What will students learn? How will they be assessed? How will they know criteria for success?

After a very thought-provoking conversation at this morning's staff meeting about the power of making learning intentions clear and visible to all of our students, I realized that I have found success in making my learning intentions clear to my students, but I have failed in educating my parents about learning intentions in the art room.

What are the learning goals in art?

This year, all of the activities within my "How to be an Explorer" curriculum revolve around 9 different learning goals (which were adapted from the Columbus Museum of Art's nine habits of thinking like an artist). In art class, we call these 9 learning goals our "destinations". They are posted on the board and discussed every lesson. You can see the ways in which the learning goals and the ways in which they are linked to the Ohio Visual Art Standards and DCS's 6 Habits of Thinkers below.






Why are these goals important?

Having my students know why they are working towards a certain goal is even more important to me than having my students be able to identify the goal. Each time that a goal is posted, we also discuss the importance of the goal. These explanations are posted under the question "why".





How to the students know the criteria for success? 

With each of the 9 learning intentions, I have created a student rubric with the steps that students can take to achieve the learning goal. These rubrics are used in many ways throughout the curriculum, such as tools for setting goals before starting a project, mid-project self assessments, and rubrics for me to generate student report cards at the end of each trimester.



How do I assess my own pedagogy to help students achieve each goal?

This year I have also developed rubrics to assess myself with each class. I am keeping these rubrics posted on my cabinet doors and marking where I am at as a teacher with each class. This lets me know where each class is at and identifies areas that I need to focus on growing as an educator.

"What If" Detectives

As the students walked into the room and gathered in The Hive, they were confronted by two signs. On the left was a street sign that said “Curiosity” posted on the blackboard under the phrase “Where Are We Going?” On the right, “No answers allowed!” was projected in large red letters onto a large white screen. The teacher walked to the front of the room, stood with a puzzled, curious look on his face, and asked the class a question: what if no answers were allowed for an entire class? As a student began to explain what it might be like, the teacher pointed to the sign that said, “no answers allowed”. Another student raised his hand and proclaimed how fun it would be to have no answers and the teacher, yet again, pointed to the sign.

Silence.

More Silence.

A hand hesitantly raised and a young, shaky voice asked, “What if we could play all day long?” The teacher’s face lit up with excitement as he proclaimed, “Interesting question!” and handed the 4^th grader a What If Detective sticker. Several hands shot into the air, one after another. As each student asked their question, they were handed a sticker. Once every student had obtained a What If Detective sticker, they were told to grab their sketchbooks and pencils and head to the door. As the students were taken on a journey throughout the school and around the playground, they excitedly shared “what if” questions with each other, feeding off of each other’s curiosities and writing down the questions that they found particularly exciting.

Check out some of their curiosities below!

What’s next?

4^th Grade students will share their curiosities and receive feedback from their peers. Once narrowing their ideas to one intriguing question, the students will begin to plan an art project that will explore their curiosity!

5th Grade Explorer Challenge: Unconventional Mapping

Today’s explorer challenge presented 5^th grade students with their first practice with the concept of Vujà Dé: seeing a familiar space in a whole new way.

To start the lesson, students first brainstormed the purpose of maps. The answers were almost all expected responses, like:

“Maps are used for finding directions.” – J.S.

“Maybe you have a question of a country in Europe. You could look on a map to find where it is located.” – W.D.

“You can track the roads you have traveled” – A.B.

“ If you want to go to a different state, you can use a map to look that state up.” – A.B.L.

Students were then presented their challenge, which I hoped would extend their current understanding of maps and they ways in which maps can document so much more than just roads, cities, states, and countries.

5^th grade students were then taken outside to a very familiar space, the entrance of the school and asked to create a map of all of the things they have never noticed before about the walkway into the school. Students were split into groups and 1-inch graph paper, 1/2- inch graph paper, and blank drawing paper.

The squares of pavement that make up the school entrance create a natural grid that I assumed would be the starting point for each group. As usual, the students shattered my expectations in the different ways that each group approached the challenge.

  

Here are examples of the approaches taken by Mrs. Tate’s class:

Group 1

When I first glanced over at Group 1, they appeared to be a group that was struggling to start the challenge as they sat in a circle around one square of pavement. As I went over and started observing this group, I quickly realized that this group had chosen to scale their map to focus on the previously unnoticed details of one single square of pavement.

Group 2

 

This group noticed a difference in color in some of the squares of pavement, which they labeled as the “white pavement”. By first marking the lighter pavement squares on their grid, they used this area as a point of reference as they marked unnoticed detailed in reference to the “white pavement”.

Group 3

This group was attracted a bench on the side of the entrance, perhaps because it is a large bench that sat under the cool shade on a warm sunny morning. The group decided that they would create a map from the perspective of someone sitting on the bench. They used the bench as their reference point for where to place each landmark on their map.

Group 4

 

As I watched Group 4 approach this challenge, I questioned whether they were creating a map or simply exploring the space, but the group had a focused approach so I sat back and simply observed. I quickly realized that this group was using texture rubbing to document the various textures that were present in the school entrance. While the limited work time prevented them from completing their map, their plan was to arrange the textures based upon their physical relation to each other .

Group 5

 

This group approached this challenge focusing solely on the various objects that they noticed in the space and their relation to each other. After drawing in various large objects, they used these objects to add in the gridlines of the pavements and the various details that they noticed.

What’s next?

I am excited to introduce the 5^th grade students to cartographic art, unconventional maps, and challenge students to document daily experiences through map making.