The Joy of Teaching Art

During today's 1st grade class I had my students drawing pictures of their home and everyone that lives in it with them. They are doing this as preparation for their pop-up house, which they will begin on their next trip to the class.
This class has Jamari in it, which you may recall from a previous posting. When he finished drawing his home, a blue apartment building, I provided him with a new piece of paper to start the next step. Drawing people was frustrating him. He started over twice, and when I told him that what he was doing was great he accused me of "having to say that" because I am a teacher. This comment brought into perspective some of the wonders of being an art teacher. We do get to like everything that our students make because most of it is wonderful. Having so many students with such different styles is an amazing change of perspective. As a teacher of visual arts, I get to see the wide diversity of "right solutions" to so many different topics. For example, I had one student in my first grade class that drew his apartment with the ground level having a whole floor of doors, like the hallway of his apartment building. While visually his solution was not realistic, it should complex thought and perspective.

Emotional Face Collage, printing day 2

Today begins the second day of printing for the second graders. I began the lesson by showing examples for their last visit. I talked to them about their successful prints, and what had gone wrong with others. For example, if the paper ripped, why? If the colors look blurry, why? For today's class period the students were to make more prints. If they had time, they may clean their print and try a different color palette. These are two of my examples of the same print using different colors and already at the final stage (collaged). The cool colored face has the emotion of scared, while the warm colored face looks more embarrassed. Having students see these types of examples can show students that color can change the mood of an artwork. By making the same connection in their own examples can express to me (their teacher) that they understand that connection.

House Talk with 1st graders

Today I began my Pop-up House lesson with the first graders. I had started this project a couple days ago with the kindergarten class, and have been working hard to adjust the questions and style of the handout I created for this project. It is amazing the developmental difference between these two age groups, as they are only separated by a single year.
Today's lesson began with reading a digital version of "So Many Houses", then talking about different types of houses that the students may live in. They helped assemble different houses on the Smartboard, including: a 2-story house, a duplex, an apartment, and a trailer. The students then were provided with a worksheet that they were to complete on the rug, as I completed my version on the Smartboard. This was primarily done for the vocabulary, which I had them write in Spanish and English.
Only one student, Jamari, was causing me trouble during today's lesson. He was not doing the work that I was asking him and the rest of the class to do today. I told him that if he didn't complete the worksheet I would have him in here the following day during his lunchtime recess. By the end of the classtime he had not even started his worksheet. So I followed through, and at the end of the day I went to his class and talked to his classroom teacher. I believe that by having him come the next day to my classroom, it would show him that he cannot come to my classroom and not work because that is unacceptable behavior.