Throughout my practicum in a Grade 1 and 2 combined class I was able to apply work learned throughout my Teaching English Language Learners Through a Cross-Curricular Case-Based Inquiry Approach cohort. For the majority of my lessons, my goal was to combine multimodal information delivery and critical thinking that allowed students to experience the curriculum and make their own inferences from the material presented in class to provide a deeper understanding. They were offered many opportunities for discussion and reflecting on their thoughts as they learned.
My School Advisor only worked on Monday to Thursday and on Fridays the resource teacher was in charge of the class. Art was her passion and so every Friday afternoon the students go to participate in a new art activity. I thought it was so exciting to see how this teacher was able to apply her passion in the classroom and in turn get the students passionate and excited about art too. One thing I learned from her, which was also supported in my Art classes during my education classes at UBC, was to let the students explore different mediums and allow them to express themselves without being too strict on how things had to look. She did not believe in using stencils or having strict desings. This resulted in the students all producing beautiful and unique artwork.
When I was in charge of art I particularly liked the idea of mixing watercolour paints and using pastels as a resistor. I read the students a story about people’s daily lives in Yukon and then I showed them the artwork of Ted Harrison. We used his colourful artwork as a guide for our own paintings, using a wide array of colours to portray a landscape and white pastel to separate the colours. The students also had the choice to make and add on an inuksuk as Ted Harrison does in one of his most famous paintings.
In another art class I also wanted to challenge myself and give the students another medium to explore. We made paper mache piggybanks to tie into our financial literacy unit, as well as had them write a descriptive story about the pigs they made which made them feel more connected to their artwork. Paper mache was a very messy activity and it definitely tested my management skills in the classroom, but with the help of the substitute teacher who was in the classroom that day we helped the students make pigs that they were so excited about.
