Thursday, September 11, 2014

First Grade Group B-

We made progress on our self-portraits today.  Tomorrow, they will finish and we will compare and contrast portraits by two famous painters, then compare and contrast their portraits to each other.

I noticed that students in Ms. Boyd's room were making pictures from geometric shapes, so I went in to take pictures and ask the students about the designs.

I was really excited about this piece.  Buffalo, as you are probably aware, sits on the river and I feel like this is a simplified portrait of our city. I didn't want to influence the student, so I simply asked what she made.  She told me it was a river and houses.

The diamonds are the water. The other shapes are houses by the water.

I also enjoyed seeing these trees.

Pre-K 106
It was clear to me that this group of students needed more guidance on identifying the parts of a face before they could make solid portraits. I placed a new provocation and supplies on the table. The provocation was, "Can you make a face?" and this is how it looked when they came in:

I had the students choose a sheet of paper that they thought was closest to matching their skin tone, as I'm trying to reinforce the idea of observational drawing and choices based on realistic colors. Then I had them choose items that could represent eyes, noses and mouths.

The students worked with the loose parts (a term used in the Reggio-inspired approach, also called, "beautiful stuff" that represents random, interesting "things") to create a face. We worked without glue and at the end of the period, I had the students try to sort the objects back into the containers. Sorting is a skill that we need and it was good practice. I'm going to let them play with the loose parts again next class to see who else can create a portrait and to give them more practice sorting.  Here are some of the Loose Part Portraits that were created today:

I brought a new second grade group from 116 in to start their portraits.  I was happy to hear vocabulary used from last year.

Natalia- It's a portrait! I know that!

Retention of terms and skills seems to be high.  I'm grateful for that.  The students we had last year are demonstrating great attention to detail and remembering how to look closely. Take a look at these portraits from kindergarteners that were here last year:

There are eyebrows, ears, hair, shoulders (the one on the right pointed out that the lines are not his arms and legs, but rather his shoulders and torso/arm lines.) These look sophisticated for this age group. I can't wait to see what they can produce by the end of the year!