DOCUMENT A SECOND!

I recently took my Ohio State students through an introduction to documentation and it was a good reminder of the first time I sat through a presentation on documenting student learning. I was so overwhelmed with the thought that on top of all of the million things I was trying to make happen in the little amount of time I have with my students (45 minutes, every 4 days).

While I have come to realize that adapting my curriculum and pedagogy has freed up a lot of time in each lesson for me to capture moments of learning, I completely understand the worry and struggle of allocating time for documentation within each lesson, so I decided to start experimenting with a project I am calling "Document a Second".

Below you will find my first video of the project, which is a compilation of 1 second videos during my art classes over the month of February. While snow days, schedule changes, and my days off to care for family members left me with only about 11 teaching days in February, I think the video still does a good job of documenting the learning moments that happen in my classroom every day.

Tell me that you don't have 10 minutes of each lesson to allocate to documentation and I will tell you that I completely understand, because I was there before. But can you tell me that you don't have one single second to devote to documentation?

I'm excited to share March's video with you next month!

Dublin City Schools has a district goal this year for staff, students, and families to work collaboratively to create a positive climate in each school. It is the inclusive climate of the art room that made me first fall in love with visual art.

Student-Driven Learning is Nerve-racking!

Today was one of those mornings where I felt really insecure as an educator.

This year I have been emphatically trying to focus on empowering my students to take ownership of the learning process with the hope that they can increasingly view the world around them as moldable. Having the kids work harder than me sounds easy in concept, but that is far from reality.

Many educators that I know decided to pursue the career in college while already having a love for classroom organization, a desire to create exciting projects, and a skill for management. Add on 4-5 years of professors preaching the importance of organization of materials, detailed lesson plans, precise assessments and concrete classroom management, and letting go of the learning process becomes a difficult thing for many of us to do.

So why was I feeling insecure this morning?

Right now my 4th graders are using the design process to solve a real world problem that happens to live about 20 feet from the art room door.... the lost and found. (Picture from last year.)

After a quick design challenge to talk about the steps of the design process, students spent two art classes describing the problem, asking questions, and creating a Google survey that was sent to teachers to understand more about the problem.

Students then generated 4 main ideas that they will be prototyping and testing:

1. Reorganizing the lost and found to help students find their items.

2. Creating a website/newsletter that will help share what is currently in the lost and found throughout the year.

3. Creating decorative name tags that will be given to each student to label their winter jacket.

4. Creating signs at the playground entrance/exit to remind students not to forget their clothing items at recess.

Each of the four 4th grade classes then voted on which of the four ideas their class would tackle.

So now what?... GOOD QUESTION! This morning I felt so insecure because I really wanted students to take control of this project and decide the next necessary steps. That meant I was sitting in my classroom reviewing my lessons for the day and I truly did not know what my 4th grade students would be doing. The only thing I knew is that this class would somehow begin to create a website/newsletter. YIKES!

So as the students entered the room, they gathered in "the hive" as I explained to them that I was really hoping they would take control of this project, generate ideas for what should be done next, and that I was looking forward to see what work they would do today. So what did they do?

One group got out chromebooks and logged into Google sites, where they began to create a website that would house information about our project. They created a framework for us to show each item that is in lost and found and they even created an area to highlight "popular lost and found items!"








One group got out paper, pencils, and markers. After a conversation, they began to create unique logos that capture the essence of the project. When completed, they will present the ideas to the class, they class will vote, and the logo will be added to the webpage.









One group generated a list of decorative fonts on a Google Doc that will be voted on for the webpage's header. They also created their own fonts by drawing bubble letters on paper.











One group logged into their Gmail account and drafted an email to our assistant principal, Mr. Ritter, explaining the project and asking if he could add a link for our webpage to Chapman's website, allowing parents to also view the items in lost and found.









Finally, one group took paper and pencils out to the lost and found. They documented and categorized every item currently in the lost and found and began to generate plans for photographing the items.










Like many times in my career, the creativity and capability of children amazed me today. Every kid was engaged and elbows deep in using creative thinking to solve a real problem. Nerve-racking? Yes... but so worth it!

Meet Chapman Art Program's Student Teacher!

Hello!

My name is Grace Galvin and I am lucky enough to be student teaching alongside Patrick Callicotte at Chapman Elementary for the next five weeks. I am currently a student at Ohio State University working toward my Bachelor of Art Education degree with a minor in Ceramics. I am fortunate to have found an intersection of my two passions of working with children and art through teaching.

I find myself in a constant state of amazement over the thoughtful, bright students here at Chapman and I am excited for the conversations, sharing and creating that is going to take place in the upcoming weeks!

I Documented Student Learning... Now What?

I documented student learning, but what do I do now in order to make my documentation meaningful?

Documentation is a topic that was first introduced to me by the Teaching For Creativity Institute at the Columbus Museum of Art back in 2011. Since then, I have explored the use of documentation in my classroom and recently our district is beginning to focus on the power of documentation in all classrooms. Because I have been having so many conversations about documentation lately, I decided to share some of the ways that I use documentation in my classroom.

Documenting student learning is only meaningful if we use our documentation! Collecting photographs, videos, quotes, etc is simply the first step. So what do I do with this data once I have collected it? Check out a few of the many ways in which I have found documentation useful...

Share it with your students!

In this activity, we were talking about the role of failure in the design process of new inventions. I shared a personal failure of mine with my students and asked them to brainstorm both "helpful" and "not helpful" ways in which I could respond to my failure. The documentation of their ideas is displayed in the classroom and used as a resource board. When they run into failures, they can visit the board and use the ideas they generated. 

Documentation wall! One wall in my classroom is dedicated to documenting Dublin's "6 Habits of Thinkers". As I see examples of students using the 6 habits, I document what they are doing and post it on the wall. This clarifies for students exactly what I am looking for, promotes the use of the habits as they get excited about seeing themselves on the wall, and provides a space for them to reflect on the process of learning to use the 6 habits as they get to see an extended timeline of documentation. 

After a professional development session this year, I was needing to document the process that our group took, so I used PowerPoint to turn my documentation into a timeline. During our next meeting, this allowed my group of educators to reflect on the process we took in the previous session and it set the building blocks to move forward in our learning. 

This has been my favorite! I started using speech bubbles in my documentation when I was documenting a conversation that took place among teachers in a professional development planning session. I had the documentation sitting on a side table in my classroom and I noticed that students were drawn to it. Students in all grades were taking the time to stop and read the conversation, which had to be such a boring conversation to them! I really thought about why they liked it so much and I think that it is the comic book-like quality of combining interesting images with speech bubbles. 

I started creating "comic book documentation" of important learning for students to revisit the next lesson, so I am constantly trying to bridge the gap between art classes since I only have my students for 45 minutes every 4 days. My students have been really engaged with these comics! 

One variation I have also started doing is using photographs and using blank speech bubbles. Students then reflect on what they were thinking or how they were feeling at the time and fill it in on the speech bubbles. 

What might the students be thinking or saying in these photographs?

Share it with your community! 

With each project that goes home, I also send home a page of information about the project. Including my documentation has made my community much more aware of the learning that takes place in my classroom. Because of documentation, I am able to include photographs, videos, and quotes in these project letters. 

    

This year I have been focusing a lot more emphasis over putting documentation in the hallways rather than display. Displaying finished art projects is kind of like going on an amazing week-long vacation, coming back, and describing your entire vacation to your friend simply by showing them the souvenir that you got on vacation. Documentation is like showing that friend a collection of photographs, videos, and quotes that highlight the most meaningful parts of your vacation. Which way would help your friend better understand how amazing your vacation was?

This year I have created a blog where I post my documentation and I also post documentation on Twitter. This has allowed my to share the learning that takes place in my room with my community and connect to educators across the world (yes, the world! I have made multiple connections through my blog to educators living in Europe and Asia)!

Reflect! Reflect! Reflect!

One thing that really helped me begin to organize and reflect upon my documentation was the set-up of Google Drive folders. My curriculum focuses on 9 practices of "Thinking Like an Artist," so I created a folder in Google Drive for each of my 9 practices. Now when I document from an iPad or my iPhone, I can use the Google Drive app to immediately upload the documentation into one of these folders. This organization allows me to see which practices are common in my classroom and which practices I need to focus on more. 

After a conversation with colleagues about what our study group might want to focus on, I wanted to figure out the concepts that dominated our conversation. I recorded the conversation, so I converted the audio file into written text using the Dictation & Speech tools on my Mac. I think pasted the conversation into a Wordle, which automatically counted the number of times each word was said and generated the graphic you see below. Seeing this graphic allows me to reflect on what our group focused on the most in our conversation. 

The Columbus Museum of Art also has a ton of powerful tools that can be used to focus on particular skills or concepts while analyzing documentation. I have been using these for the past couple months and they have provided me with a great structure to use when I am figuring out how to think through my documentation. 

I think this tool below will be very helpful for teachers to process and interpret their documentation. I videotaped an activity and filled this out afterwards, which I am glad I did because I was able to watch the activity multiple times and focus on 1 or 2 behaviors at a time.

 

I use an adapted form of CMA's "Thinking Like an Artist Rubric" in order to evaluate my own teaching. Using this tool, I was look at my documentation and reflect upon whether each class is in the early phase, implementation phase, or innovation phase for each of the 9 practices I teach. This allows me to calculate where I am at as an educator with each class and where I need to go with future lessons. 

I am working on some new ways to use my documentation so stay tuned!

Are kids' ideas as important as adults' ideas?

5^th and 4^th grade recently did a thinking routine (a combination of Circle of Viewpoints, Tug of War, and Chalk Talk), which required them to consider multiple viewpoints, practice empathy, and generate questions and opinions centered on a provocative phrase.

“Kids’ ideas are not as important as adults' ideas.”

Students then gathered as a large group to collaboratively discuss and debate the statement. This discussion of the power of kids’ ideas, the recipe for important ideas, and the practice of empathy will guide students as they move into the “ideate” stage of design thinking.

Check out what they said, then ask a question or share your opinion!

The documentation of this conversation is currently being displayed in the hallway along with quotes from 4th graders and laminated speech bubbles for students, staff, and parents to ask questions or share their opinions!