Co-Teachers: Isabel Fernandez and Delaney Kjellsen
Friday, October 8th, 2021 at Lopez Elementary
This our second application of this lesson in real classroom environment. The students in this group were especially excited about material exploration and choice based learning concerning their material. My students were asked to work together at their tables to create an abstract 2D artwork out of choice materials, with the goal of representing who they are as friends.
With this particular group of students, my biggest worry was actually in their excitement to use material and abstraction, versus their expectation of remembering to represent who they are as friends. This particular class definitely needed individual instruction and probing on top of the class instruction.
What went well:
Overall I am super happy with the outcome of this lesson's success, but specifically I am proud of how excited our class was to explore materials. This group of students actually took some of their sketching time and studio time to explore materials before applying newfound techniques to their final group piece.
In this demonstration of this lesson, we decided to take out a slide on defining abstraction in our presentation and replace that with another abstract picture for the students to analyze. This super effective and the students clearly understood what abstraction was by the end of the discussion. Without the class's engagement with our probing questions during this section of the lesson, the success could've been poorly impacted.
What did not go as planned / Needs work:
Similar to the last time we taught this lesson, the management took a lot of understanding and patience. Students were so excited and were easily deterred or distracted by their excitement, sometimes losing track of their final goal of representing their friend personality. The way went about keeping students on track or got them back on track was by continuously walking around and using questioning to push them in the right direction.
In the last reflection I said, "The last thing I want to mention, is the risks that come with free choice medium and experimentation of medium. I think that there were some cases where a few students got excited about using medium and forgot about creating meaningful mark making that represents their friendship". This dilemma was still present in this demonstration of the lesson as well. I think that I have come to the conclusion that this lesson could focus more on choice 2D material and abstraction, and for more advanced students or classes, adding the element or really pushing that element could be added. I don't think that failing to represent a friendship personality is necessarily a bad thing.
However, I would say by the end and with lots of extra probing during studio time, every student finally got their friendship personalities down.
Comments