Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Today has been a crazy awesome day.

120, bilingual first grade.
I worked with the students on Mrs. Wagner's painting project.  The students painted leaves and painted with leaves on a large sheet of paper using only brown paint the first day.  I wasn't in the room yesterday when they added red, so it was interesting to see what they did with the new color. Today, we worked with orange.

The students were given new leaves that Mrs. Wagner brought in.  One student was thrilled to find a guest on her leaf- a snail!  The snail created a feeling of excitement in the room as the students took a close look at this surprise visitor.  One girl started painting something that looked like a snail, so I brought it over to her for a closer look.  She added antennas and the swirl on his shell.

The real snail and the painted snail. 

The students weren't given specific instructions for the paintings, so the results are really different depending on the table and the inspiration each student brings to the group.

This student added components of the portrait lesson onto his painting.

 One boy was really excited to show me that he used his paint cup as part of the artwork.  He turned it upside down and painted it.  Then, he added a toy dinosaur.  Later, he called me back over to show me that he added the leaves, creating a very interesting environment for his dinosaur friend.

One student turned his painting into a habitat for his dinosaur toy.

"The dinosaur got hungry."

116 bilingual second grade. We are finished (finally!) with our self-portraits.  The result is a beautiful collection of unique faces that will look amazing on their community mural. 

I took small groups from 108 (monolingual first grade) and 118 (monolingual second grade) out to look at the new playground our school had installed.  I recorded their questions and they drew the playground.  We added color with colored pencils after a demonstration on proper use of color pencils. The students were very excited. I will post pictures of their work and the questions shortly.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

116, bilingual second grade- We continued our portrait paintings.  We're probably only going to need a week or so longer and these will be ready to be displayed.  Our next project is going to be a classroom mural about our community, so the portraits might pop up in the mural once we get it finished!

118, monolingual second grade- I noticed that the sunflower we studied a few weeks ago is now in a state of decay.  Mrs. Chowaniek and I agreed that we should discuss it again, linking the word "decompose", which they are studying in math class, to the sunflower.

T: I looked at the sunflower and saw that it was different.
Why?
S1: It shrunk.
S2: It's getting older. It's breaking down.
S3: It's breaking apart and really old and rotten.
T: Any guess why it would break apart?

S3: It's older it's breaking apart and its old and nasty.

More comments: 

It's moldy.
It's dying. 
The mold is like rust- when you leave your bike outside, the metal parts get rusty. The mold is like that.
It's mushy. 
It's old.

T- The mold means it's getting old?
The mold means it can't survive anymore. 
The marshmallow part is getting old and the seeds will fall out.

T- You can't feel it, because I'm worried about mold allergies, but I can feel it. It isn't moist any longer.
What does moist mean?
T- It means wet.  It doesn't feel wet anymore.  It feels dry.
It looks like when you leave a banana peel out. 

T- Do you think these changes are a bad thing? 
It is bad because the sunflower is dying.
I think it's good because when the sunflower dies, then the seeds can make a garden.
It's both bad and good because the sunflower is getting old and rotten, but it's good because the seeds mean we can have a new garden.

T- There is a word you are using in math class that begins with a "D" that describes the process this sunflower is going through.  Does anyone know that word? 
Death?
Decay? 
Depose? 
Decompose!
It's rotten, like when you leave a banana outside and it turns black. 
It's turning black, too.

T- Tell me about the mold.
It looks fuzzy.
It looks like a banana that is black and brown.
It looks like a spider web.

T- How did the mold get there?
No one really understood where the mold comes from- they just kept commenting that it was part of the death process. 

Student- Why do plants die?
Teacher has other students answer.
So they can regrow again.
T- How?
We can put the seed back in the ground. 
T- Could we do that while these seeds are still in the sunflower.
No. We put it in a hole in the soil with water and sun.
T- So, should we be sad that this flower is decomposing? 

It's not really sad because plants are not a part of your family and they are just for decoration.
And food.
And nectar for the bees.

Mrs. C- What might an animal in nature do if it tries to eat the moldy flower? 
It wouldn't eat it.  It would see the mold and know this is a rotten flower.

T- What would happen if the plants didn't die? 
They would grow up to the sky.
Like a skyscraper!
Someone could get hurt if one fell down.
Or if someone pushed it down, it might crush your house and then you wouldn't have a house or food or anywhere to eat.

The sound isn't really great, but here is a video of our conversation.  I'm more comfortable with photographing, so this video thing is new and I'm still learning.

This is a video of our conversation.

108, monolingual first grade- I finished demonstrating and practicing drawing from observation with the final group of students.  Now we've all seen Austin's Butterfly and worked with pen.  We will continue our observations tomorrow using pen and then moving into watercolor, tempera, colored pencils and clay.

We drew these lumpy, bumpy gourds.  It was fun to listen to their comments ("what happens if I push on one of these bumps?" "What's inside of these?" "Why are they so bumpy?") about the strange-looking vegetables.

112, self contained class.  Today, we planned on having the students apply their new skill of drawing from observation for a more traditional purpose- drawing the continents.  We wanted to make a large map or globe of the Earth and we thought our discussion of the oceans would connect the shell study to the continent drawings. The students seemed uninterested in this endeavor, losing the excitement that we'd had when working with the shells.

T- After this, we'll make a globe or a map, but first we need to practice drawing the continents.

S- I think we should make a moon.

T- That's not a bad idea... We could make the sun and planets, too.

We discussed materials and Ms. Natal suggested we use paper mache.  She has balloons, so we can easily create planets that way. We blew one up to see if it was the round kind.  This led to the children playing with the balloons (their drawings were sufficiently completed and I wasn't forcing them to go back and draw more when they clearly weren't interested.) 

The balloon kept bouncing and getting blown away.  I said I wonder if there was something we could do to hold the balloon still. The students decided to make a balloon holder with blocks.

S2- The balloon will be happy because it's its home.

At first, one student built a tower and tried to balance the balloon on the top.

S1- That won't work! We need to build it with squares.

They began to build a circle of squares. We placed the balloon in the circle and blew on it.  It wasn't tall enough.  They decided to go back in and build it up higher.

First attempt at a balloon holder.

We did another test with the balloon and it was almost secure, but a large gust of air from one student made it come out of it's stand.  The students knew they had to build even higher, but the bell was about to ring to signal change of class, so it's something they'll have to go back to another time.

Second attempt at a balloon holder.

101, pre-k, and 104, bilingual K, both spent the class period working on drawings for the alphabet book. We are very close to being finished. I think there are only a few letters and pictures left.  I can't wait to create the photo collages for this book! 

Monday, October 7, 2013

120, bilingual first grade. Mrs. Wagner has been providing inquiry experiences with objects from nature. Students were provided nice, big maple leaves, a large sheet of yellow paper for the table and brown paint. No direction was given, other than naming the parts of a paintbrush, how to hold a brush if you want more control and how to tell if your brush is too dry.

S1-Look at mine! I made a leaf!

S2- It's so cool

S3- He colored his leaf. Can he do that? He can?! I'm going to do that!

S1 paints her leaf and then decides to use it to print on the paper. A chorus of oohs and aahs is given in response. Soon, predictably, others make prints with their leaves.

One group decides to glue their leaves to the paper and paint the entire page brown.

Over the course of the week, they will get one new color a day and layer the paint.

118 monolingual second grade- I took a small group to work on painting technique and texture. One part of this job that I love is when students discover something and they start laughing with joy at the discovery. Today, one of these students found that the acrylic tube he wanted to use was unopened. I watched him and another student figured out that it can be opened by flipping the cap upside-down and pressing it into the tube. He let out a full belly laugh when this worked and the paint started spilling out because he was laughing so hard, he squeezed it.

S1-This color is so ugly. Do you like this color? (A dark greenish brown.)

T- I do, because it's a great color for painting rocks or other items from outside. It makes me think of fall.

S1 thinks about that-The water is the color of dirt now. I think it would be awesome if we mixed the water with the paint, because we could really make a good dirt color.

 108, monolingual first grade- I continued working with small groups on drawings from nature.  I have one more group to go and then we'll take the drawings down from the wall and begin to play with materials- one leaf will be in colored pencil, one in watercolor, one in tempera.  I want them to see how different materials create a different look, to get them to compare and contrast the materials, so that they can make informed choices when selecting materials for their projects all year.

116, bilingual second grade-
The students finished their self-portraits and began to experiment with watercolor for their background paintings.

103, preschool.  This was a really fun class!  I let them finger paint today!  We talked about how the finger paint feels, then the feeling we get when we rub the paint on the paper.  This paint is really great- it has a gel consistency, so even I couldn't resist putting my hand in the jar and playing with it. The kids were ecstatic.

They were only given one color each to start and then switched, so when the red was added to the blue (or vice versa) there were exclamations of "look!  It makes PURPLE!"  Each pair had two colors- the primary colors and white.  The pair with red and white was very excited when their paintings turned pink.

Rainbow

Boat

Dinosaur

Cave

Hole

Gato

The Sea

Friday, October 4th

118 monolingual second grade students came in to work on their portraits. I gave them an introduction to painting in which I told them the trick to knowing if you require more paint is in the paintbrush's hairstyle- if the paintbrush looks like it's having a bad hair day, it probably needs more paint or water.  I also told them that they can be the "boss of the brush".  I heard a lot of comments and critique around these phrases:

I'm not letting my brush have a bad hair day!
I am the boss of the brush!
You are not the boss of the brush when you hold it like that!
This brush looks like it's having a bad day.

I asked them to critique each other as they worked using constructive criticism instead of just saying, "You ruined it!" or "That's so ugly!"  I heard, "Nice job! I like how you did that!" and "I think you're using too much paint."  I think this group is really taking everything that we present to them and rolling with it.  They are really fun to work with because they are open to the Reggio Approach.


I had a meeting today, so I missed 112, but they had testing during my block, so that worked out.  I touched base with Ms. Natal about the shell project and we are both thrilled with the students' interest in everything we're bringing to the table. She presented an inquiry yesterday by placing rulers, pencils and objects on the table without giving directions. She was hoping they'd measure the items on their own, but instead they started making abstract art. They turned it into a study of lines and shapes.

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.

103- We finished our Alphabet Book pages! I had three stations available- painting letters, painting backgrounds and pipe cleaner sculpting. 

104- We continued our Spanish word pictures for our Alphabet Book. One more day and we'll be finished!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

We have a half-day of school for students today, but that didn't stop us from having fun.

120 bilingual first grade- I continued to work in small groups on portrait drawing while the rest of the class used chalk to color in the beautiful observational drawings they made yesterday.  I didn't get pictures today, but I will tomorrow.

112- The students who were absent last class were here today and the students who finished early were both out, so it was the perfect opportunity to catch everyone up.  The kids made their clay shells, painted shells at the easels and then we tried printing with the shells.  This was very exciting and led to an attempt to do a marble painting technique with a rounder shell.  "This was SO MUCH FUN!" was the reaction of one of the students.

108- I took a small group to the studio to work on observational drawings.  We brought their treasures from outside to draw.  We watched Austin's Butterfly and I demonstrated contour line drawing.  The students tried to see like scientists and I heard positive critique being practiced. Win.

S1- This doesn't look right.

S2- It's too small, that's why. 

S1- It's not long enough, right?

S2- And it's too thick.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

It seems that nature is the theme in most of the classrooms, inspired by the changes Autumn brings.

120 bilingual first grade- We took a break from our portrait drawing and instead did an observational drawing from nature.  Mrs. Wagner brought in many different plants and objects from nature.  The students studied them with magnifying glasses and commented on the objects.  Then, we gave each group paper and fine tip pens.  I reminded them to use their "drawing like a scientist" skills to really record what the objects look like. 

108, monolingual first grade- We went for a nature walk, then brought our treasures inside to share out and ask questions. 

Comments overheard on the nature walk:

This is my tunnel!

Oh! There are pokey pods on you!  (Pokey Pods and porcupines are burrs we found.) 

I discovered someone's house! Look!

A porcupine! (Regarding the prickly burrs.)

They're called burrs! 

I guess one loves me!  (It was stuck to her shirt!)

I found a Y stick! Look!
  
I found a blue berry! (Not to be confused with a blueberry.) 

A "Y" stick.

The walk elicited mixed emotions. Some students were so excited that they were covered in leaves and webs and seeds, running top speed through the field.  Some were scared to touch anything from nature and wanted me to pick things up for them.  I saw two girls holding hands for support in case they saw a spider.  Overall, I think they enjoyed the experience and I foresee more time in the great outdoors for them.

We came back and shared three of our favorite items that we found. The students explained what they  thought the items were and asked each other questions. 

S1- This part is a berry. This is a colored leaf and this is a black leaf that fell from the tree.

S2- What are these?

S1- When you touch them hard, they pop on your hand and your hand gets red. Now your thumb is red.

S2- I think they're little pumpkins.

S3- Baby pumpkins.

S2- They look like little pumpkins. They're green, and pumpkins are green before they turn orange, so maybe they are.

A bag of treasure.

S4- I have one leaf, one porcupine and one flower.

S1- That one is supposed to grow still. (It was an unopened dandelion.)

S3- When this gets bigger,  it turns into a flower ball.  

S4- I'm feeding the porcupine the berries. You just put it there until it's ready to eat it. They stick to my shirt! Look! 

Everyone then takes a turn sticking the burrs to their shirts.

S2- I have a stick that looks like the stick with the baby pumpkins, but it doesn't have them yet.

The fur balls stick together. Look! 

S3- What are those parts of the flower?

S1- They aren't ready to turn green yet, but they will.

S3- They are baby baby pumpkins.

S2- When you take the fur balls apart, they want to go back together. See? 

S4- Look at how they stick to me.

S5, coming from another group- It's my badge. I am the principal.

S1- I am the lady principal. 

S2- The fur balls look like berries, but they have points.

S6, also from the group next to mine- They stick to leaves, too.

S6- These leaves are the same, but different colors. Look!