Tuesday, October 29, 2013

I hope everyone has a high speed internet connection, because I went a little crazy on the photos today. :)

120, bilingual first grade. Mrs. Wagner has been presenting great inquiry opportunities with objects from nature, with students observing and drawing from observation.  I offered to bring clay tomorrow so the students can try to sculpt the gourds in 3D.  As I was feeling the weird appendages on the gourds, I knew this would be a really fun experiment for them.  She agreed enthusiastically, so I can't wait for tomorrow morning!

112 was heading out for a field trip to see the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, so I missed their class today.  Our school believes in exposing the students to cultural opportunities like this.  Last week, they went to see a Russian Ballet at Shea's Theater.  I used my free time to photograph the artwork and projects displayed all over our building, because I think it's important to share what other teachers and grade levels are doing in our Inquiry Based School.  Enjoy this visual walking tour of School #33:

Shape animals from Mrs. Bennett's preschool class.

Art is Everywhere

This preschooler made a finger-painting of a leaf and I love it.

Kindergarten pumpkins from Mrs. Holden's Room

The work of the older grade levels shows the same respect for aesthetics and the language of art as a means for conveying information.

Soft lighting, such as this in Mrs. Connor's room, can be found in many of our classrooms.

Our rules are child-made and often contain illustrations, such as this example in Mrs. Connor's room.

Even the signs for various fundraisers and functions are now created by children and presented artistically, versus a typed, copied sign, which just doesn't have the same effect. 

Art from our school's visual arts teacher, Ms. Ulak:

Mrs. Wagner's documentation of the mural project her class created.

112's identity wall

A mural from 112

Art from 108

Work from 104

104 portraits

108, monolingual first grade.  I took another small group and we worked on the community clay building project. This group was by far the most interested in the project yet and they just dove into the building with contagious enthusiasm.  Our flower shop is off to an impressive start:

118 was also on the field trip.

101, preschool students are currently exploring the concept of "myself" in their classroom. Since we just finished the painting exploration and we needed to begin an introduction to clay, clay self-portraits seemed like the perfect lesson.  The other preschool class had already created these, so it was fun to see the differences and similarities.

This child didn't forget anything- arms, legs and facial features!

I was impressed that she pushed the pipe cleaner "hair" through the clay and twisted it.
I also love the green eyes. 

This one reminds me of a pirate skull, but maybe that's because we're close to Halloween.
I love the popsicle stick mouth.

This little one kept testing out different buttons until she found the right ones. 

103, preschool.  After the students finished their primary-to-secondary paintings, I wanted to see what they would do if I gave them all of the colors and asked them to draw themselves or a friend.  Some just experimented with paint, some drew faces.  I wasn't blown away by the results.  I thought about how to save the pieces and I decided I would give them markers and let them draw on the paintings.  More faces showed up, as did some abstract scribbles.  I noticed that they are definitely more comfortable with markers than paint.  The results after this class are more interesting. There are so many little details and facets of the work. It's really pretty cool to see how they will keep working in the same spot and they don't seem to get frustrated or bored easily.  I am going to give them glue sticks and some of the "beautiful stuff" I have- feathers, buttons, fake jewels, wood shapes, foam shapes- and see where they take it from there.  After that, I want them to tell me a story about the two paintings, as a class critique.

Mural #1- Lots of Happy Faces

The girls ripped this spot when they painted, so I taped more paper behind it.  They then colored the marker in that spot so hard that it ripped again.  I don't know what it is about the hole, but I am going to find out.  I believe it's intentional.

Lots of little faces:

The second mural:

I get a graffiti vibe from this one.

Another little person

I see a nice attempt at writing and it adds to the graffiti look, almost resembling a "tag."

Another little face, hidden in the chaos.

More friends

This part is awesome. She wasn't here last time, so she took the area where one student just painted blue and made it the ocean.  She has waves and she is swimming.  I was so impressed. 

More little faces. 

Monday, October 28, 2013

120, bilingual first grade. I took a small group to the studio to work on portraits. I'm really pleased with the way these portraits are coming along.

Pretty amazing for a first grader, don't you think? 

108, monolingual first grade. I brought a group into the studio to continue our work on building the community. The first group made two houses and a pet store.  This group made a video game shop, a Walmart, a doctor's office and a gym.

Our Gym

This is going to be a video game store.

The beginnings of our Walmart.

118, monolingual second grade. I brought the same small group I had last week into the studio to continue working on building a model of our school playground out of clay.  They went from wanting to work alone, to wanting to work as partners to deciding to work as a whole group.  We will have one playground model, with each student contributing a part.  I love that they decided to collaborate.  The atmosphere changed this time around, too.  I heard a lot of encouraging praise and the critiques were constructive and positive.  I am really happy with the progress they're making.

Our monkey bars are complete. The slides are created, but not attached.  We're making lots of progress.

102, monolingual kindergarten. I brought half of the class to the studio to paint realistic portraits of themselves, as their unit in the classroom is All About Me.  We chose colors that match our skin tone, mixing the multicultural paint colors when necessary. The students painted their faces with the skin color, then I demonstrated how to make realistic eyes using white, the iris color and black.  We also discussed hair color and tried to match up our actual hair color and hairstyles.  I thought the results were pretty awesome.

101, preschool. I had them complete their primary-turned-secondary color mixing lesson today. Instead of stenciling or stamping, the students etched their first initial into the paint, which is something they were working on in class, so I figured we could reinforce it through the exploration of materials in art.

Friday, October 25, 2013

116, bilingual second grade.  I took a group of students to the computer lab.  We learned how to log on and search for images on google. I've learned that technical difficulties come with the territory when you are working with computers, so we had issues printing and saving our images.  I just wrote down the web addresses and I hope to find their images and print from there.  I gave the students pens and paper and they began drawing their living things right from the computer.  I will repeat this with another group on Monday.

118, monolingual second grade. The students were preparing to leave for a field trip, so I used the time to write a lesson plan for where the community project is heading.

108, monolingual first grade.  Our school practiced a lockdown, which ended up taking up this period.  In this day and age, lockdown is a necessity, even if the most creative, Reggio-inspired schools.

I was able to get the pre-k and k letters project all formatted and now I'm researching to find a way to print copies of our letter book in an economical fashion.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Today was one of those days where the inspiration is almost tangible with these students. I decided that since the clay is already out and my room is in a state of dusty chaos, now is a good time to explore clay with a few other classes.

120, bilingual first grade, continued with their small group portraits.  Not much to report until those are completed. :)

118, monolingual second grade.  This class just finished drawing the buildings around our community as part of their observational drawing skills and their social studies curriculum.  We incorporated mathematical concepts, such as visually measuring using your pen or pencil to get proportions correct when drawing from life.  I think this reinforcement from a visual arts perspective is really hitting the curriculum home.  I brought the group who drew the playground to the studio and gave them clay and photographs of the playground.  I showed them architectural drawings, blueprints and then 3D models, explaining what each of those components are.  The students knew 3D only as a way to watch movies, so it was interesting to talk about height, width and depth with them.  When I brought the clay out, they knew it could be used to make the playground in 3D and I didn't have to say a word.

We talked about angles and measurement again and I was so excited to see that the angled monkey bars were being recreated with nearly the same angle as in the photograph and real life!

The kids decided to work in groups and both groups were using the similar angles and proportions. I can't wait to see the finished pieces!

108- monolingual first grade.  I've been using an exploratory approach to this class and today I thought, "Why not start with clay and tie in communities?" We did a taxonomy of places in the community and the students started building some places for community helpers to work.  I have a feeling this could lead into a community space with murals for the streets and background, street lights, maps, and a huge project might grow out of it.  

116, bilingual second grade- I took Group One to start drawing the non-living things in our community.  The school was the first choice and the church was the second.  We now have two huge drawings started of these buildings.  The students are using their drawing from observation skills to draw from photographs.  Tomorrow, we'll go to the computer lab to research images of our living things, which I will print so we can draw and paint them from observation.

103, preschool. The students have about learned color mixing using tempera paint, so I wanted to give them an opportunity to explore with all three primary colors. I set up areas where students could paint in groups and let them choose the subject matter.  Most of them practiced mixing colors.  I saw a letter A and some faces.  Two girls drew themselves and the other. "We are working together! This is fun!" They painted themselves near an apple tree.  A boy painted himself in his Halloween costume. 

"Me and my friend are by the apple tree."

A happy little guy.

Another first attempt at a face.

102, monolingual kindergarten. I took the students who didn't make self-portraits out of clay yesterday. 

"I made my legs crossed."

"This is me. And this is my pizza."

A nice seated figure.

The children of Room 102 in clay!

I've had a number of projects finish at the same time, so I've been on a crazy hanging/installation kick. Room 104 finished their tree, so we installed that today.  The students are going to find the biggest, most colorful leaves they can find at home and bring them in to hang on our tree.  The three will change as the seasons and projects change. 

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

118, monolingual second grade. I took half of the class to finish their portraits, but it became clear that we will need one more day.

112, self-contained. We continued our study of the continents.

116, bilingual second grade.  We hung our cloud murals in the room.  Now we are ready to begin our study of things in the School #33 community.  We will start with a drawing of the school.  Each student will then do an observational drawing of a living or non-living thing in our community that they've researched.

120, bilingual first grade. We created menus for the class kitchen area, which is turning into a restaurant like the other first grade class has.

102, monolingual kindergarten. We continued their exploration of materials and tied it into their social studies theme of "myself."  The students were given clay and clay tools and asked to create something that represented themselves. They made clay sculptures of themselves.  I later found out that they'd learned this technique in their art class with School #33's other art teacher, Ms. Ulak. It's awesome that they are carrying our lessons over into each other's classes, because this is a great sign that they will become competent at working with materials in their homerooms!

104, bilingual kindergarten. We finished our trees and their teacher requested that I work on their fine motor skills while we explore materials, perhaps using shapes as a theme. I had the students explore the clay and use clay tools to cut triangles out of the clay.  This was difficult for some students, but they enjoyed the tactile sensation of working with the clay.

I have pictures, but I'm having technical difficulties at the moment, so hopefully I will add them later.


I was busy hanging artwork around our building yesterday, like this rainbow of preschool secondary color paintings.

Preschool Secondary Color Paintings

Observational Drawings of the Community

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

There was no blog post yesterday because I wasn't here.  I apologize.

120, bilingual first grade. I continued with my second group of students in the atelier for portrait painting.  The students in this group did a great job and were thrilled to use the paint.  I love working in small groups- not only do you have a much better opportunity to understand the students' strengths and weaknesses, you also get to know the personalities of the children. I never had the opportunity, much, in my previous experience, to work in groups like this. I really appreciate this aspect of the position.

116, bilingual second grade. I took my final group outside to study the clouds.  The students were THRILLED to see that the moon was out in the daytime.  This became a big focus of the discussion we had outside and then we had to take a vote when we came in to see who would be the lucky person to paint the moon.  The students in this group worked really well together.

The moon is still out! 

Here is the discussion we had while the students painted:

Teacher- What did we see on our walk in the community?

S1- The moon! 
S2-Clouds!
S3- Trees
S2-Houses
S1-Grass

Teacher- What living things are outside?
S1-Birds
S2-Animals
S3-Turtles
S1-There are no turtles outside in buffalo! (Laughing) But there are cats!

Teacher- What are the non-living things outside?
S4-Flowers?
S3-They are living- I want to draw some flowers on the mural! Zombies are non-living. But they're not real.
S1- I know- they are only in the movies.
S2- The big building over there with the door hanging open!
Teacher- yes! That is a big building in our community. I think it's very interesting.
S1-The church is on the other side of the school. There is a store down that way, with pizza.
Teacher- We have something new next to the school- what's that?
S1- You are new to our school! (Laughs)
S3- They built a park for us!
Teacher- That's right! They did! 

Teacher-  Finish this sentence: Our mural is...
S3- Beautiful
S1- I like my moon
S2- Pretty

Teacher- Should we fix anything?
S3- No... Yes!
Teacher- What specifically needs to be fixed? We have to be specific or we won't know how to fix it.
S3- These clouds are shapes and we shouldn't put a shape in as a cloud.
S5- Did I do it ugly?
S1- No, it looks cool, but it just looks like a rectangle and we made it more like a cloud.

108 was on a field trip so I used the free period to clean and organize the atelier.  I hung the observational drawings that didn't fit on the wall in the second grade wing and did some general room organization.  The classroom environment is as important as the teacher in the Reggio Emilia Approach.  It is important that our environment reflects the creative and high expectations we have for the students and our studio was looking a little too static. It was nice to have some time to change it up!

112 came in and we began our study of the continents to add to our globes.  The students cut out the continents- strengthening their fine motor and cutting skills- and they will draw them on the globes next class.

103 finished their exploration of primary color mixing.  Next class, I will lay out all three primary colors and let them create anything they want as partners.  I'm curious to see who mixes and who uses the colors as they are.

104 created the smaller branches and twigs for their trees. I laid out paper and pipe cleaners and they figured it out on their own.  Some branches are more decorative, some are more realistic.  They were very proud of their tree.
"This is important- that we make a tree."
"Our tree is going to make every other class say 'Wow! I wish we had that tree!'" 

A small branch

The pile of branches