn't able to be there right away when this happened and by the time I could try to help her she didn't want anything to do with the project. I even had one of the girls ask her to come back up to trace but she didn't want to. Jill had to come in and help calm her down and she sat drawing for the remainder of the time until the groups switched. When the groups switched there were more problems. A similar situation occured with a group of boys this time only they were arguing. Jason ended up walking away frustrated and said that the other two boys were fighting but I mangaged to stop it fairly quickly and get the group back on track. We also had problems during snack time with the same group of boys throwing goldfish crackers around and then smashing them on the floor. Kuen was quick to discipline them and they cleaned up their mess. Jill also said she experienced problems with the Simon Says drawing game where boys were misbehaving. This could have been in part because the first 3 groups took so long tracing and they may have gotten bored with the game. (I think the first group was younger than the second because that group did not take as long to finish as the first.)
Overall I think this was the most stressful week we've had and the most challenging. However, most of the students seemed to enjoy themselves and came up with some really great drawings on the tables that we had covered with paper for the painting part of the project (but unfortunately we ran out of time and did not get that far with the under paintings.) But the drawings came out great and we plan on mating some of them for the exhibition.

For the most part the big canvas drawings turned out pretty good and most had fun with it. However, this week I noticed a big difference with the younger groups and the groups of boys. They seemed to struggle the most with the project and had the most behavioral problems. Being that we will be painting next week, I think that we will really have to set down some ground rules and provide a lot of scaffolding for the next two lessons because we don't want a repeat of this week. Kuen has already given us some ideas on how to handle this next week.

The Power of COLOR!

This week in Marietta's second lesson we explored the power of COLOR!
We started with sketchbook time, as usual. The majority of our students are still fairly engaged in sketchbook time, however, there are a few who prefer to read comics instead. Even though I tried to prompt a certain comic-loving student to draw instead, he continued to read and didn't draw anything this week. In this situation, I'm not sure whether we should remove the book from the classroom so as not to distract him during sketchbook time? Or if we should continue to allow him to choose his activity?
After sketchbook time Marietta taught her lesson on color and used her own paintings as examples and references. She questioned the students about the emotions and feelings they had when looking at certain pictures and paintings. The students were fairly responsive and shared interesting emotions. They were able to correlate the feelings the art gave them with the color employed in the pieces.
Marietta had the students do a practice exercise with acrylic paint on a sheet of paper. They had to cover the paper with 3 layers of paint & glaze mixture in order to make transparent colors and explore their properties. Many of the students had trouble with this part because they didn't use enough glaze so their colors were still very opaque. Most of them required scaffolding in order to understand the glaze medium. This part was difficult because there were only two of us to offer individual help to almost the entire class. Also, the students had a lot of questions about the procedure even though the steps were laid out for them on the bulletin board (and Marietta went over it in her lesson).
After they painted the background the students were supposed to cut out shaded spheres which Marietta had printed for them. They were instructed to make paint one with 'happy' colors, one 'sad', one 'angry', and one 'scary'. Most of the students were able to conquer this practice exercise and explain which one was which.
For their real project, the students will be composing a painting on a board where they will use transparent colors to collage printed images together. At the end of the class--after they gesso-ed their boards twice-- the students were able to choose 3-5 images they wanted to use in their painting. Marietta prompted them to choose images that would have a meaning when juxtaposed together.
The students seemed pretty excited to be able to paint on a large scale like this. This week, we left a lot of time at the end for clean up and although they required a lot of prompting to do it, they actually did a lot of the clean up themselves.

[I apologize that I don't have any pictures of the students during work time, but they required a lot of help and my hands were messy basically from the beginning. I do have a video of the lesson, though, which I'll try to upload as soon as possible.]

Week 6: Build Me!

For this weeks lesson, we made dancing machines out of clay. It was a somewhat difficult process to teach (just like printmaking) because it takes several steps to create something out of clay. But to me and Lacey's surprise, the students did a phenomenal job making their machines.Overall, the lesson went well, even with the film crew. There was one thing that could have been done better, which was the demonstration of the clay. Since I took lead this week, I decided to show to the class a demo of how to use the clay. I started off smoothly letting the students feel the clay. And halfway through I got a little bit distracted by the students that I skipped a few crucial steps, like how to make a square out of clay. Even though I was distracted (and Lacey even tried to help me get on track and I just didn't realize that she was trying to get my attention....sorry Lacey), I noticed that the students were really interested in playing with the clay. I even had Elijah demonstrate to the class on how to make a square (which he squeezed the clay with both hands.) It was interesting to see how much the students knew about clay and how to build things with it.

Perhaps the demo was too long and not well planned out. However, I did learn that the students like to get involved. So maybe next time we could have students volunteer in the demo process (would this be a good suggestion?)

As for the centers, they were absolutely great. There were some students that really enjoyed

the photo center because they were able to take pictures using a camera. They took so many pictures using Lacey's camera. Another center that students were involved with was the drawing center. In this center, students used skewers and markers to draw on an already hardened clay. There were a lot of interesting drawings, especially drawings of cats and kittens.

Animals, especially cats, were a big theme this time in class. It actually started during sketchbook time when I read The Alley Cat's Meow to Shannon, Amila, and Taylor. Throughout the entire lesson, Shannon drew a cat in the drawing center and she made this beautiful cat out of clay. It was just interesting to see she used the book as a reference or a guide in both the center and the big activity.

Dancing Machines galore!