2nd Grade Visits the Museum!

This week, classroom teachers handed each 2nd grade student a golden ticket to the museum, which they carried on their way to the art room. As they approached the door, they saw a red and could hear The Ticketmaster (me) shouting into the classroom, "the visitors are here!"



Greeted at the door by The Ticketmaster, students placed their tickets in the ticket box and entered the room with excitement and anticipation as they entered the room, only to be greeting by a large image of a museum sign pointing to a construction site.



"Visitors young and old, I welcome you to the most magical... the most magnificent... the most miraculous... the..." proclaimed The Ticketmaster as he turned towards the construction site. "Oh dear... umm... give me one second..." said The Ticketmaster said nervously.

After making a phone call to his "boss," The Ticketmaster explained to the students that there appeared to be a problem. The museum was suppose to be open, but it was unable to be completed, because this wasn't a museum about ancient fossils or famous artists. This museum was designed to be a magical place about each individual student. The people at the museum couldn't complete the museum because they didn't now everything about each individual student, so The Ticketmaster asked the students if they would help create the museum.

After he Ticketmaster explained that, inspired by the book Me Museum, each student would spend the next several weeks designing architecture, paintings, sculptures, gardens, ceiling murals, gift shops, and tickets for a museum all about themselves.

Students immediately transformed into architects as they spent the rest of their class designing the outside of their museums.

  

Stay tuned for updates on the development of their museums!

3rd Grade Visits ChapMart!

This week, as 3rd grade students entered the art room, they were unenthusiastically welcomed by Mr. Grumpy to the fictitious grocery store, ChapMart. As students sat in The Hive, they saw an image of the cereal aisle and heard grocery store sound effects playing over the classroom speakers.

   

After Mr. Grumpy told the "customers" of this weeks specials, he proceeded to complain about having to spend the entire morning reorganizing the cereal aisle based upon which cereals were designed for adults and which cereals were designed for kids. Suddenly a crashing sound came over the speakers and cereal boxes came crashing down onto the aisle floor, sending Mr. Grumpy into a nervous fit, as he has already been written up 3 times this month. 

Mr. Grumpy asked the customers to help him not get fired, by organizing the cereal boxes at the tables. Customers moved to the tables and worked together to place cereal boxes designed for adults on one side and kids on the other. 

Customers gathered together as a whole class to take time to reflect on the designs of the boxes and discuss the similarities between the kids' boxes, and then the adults' boxes. 

Customers then discussed the purpose of "audience" as part of the design process. Customers investigated board game designs in search of who the targeted audience could be. Customers were then transformed into designers as they identified their audience, listed important design elements of a board game, and began to generate ideas of their own board games.

A lot of fun will soon be created by the creative games I saw being planned this week!

Investigating Dublin's Profile of a Graduate

This week, students were assuming the role of "secret agents" as they investigated Dublin City School's Profile of a Graduate.

The art room was transformed with laser lights, suspenseful music, signs and projected images. As students entered the room, they were told about the secret mission they would be completing and were given disguises and flashlights. Students followed me as they tiptoed, jumped, and crawled their way to the "secret room". One student even carried a briefcase with classified documents! Check out the video below!

Once into the room, students were presented with their "mission" to investigate the "code words" on the secret document (the Profile of a Graduate) in order to answer the questions "why do we need to learn all of this information at school?" Students were given a "mission report" that they used to select one of the "code words" and complete the following missions:

Mission #1 - What does this word or phrase mean?
Mission #2 - Why is this word or phrase important to our lives?
Mission #3 - How does this word or phrase relate to art class?

  

Students chose code names that we all used for the class (mine was Agent Butter Cookies 😂!) After students investigated their "code word," they began to create artworks to represent their word or phrase. I am excited to share their artworks with you soon!

  

 

March Document a Second

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?

Here is March's "Document a Second" video (spring break took 1 week away): 

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!