I’ve been embracing the beautiful fall weather with my class this year. We have been a community for a month, but already we have been successful at collaborating and journaling together in the great outdoors of Calgary.
We have been outside reading, going for walks to nearby forests to explore, and play games. We have written poetry and sketched.
The idea of learning outside has allowed many of my learners to feel more confident, and comfortable. I hope to continue going outdoors even in the cool winter months to explore how we can adapt to learn in our great city.
After two months of hard work, and collaborating, my students completed our first mural!
Together we came up with a theme of “moving forward” and one of our students suggested trains as a way to represent this visually. After deliberating and voting this is what was decided.
My students had total control over the look and theme of the mural with my guidance. They debated, discussed, and came to a consensus together – talk about adding some Social Studies into the classroom 🙂
Then, the student who wanted to created designs for the murals in their sketchbooks. We did an art walk and students put small sticky notes on their choice of design. I picked the top two designs and sort of meshed them together and drew it up on our mural board!
Each day students took turns coming up to paint their sections. One train car is white – that is mine.
With Spring comes a busy flurry of student activities. I find that my calendar fills up way faster in April and May with in-school residencies, and other school-wide events. We’ve been very busy learning about Democracy and the Election process in Social Studies – our students participated in Student Vote, and were almost bang on with the way the Election results actually were reported! A testament to the research and critical thinking skills our students have developed.
In Science, we’ve been busy at work learning about Sky Science – the moon, sun, stars, planets, and space technology! This unit is always a favourite amongst the kids, as they love the chance for inquiry, and deep exploration about the great big universe we live in!
My Grade 6s just finished their first Provincial Achievement Test in Writing. They had to write a short story based on a picture prompt, as well as a newspaper article based on information they were given. I’m not a supporter of standardized testing but want all my students to be successful in a system that I can’t singlehandedly change. So we did some test prep, and we talked about ways to de-stress and take care of our mental health. This group did very well based on my first glances, and they seemed calm and cool about the whole thing.
I managed to get a large piece of wood installed outside my classroom so our class debated and discussed a theme, and then sketched images based on that theme, and then democratically we voted on the top 3 designs. I took those 3 and combined them to create a great mural for this year. The best part about the wood is that we will be re-painting it over and over again so the art changes with our learning 🙂
Here are some photos of some of the going ons in our busy Room 14!
Painting our Train Mural – keep on moving!Drumming residencyStudent Vote day!Paper Mache bowls for our Healthy Eating Unit in French and Health!
Today I had the great opportunity to attend a PD away from my school, and join 400+ teachers from around Calgary (as well as some pre-service teachers) who want to discuss some of Education’s tough questions and movements.
EDCAMPYYC 2015 is about meeting with other like-minded professionals to create a learning network and discuss topics that we are passionate about.
Entering the new highschool up in Nose Hill; Robert Thirsk Highschool is beautiful. It still had that new school smell, and was exceptionally laid out. What a treat it must be to get to work there. They had some beautiful living walls, and a lovely outdoor terrace for teachers to shmooze and have breakfast.
My first session was put on by Joe Bower who is an advocate for a shift away from grades and tests. He facillitated an excellent discussion about the “whys” and the “hows” related to moving away from giving students tests and grades. We discussed the difficulties, the roadblocks, and some of the successful ways teachers from K-12 were managing to provide formative feedback, collaborative reflections, and more. Joe did an excellent job inspiring the crowd with his own personal anecdotes about dealing with parents and kids who are still “number obsessed”. He explained that every number is subjective.
Some take aways from this discussion were:
– that we need to teach kids how to collaborate and share their learning. Many know how to talk about their weekends, but when they have a school q. they raise their hand to ask the teacher. Have to teach and train them to use each other as a community of learners
– instead of tests – look at objects, performances, and portfolios (digital or physical) – students always need to know the purpose and context of every task in order to be engaged.
– Success and Failure should not equate to Reward and Punishment, but INFORMATION!
– We need to give students a space where they can take risks, where a number doesn’t define them, where process is important, and reflecting on how they grew from the process.
Secondly, I went to a discussion about Outdoor Education, put on by Paul Kelba. He shared some great links and a video about the importance about getting outside. We discussed together the challenges and roadblocks to getting outside to be active and to do field work or field trips. Many common roadblocks are the paperwork, costs, not enough volunteers, and resistance from teachers, or kids themselves. We discussed ways to overcome some of these roadblocks such as going on walking trips (cost saving, and almost no paperwork now thanks to the CBE and their walking distance trip letter). We talked about creating dialogue with parents to help stress the importance of doing field trips and the need for volunteers at your school and using student teachers/university students as volunteers. Overall I was very inspired to get outside more, and take advantage of our beautiful city.
Some take aways
– the benefits of revisiting the same place multiple times in a year
– using GIS
– mapping and orienteering
– using art and science outcomes for any outdoor trip – journaling, reflection, field studies, etc.
This month our 5/6 class focus was online safety. Together, we watched videos, brainstormed, and discussed how to be safe online. An interesting topic came up around being polite online as well! As a group students came up with some “netiquette” policies and some tips to stop cyber bullying! Some made visual journal pages and I think they turned out wonderfully.
Masked off and exploring techniquesTape removed, great negative space!Awesome techniques
The past two weeks my class explored watercolor painting techniques. We explored many techniques that I showed them (wet-on-wet, splatter, using salt, using plastic wrap etc.) Then I let them do their own experimenting in their Visual Journals. Many of them commented that it felt like a Science class – awesome!
Each student was given a piece of watercolor paper, they loved how heavy it felt, and its texture. I asked them to use masking tape to create negative space on their page. Many chose to go with a geometric design, but some were also random. Each section they created they were asked to demonstrate their new understanding of the techniques. They could layer different techniques, or highlight just one.
We left those to dry for a few days and did some lessons in Health surrounding body image, relationships, and self-esteem. Afterwards we made a list of ten positive things about ourselves. We talked about being ourselves, loving who we are, and accepting our mistakes as learning opportunities.
After this was done we did a photography lesson! The kids were so excited with all the different components to this project. We discussed shooting close up faces for impact (SCUFFI), and using lighting to help create value on our subjects. Students loved going outdoors and taking lots of various portraits of each other.
Final step was to put everything together in a creative way. Don’t you just love how they turned out?
Last week in Math, we were learning about shapes and angles! Students were exploring angles around us in our classroom, and in our lives. Then applied this knowledge to understanding the interior angle of shapes. We concluded that because a triangle is like half of a square that if a square is 360 degrees, a triangle’s angle measurements should be half of that, 180 degrees!
After some use of the protractor, we did a photography project relating to angles! We talked about how different movements of our camera can make a different angle in relation to the ground – some students even were able to make some fairly good estimates of what the actual angle was. For example, having your body on the ground with your camera on the ground and taking a picture of the object on the ground = 180 degree angle!
Students had to choose ONE object and take as many different angles of the object that they could. The result, some interesting perspectives on ordinary objects!
The display outside our classroom with our photo collages!
Before beginning the day, while I check homework, do attendance, and collect any paperwork – students are given a daily drawing “prompt” on the SMART Board.
This particular challenge was 30 days long, so on the first day, students divided a two-page spread in their journals into 30 sections. As you can see, some did random divisions, and others were more mathematical (dividing each page into 15, by creating 3 columns and 5 rows).
Some examples of the challenge were:
– Draw a Science project gone wrong
– Draw a word in graffiti style
– Draw a mysterious building
– Draw something taped together
– Draw an ancient cell phone
– Draw your favourite character as a zombie
Can you spot any of these in each of the student samples of the Drawing challenge? Many of them did them in random order, some were more linear and went day-to-day, in order.
This is a great activity to keep students busy, and thinking while you get prepared for the morning. There were so many creative interpretations of each day. I always ensure not to “instruct” them too much with examples. I have my own page, but I usually do them AFTER the students have had their prompt.
*sigh* after two days of Parent Teacher Conferences I was exhausted. While I enjoy having parents come and be a part of their child’s world for awhile, it is a long day of teaching, and then meeting with parents until the evening. Most parents were so thrilled to see their kids’ Electricity Projects, and Visual Journals. All of my interviews went great, and I could really sense the kids and parents felt pride in the work that was being shown.
The last week of school for Science, students did mini-experiments which we named “Eye on the Exhibits” After exploring and making observations, students had to create a journal page that was like a lab write-up.
In Math last week we began exploring the relationship between capacity and volume. Students learned about displacement, and how to measure the volume of an irregular object using capacity and displacement. Yes, the camera is waterproof!
It was a great last week, and although I am fortunate for the break, I am looking forward to going back to school in April fully recharged and ready for a great 3 more months of this school year.
Our Kindergarten buddies put on a play that needed a background. Together, we created colourful squares that represented signs of Spring! The 5/6 students drew the picture, and we discussed the concept of “monochrome”
The project took a few weeks, but it really paid off, and the students loved seeing it come together slowly. We glued the pieces to the background as they came in, so it slowly came alive! The Kindergartens loved drawing cacti, vines, flowers, leaves, fruits, and vegetables in new colours! My class did an excellent job teaching their buddies about using monochromatic colours.
Together we created this lovely mosaic that our buddy class used as a backdrop for a cute play!
Well, I am now in my third full year of teaching (can’t believe it already!). I am beginning to get a good grasp on the curriculum for Grades 4, 5, and 6. In doing so, I am finding it much easier to plan big, cross-curricular projects, focus on the big questions/concepts, and infuse art and technology into areas that make sense for the students learning.
Making art and technology authentic to my students has been important to me, as well as ensuring they learn important skills, techniques, and vocabulary associated. With art, I always try to focus on the WHY, (WHY did I choose this colour, WHY did I like this, WHY didn’t I?)
I am already beginning to have some amazing ideas for next school year that relate to art projects – I will share those hopefully as I come out with them.
For now, here is what I’ve been doing THIS year, that is art-related!
1. Visual Journals
These have been an amazing learning tool for the majority of my students this year. Whether it be Social Studies, Math, Science, LA, Art, Health… whatever! The students always get options on how to represent their learning, and usually they choose to make a visual journal page.
Here is a great example of a math multiplication strategy page a student made. Each strategy is a flap that explains what it is, how to do it, and an example!
I will make a longer, more in depth post about how I introduce the journals, the requirements I provide my students, as well as the self, and teacher assessments I use.
2. Art Cart!
In order to make the most out of art supplies, myself and another teacher have pooled our stuff onto an “art cart” that we share between classes. Her kids come grab it when they need it, and mine grab it when we need it. It has worked very well so far this year as a great mobile supply cart for unique items to add to Visual Journal pages, or for other creative endeavors.
visual journal cart
On the cart there are stamps, stamp pads, sponges, mod podge, scrap paper, newspaper, old books, old playin gcards, string… etc! You think of it, its on the cart!
3. Daily Drawing
This has been a class favourite! We’ve done 3 separate 30 day drawing challenges – a lot of ideas I come up with on my own, or borrow from other drawing challenges that I’ve googled. Basically I use my SMART Board, and create a Notebook file. Each slide is a new day. In the morning when students arrive, the daily drawing task is on the SMART Board, so that I can do attendance, check homework, talk to students, etc. while everyone else stays occupied with an artistic task that requires creativity and time. For the 30 day challenges, I have students use a two page spread in their Visual Journals. They then divide each page into 15 squares (3×15).
My students LOVE seeing the creative ideas they’ll have to draw next!
Some examples of daily drawing challenges:
– draw your teacher as a monster
– draw a fruit eating a vegetable
– draw the inside of your brain
– draw two animals mixed together
I will try to post a picture of one of my student’s completed drawing challenge, they are so fun, and get the kids drawing, and thinking while I get morning tasks completed.
This week was super busy! Our class has a school-wide assembly to host in March as well as a Silent Film workshop that took all of Wednesday for filming and editing. It’s been quite the creative chaos in our classroom.
As a class, we decided to create a large mural – pictures to come for our Kindergarten buddies’ play. We helped make the costumes they would need as well. We also have some students doing a dance to the new song from the Lego Movie – Everything is Awesome!
On Wednesday, students created Silent Films and edited them using iMovie. They turned out so great, and were very comedic. As a class we had a discussion about humour vs. being silly for no reason, and the message came across well. We had some creatively funny stories!
Looking forward to this weekend, I have a lot of work to do, but because the weather outside is supposed to be in the -30 range, I’ll be bundled up with my laptop and some warm beverages to work.
artisteach 
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