Tag Archives: classroom management

Teaching Practicum Week 8

To summarize my practicum so far:

Units taught in Media Arts: Interview Unit (5 lessons), Storyboard + Film the Storyboard Unit (10 lessons), Pixilation Animation Unit (6 – 8 lessons). Visual Storytelling (1 class), Camera Tech (1 class), Scavenger Hunt (2 classes), Montage (4 classes), Commercial Re-edit (5 classes).

Units taught in Visual Arts: Gestural Drawing (4 lessons), Wind Sculptures (4 lessons), Land Art (3 lessons), Comic Book Page (6 – 8). Gestural Drawing (3 lessons), Memes (4 lessons), Fictional Creature Illustration (5 – 7). Implied Texture (3 lessons), Actual Texture (3 lessons), Final Textural Piece (6 lessons).

16 hours working with teacher and student crew filming short film entitled “I am William”. Principal Photography – the shooting of all the scenes.

4 hours setting up the Senior Visual Arts Show in the school gallery, hanging artwork, and arranging pieces.

Handling diversity. Art education allows for accommodation of variety of learners. Concepts were taught visually (visual aids like slide shows, movie clips, posters, visual demonstrations/exemplars) and kinetically (games, activities, outdoor excursions), vocally (short lecture on artists, directors, history of visual culture), as well as through written communication (handouts for students to fill out reciting terminology, and self-reflection/self-evaluation).

Media Art required extensive group work because of limitations of how much equipment must be shared by entire class. Students were randomly assigned groups at first, and then the process organically arrived at students choosing their own groups, which allowed for (surprisingly) more controlled and positive group dynamics.

Similar process in Visual Arts classes – I began by trying random grouping (numbering off students into random groups) and then found that by letting them select groups themselves, they were happier and more productive every time.

Think-pair-share was used on several occasions to encourage more class participation in questioning/discussion times, but I found that overall vocal students remained vocal, while less vocal students remained less vocal.

Hooks and Teaching Strategies overlapped – they became one and the same for me. I strategize, manage and hook students into participating by implementing some sort of visual/oral/activity in conjunction with lecture and work time every class.

Technology used in almost every class (projectors hooked to computers, using visuals and sound). Creating visually engaging slide presentations and including student work in some of those slide presentations.

The most difficult technological issue is trying to keep one step ahead of students learning about film equipment and software in Media Arts classes. I made substantial progress in that realm – I know much more about the software and hardware now, and feel confident that I have a strong base in that knowledge.

Working on visual art outside.

Field trips to a nearby park/trail (several blocks away from school, able to leave and return within the same period) and outdoor filming/drawing/showcasing sessions on school property.

I feel that I share many common interests with the students in the realm of Media and Visual Culture. It is a matter of making them become more conscious of why that Media is of interest to them. Showing familiar images (of memes, popular videos, popular advertisements) hook their attention, and then it is a matter of having students discuss the importance of that visual culture around us by posing them the right questions.

Draw an animal and paint its environment expressively.

The Land Art lesson, after students had learned about Land Artists, and after they had gone out and made work of that kind themselves, went very well. We debriefed on the work they had created, looking at photographs of the ephemeral pieces, and discussed what worked/what did not work so well. The lesson then segued smoothly into Land Art created by past and current cultures, current incarnations of Land Art with First Nations influence (Rock Art, Inuksuks, etc.), and then First Nations oral storytelling into Visual Storytelling (comics). In one class, we accomplished so much. Students saw the importance of temporary work that they had made, its connection to ‘the big picture’ of the entirety of art history, the importance of past and contemporary aboriginal art-making, and then a new perspective on what it means to tell a story visually – more than just a silly comic strip. A group storytelling activity also allowed them to experience the ease of making up stories on the spot.

I am always friendly. I strive to be more stern in terms of consequences, but for the most part, I give reasons to students for each thing I ask of them (assignments must be on time because we all must move on towards new concepts at a steady pace…tell me if you are leaving the classroom because I am responsible for your safety in and outside of the classroom, etc). I think that reward is more positive than punishment.

Collaborative Days included meetings that allowed teachers from different departments to meet over the common goals of helping out/sorting out issues with particular students.

Professional Development Day involved going to a workshop that dealt with bullying – particularly in the case of aboriginal students, but the role-playing scenarios explored at the workshop could definitely be applied to all diversity of students.

Assessment is constantly morphing and progressing. Depending on the group, students can be more inclined towards self-evaluation, being aware and fair about how well they worked on projects, while other groups I handle the marks entirely (although students are always free to discuss a mark with me).

Teaching Practicum Week 6

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In several of my classes, writing my lesson plans, I began to forget about questioning. Perhaps I was getting too comfortable with questioning techniques – maybe I felt that I could come up most of my central questions on the daily class topics on the spot. Possibly, my lessons were more ‘work time’ oriented and I lost focus on the questioning that supports introducing concepts. In any case, this week was a good time to continue implementing preplanned questioning in my lessons as I was feeling pretty sick and listless. The preplanning was integral to allowing the class to run more smoothly while my mind was running a little more slowly.

Being sick this week also allowed me to think more about using more than just my voice to establish order in the classroom. My throat was feeling awful, and every time I had to give instructions, I was reminded of how using other tools like lights, gestures, noise-making devices, etc., would be awesome.

Goals for coming back after the March Break include testing out some of those tools in classroom management, reworking my rubrics and criteria lists so that they are all in order for upcoming assignments, and of course, catching up on lesson planning (and sleep).

Teaching Practicum Week 4

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This week I learned that having a period split into a variety of activities helps students to focus. As we flow from one activity to another, students have less of a chance to take out their cellphones and text, or attempt to do last night’s math homework. The challenge is to relate the many different activities back to the main theme or concept of the class. For example, in a Visual Arts classroom, group ice-breaker activities, art history/context presentations, drawing warm-ups and drawing games are all somewhat amenable to art content. The students, I think, feel that their time is being used appropriately in each task, and each task ameliorates their visual skills.

Students in my Media Arts class seemed a little more resistant to having so many different components to each class. Splitting the class into presentation, discussion, lesson and then work period helped to manage student distractions like computer games and cellphone use, however, the students became agitated by the thought of not having the majority of the class to film their projects. Instead, I tried to see what would happen if the project work time in each class was reduced. Perhaps this will drive the students to regard the work time as more ‘precious’. I will have to observe more how this method will work.

In the upcoming week I would like to maintain a high level of energy and activities in my classes. I will be picking up two more classes, and I foresee that it will be a struggle to maintain energy as workload ramps up. I want to get enough sleep, which will require going to bed at 8:30 pm, and maintain a healthy diet. It can be difficult to get groceries with this kind of schedule.

In terms of classroom management, I would like to work on my questioning. Only certain students in each class tend to answer questions. I would like to reach out to students who are more quiet or scared to speak out in front of the class. This might be an occasion to implement the think-pair-share method.

Mask Project that students create with another teacher — what a beauty to show off!

Teaching Practicum Week 3

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Starting teaching in the visual arts room this week allowed me to reflect on my art education philosophy as a whole. I planned my visual arts lessons to begin chronologically with gestural drawing, because not only is that kind of drawing a warmup on the micro scale, but also an artistic exercise in the macro sense too. Over the span of one period, I saw students drawings become more free and relaxed-looking, and it is my hope that by bringing this activity back into the classroom at regular intervals, it can help students feel more relaxed and confident about creating images in general.

One barrier that can arise in the task of teaching art is students quite simply choosing not to participate. For teachers of elective courses, the theme of trying not to push students too much as to drive them away from the non-compulsory course is a reoccurring subject. However, part of my teaching philosophy is the conviction that challenging projects inspire more creativity than the undemanding kinds. To me, this means that student attitude (the desire to do their best), participation, and energy put into the work is what matters most. The visual outcomes are not necessarily key. It is my intention to shift the focus away from prettiness or perfection of a final product, and move that focus towards process. In this way, there can still be the rigorous challenge of working on art pieces without feeling anxiety about the end results.

The projects I have planned for my visual arts classes are mainly themed as being ephemeral. That is my initial step towards implementing my art education philosophy. The next step, enacting classroom management that reflects those goals as well is a little trickier. I’m still not clear if more stringent regulations concerning classroom environment help or hinder the building of intrinsic student motivation or desire to do their best. By this I mean, there are many basic classroom management aspects that I will be working on improving, like clarity and completeness of instructions and assertiveness of statements, however I’m still not clear which kinds of students are likely to produce more work, more often – those who are obliged to put away their cellphones, or those who I warn by simply stating that they are making their own choice by wasting time?

An ephemeral edible work.

My personal goal for this upcoming week is to have a firmer grasp on classroom management aspects that I believe will help students complete projects more effectively. I would like to be more assertive about project instructions, due dates, students who are off-task during class time, and bathroom breaks. I would like to implement a new rule in my classroom that students must sign out on the whiteboard whenever they leave the classroom. I would also like to make it clear that in upcoming projects (particularly in Media Arts) I will not be extending due dates. When I see students misusing technology (using devices for matters not relevant to work) I will use this as an occasion to remind them that due dates are firm and their own personal achievement/grades are at stake.

On Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop for professional development day. This workshop consisted of practical group activities that allowed me to consider how I might react in various classroom scenarios. The focus was on indigenous groups, however, the role-playing in various scenarios could have applied to any number of bullying situations as well.