School 33 Reggio Emilia Atelierista Blog: Thursday, October 3, 2013

120, Bilingual First Grade- I continued working in small groups on their portraits. In my group today was a boy who has difficulty staying focused and little interest in most of his school work. I worked closely with him to get a decent portrait completed and I really think he tried his best. To illustrate that the way he drew his mouth was over by his cheek, I took a silly photo on the Photobooth App of the iPad. This delighted him and he wanted to play with the app. I made a deal that I'd let him use the last few minutes of class to play if he finished a nice portrait. He sat and drew, only getting up one time. He came right back and said, "I'm here! I stayed!" because he recognizes that sitting still is a challenge for him.

He won his time on the iPad and created some beautiful photographs. He was interested in the way my colorful pencil could make one color at a time show up on the kaleidoscope mode of the iPad. He took some interesting photos. I compiled them into collages for your viewing pleasure. What's more is that he was able to focus on his work because the goal of playing with something that peaked his curiosity drove him to finish.

116, bilingual second grade students continued to work on their portraits. I had the group who was previously struggling and required more time. They were very excited to finally get to paint and they responded well to the material. They followed directions and really did a great job.

108 monolingual first grade- I continued pulling small groups to do observational drawings of the objects they found on their nature walks.

112, bilingual self contained, grades one and two- We continued explored shells and created prints using the shells and tempera paint. Now we're ready to expand our shell study into a study of the oceans and continents again.