LLED 360

This chapter provides a good variety of effective examples to teachers on how they can introduce academic language in the classroom.  Some of these ideas include ways of verbally conveying what was taught, the use of color coding, and hand gestures.  Throughout this chapter and the rest of the book, I noticed a huge emphasis on both verbal communication and group discussion.  I believe that both are underused in classrooms, especially in my field, the art classroom.

My experience with high school and in particular art classrooms, the presence of discussion is non-existent.  I recall the preference for a quiet classroom by all of my teachers.  In my opinion, the quiet classroom can be both beneficial and debilitating.  For certain activities such as reading or writing, it is important to have quiet time so that students won’t be distracted with extraneous noises.  However, for classes such as art class, PE, home economics, tech class, and even the other academic subjects (math, English, socials, science), it is very important that time be carved out for public chatter.  I believe that talking to your classmates is an integral part of the student experience but this must be mitigated with time spent listening to the teacher and to other students.  Dealing specifically with the art classroom, I think it would be beneficial to spend time talking about WHY we make the art we do.  I have a personal interest in social justice and creating projects around that would help facilitate critical thinking and discussion.  One very common way of integrating this into the classroom would be to do art critiques.  My high school never held any critiques but I think that having a group critique about the overall process of the work would be beneficial.

I like the other ideas mentioned including the use of role playing and lyric summaries.  This makes the topics engaging and fun.  The students can learn about the topic without having to rely on rote memorization of facts.  When students can apply aspects of their learned knowledge in other classes or displayed in other ways, it shows that learning has sunk in.  The chapter also emphasized the need to speak aloud.  The idea of reading aloud in post-secondary or even in senior high school may seem a bit silly but it proves to be effective.  A couple of weeks ago I read aloud and the person beside me was like “oh you just have to read it in your head”.  I thought, “Oh right.  Who does that anymore?”  Surely enough it can work when trying to comprehend new material.  I like how art gives the flexibility of learning through different senses.  You can learn about different smells of materials, the tactility of clay, the textures of paint, and the sight of colours.  This is why I truly believe that art should be taught in schools.