Week 2

Grade Level: 3rd Grade NAME: Becca Leslie Art 309 Reflections and Thoughts about Teaching Saturday #2 Interrelating the Arts Overall reflections about the first Saturday class experience:
In the space below, briefly address two or three of the following: Select a key point on which you wish to reflect. (e. g., student behaviors, awareness of school, a successful lesson) What Ive learned about myself.. What Ive learned about the students What Ive learned about teaching. I feel good about. I am frustrated by I am going to work on..

REFLECTIONS Overall, the 2nd week went well. We knew that the students were going to need a lot of time to work on the paper mache masks and anticipated that we would have to finish the following week. We sturggled with one student that had a one track mind about Jack Skellington, which was completely irrelavent from the lesson. We worked with him to keep him on track as much as possible in one on one setting, but in whol class discussions, we had a hard time steering the discussion in the way we wanted. We need to work on different strategies for leading group discussions with difficult students. I feel good about the quality of the work that the students produced. Each student solved the problem of creating an animal mask in a different way. The masks were unique and very creative. Next week we will finish the masks by collaging the recycled colored paper, reinforcing the idea of not wasting anything, using recycled materials as much as possible. We will have to be sure to remind students of the connections to Inuit masks to really make sure they understand why we are doing the project.

Week 2

GUIDED QUESTIONS Briefly address EACH of the following: 1. What Interrelated art concept(s) did you expect your students to understand as a result of the lesson? We expected the students to connect creative writing and mask making. 2. How well did the students understand the role of the visual artist, musician, dancer, and dramatist in the context you provided? We didnt get that far in our lesson due to distractions during discussion about storytelling and creative writing. 3. What can you teach, re-teach, and/or redirect during the third Saturday lesson? We can re-teach the importance of creative writing and the literary arts! The students werent that excited to be writing a story on a Saturday, so if we stress the imporance and contiune to be enthusiastic about it, the students will be more excited as a result. 4. How did you check for student understanding? We asked the students to point to an example of symetry and asymetry. We also asked the students to recall facts about the Inuit masks (What materials did they use? What did they use them for? How does this connect to our mask making project?) 5. Describe how you helped a particular individual who was having difficulty understanding a concept or technique. I helped a couple of students that were working really slowly, having a hard time staying on task. I stood by them, handing them pieces of tape and paper to make sure they were continually working on their project. 5. How did you address the class as a group (other than saying you guys)? 3rd Graders 6. How did you handle clean-up? Was it more or less efficient than last week? Clean up was pretty easy eventhough the project was really messy. We had the students put their masks on the cart, throw out their place mats, and wash their hands. I walked around and collected extra paper mache materials. 7. Describe the closure strategies used. We asked students to compare the masks they made and the Inuit masks we looked at in the beginning of class. 8. What was the most significant learning experience during your second week of teaching? The most significant learning experience during my second week of teaching is the importance of keeping students engaged with the lesson. There are a lot of little tricks that can be used to redirect discussion and keep the class focused.