Believing In Students

Recently, we have been asked to read the article "Believing in Students: The Power to Make a Difference" by Richard Curwin.  In this article, Curwin suggests five ways to reach out to the students in our classrooms: Stop Using Rewards, Encourage Effort More Than Achievement, Give Second, Third and Fourth Chances, Don't Say "You Failed" say "You Haven't Done it Yet", Increase Opportunities to Learn.

My assignment was to implement one of these ideas in my classroom and reflect on how it affected me and my students.  In my classroom I stress the importance of the process rather than the end product.  I encourage students to try their best and be patient with themselves as well as the process because, at times, they are learning some processes for the very first time.  My focus this week has been on Curwin's recommendation of "Don't say 'you failed' say 'you haven't learned it yet".  I do not tell my students that they have failed when they are working in my room, I don't think it is helpful for student learning and so I simply do not say it!  I focus, instead, on students who look at me and tell me they "can't" do the work in class.  I replied to those students that they need to practice because they are just learning it now and it's not going to be easy the first time they try something.  I have noticed that students will continue to try when they are given this response.  They don't always get it right away, but at least they are not giving up!  I will definitely continue to use this in my classroom with my students because they need to know that they are learning and it isn't always going to be easy!

Personal Playbook

"We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible."

Vince Lombardi

For our master's program we completed a Personal Playbook created by Kathleen DuBois.  The question on the front page of the playbook is, "If you could accomplish anything within the next year, what would it be?".  Two of my goals for this year are to set up an art club at the middle school and provide a summer art camp for our middle school students next summer.

In order to accomplish these goals, I have a lot of planning and organizing to do this year.  One of the activities in our personal playbook is to declutter our world, so I have attempted to do just that!  I have purchased items for my classroom to help keep myself and my students organized this year, while giving students more responsibility in the art classroom.  I spent this morning in my classroom organizing my desk and filing cabinets to get myself organized for the upcoming school year, so I can focus on my long term goals mentioned above.  Organization is something that I have had to work for in my life, it hasn't always come naturally for me, so this step has been an important one in achieving my goals.

I am looking forward to getting this school year underway to implement many new activities that I have been learning about this summer and getting together with a small group of students to get our middle school art club underway!

Summer Adventures!

As a part of our SMU experience, we were challenged to be adventurous this summer.  I absolutely LOVE adventure, but that doesn't necessarily mean I've done everything and I don't have fears :-)  Recently, my husband, Brandon, and I took our fourth trip out West to Wyoming (we love it there!).  We spent most of our time exploring in the Big Horn Mountains with our 4-wheeler.  We were able to see some excellent sights; driving upwards of 70 miles a day!

One of our day trips took us to the ghost town of Kirwin - A very neat place!  This town was once a busy gold and copper mining town, home of close to 300 people in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  We knew that in order to get to Kirwin, we would have to do some water crossings - I am not much of a water person - so this had me a little...nervous.  With the winter that we all had around the nation, we knew that Wyoming had a lot of snow, meaning also that they had a lot of snow melt for the spring and summer.  This did not help to make me more at ease about having to take our 4-wheeler through rushing river crossings!

We gave it our all and trudged through the river crossings - and made it across without being carried downriver!  It was actually quite exhilerating going through each crossing and I found myself having a lot of fun - it had pushed my fear for the water aside so I could thoroughly enjoy the experience :-)

Kirwin, Wyoming

Although not the area of the river we crossed (this is much lower) this was only accessible on foot and there was a bridge to cross :-)

Another adventurous experience that also had me feeling the nerves a bit was riding on top of 10-15 feet of snow at about 10,000 feet in the Big Horn Mountains!  Despite the sunny days, the snow was sticking around and was quite hard so it was holding us up - I was a little skeptical at first, but once I made my way around a few times, I was having a blast!

That's me!  Taking the 4-wheeler out on the snow :-)

 Our trips always lead us on some great adventures - I feel that I am constantly testing my "adventure skills" wherever we go!  One of our final adventures - more like totally nervewrecking moments that Brandon and I took part in, was exploring the Tongue River Cave near Dayton, Wyoming.  We had read about this public access cave in one of our Wyoming hiking guides and thought it would be fun to check it out, so we packed up a lunch and donned our headlamps and the camera, of course, for another exciting adventure.

The hike to the cave is a quick 3/4 mile, with a quick elevation gain, so it was pretty steep.  Once at the entrance of the cave, it was very hard to ignore (as we were warned about in the book) the spray paint graffiti on the rocks, both in and outside of the cave.  We explored approximately one mile into (and who knows how far down) the cave!  The pitch blackness was very intense - after all we are usually led through caves with a tour guide and multiple lights!  There was quite a bit of extremely fine dust and eventually water, which made for some slippery walking.  Simply put, I was terrified as we began to explore the cave, but once we made it back to the entrance, I was so glad we had done it and we are looking forward to going back and explore it some more!

Here I am in the cave - we used the flash on the camera and it really lit up the space; but don't let that fool you, it was completely pitch black in here without the lights!  Notice, the spray paint...

Here is Brandon, and although it's a little blurry, I wanted to show more of the darkness of the cave - I had my headlamp shining on him as I took this photo :-)

Needless to say, we had a wonderful time once again in Wyoming!  We are already planning out our next trip West to see what other adventures we can plan for next summer!

Art Education Blogs

One of our recent SMU assignments is to share educational blogs that we are using for our summer action research.  The research I have been conducting so far is focused on assessment in visual arts and although these blogs are not specific to only assessments, they have been helpful in my research so far!  Happy blogging!

One blog that I follow fairly regularly is The Art of Ed.  This is an organization that offers relevant professional development for art teachers and have daily posts by various art educators on multiple topics.  Examples of recent topics include: 9 Steps to Efficiently Rewrite Your Students Learning Expectations; Easily Organize Your Standards with a Planning Matrix; Is is Appropriate to Use Social Media During the School Day?.  I enjoy reading this blog to see what teaching techniques other art educators are currently using. You can visit this blog at www.theartofed.com.

Another Art Education blog that I have recently started following is The Teaching Palette.  One of the recent posts that really caught my attention is Design Thinking Through STEAM Education.  I have attended a keynote addressing STEAM and know a little bit about implementing it into a school, however I would definitely like to learn more.  We currently have STEM classes at Byron Middle School and there has been talk of moving into the concept of STEAM, so this post will be a good one to read.  There are also a multitude of topics on this blog consisting of art classroom management techniques, using iPads in the art classroom, iBooks in Art Education and many more.  I am excited to continue searching on this site in preparation for next school year! you can visit this blog at www.theteachingpalette.com.

Action Research Reflection

Action Research Reflection

My mini action research question was: How can I create more meaningful assessments in my visual arts classroom?  As I began my research on this topic, I soon realized that there are so many variations of assessment and I really had my work cut out for me!  The first change that I made in my classroom was to provide my students with more formative assessment - I had been doing this beforehand, however, once I learned more about formative assessments and how to use them effectively in my classroom, I began utilizing them more often.

Some examples of formative assessments that I have begun using throughout my research are: exit slips, table/group worksheets, partner questions, group discussions, fist-to-five, among others.  With the use of formative assessments, I am able to gain important information about my students in a rather short amount of time.  I have started using a worksheet with my fifth grades students to complete in their table groups during our color theory unit.  I introduce and review a lot of material in this unit and I was searching for a way to help students through this learning process.  I use the worksheet to get students thinking and talking about the material with their peers, without the pressure of answering questions out loud in front of the entire class.  I purposefully added questions that force students to really think back on the material discussed the previous day, and ensure to them that if they cannot answer all of the questions, that’s okay.  I am able to see what material students are struggling with by looking at the questions that they are unable to answer.  I have found it very beneficial to use formative assessments with my students so that I can learn where they are at: what they still need help with and what they know well, in a short amount of time (not to mention I don’t have to add another grade to the grade book!).  

Summative assessment is also an important aspect of the art grading process and I spent a lot of my time researching various ways in which to do this in my art classroom.  One way I attempted to make my assessments more meaningful to my students was simply to explain the grading rubric to them and allow them time to ask questions.  There are times that I forgot to do this step and if students had had at least one rubric explained to them prior, they understood it better.  On the other hand, if they did not have a rubric explained to them prior, they didn’t understand it as well therefore it didn’t mean much to them.  Based on a student survey I gave to one of my fifth grade classes, 85% of the class found it helpful to hear about the grading rubric ahead of time; 10% of the students didn’t mind either way, and 5% of students did not respond.  

Data collection was a struggle for me during this research, so this is an area that I would definitely like to improve on in the future.  I plan on continuing this research topic into the beginning of the 2014-15 school year and I would like to continue to collect data with all of my middle school classes (grades 5-8).  One way in which I hope to collect data from my classes is to get their input on what type(s) of summative assessment they prefer (percentage, total points, letter grade, checklist, rubric).   I will need to decide what other data I will collect throughout a more extensive research on this topic as well.  Another aspect of this research that I would like to explore more deeply is the importance of formative assessments - I did not conduct much research on this topic of assessment, however I feel that it is a very important type of assessment to use in my classroom, so I would love to learn more about specific formative assessments in the art room.

Although I feel that I learned a great deal about creating more meaningful assessments for my students, I have decided that I will continue with this topic for the upcoming year.  I have been doing a lot of reading on this topic and have learned much more since the completion of this mini action research and I am looking forward to taking time this summer to conduct additional research on this topic and create some surveys for the kids to get their input.  

Community Art

I have been working on a very exciting collaborative project with Matt Weyers, a sixth grade teacher at BMS.  Sixth grade students have been very busy creating sculptures for Byron businesses.  Students chose an area business and called them to see if they would be willing to display a hand-made sculpture for approximately two weeks.  They were very nervous but excited to contact businesses and start getting the okay to start planning and building their sculptures.

Students began their planning process with a pencil sketch of their sculpture.  They then had to decide what materials they would like to use to create their 3D sculptures.  Materials used included: wood, wire, chicken wire, paper mache, clay, cardboard, paper, paint, and so much more!  We all learned a lot while going through this process and the end products show how hard these kids worked to complete their sculptures for our Byron businesses!  

Two students work on their clay sculpture for the Bear's Den.

These ladies are working on their toothbrush and toothpaste sculpture for Byron Dental Group.

This group of sculptors are busy preparing their mailbox for the Byron Post Office.

These gentleman are preparing sculptures for Gamez & More and Ace Hardware.

Students created "Spot" the dalmatian for the Byron Fire Department.

Here is the whole group with all of their fabulous sculptures!!

Making Changes in the Classroom

Apply a strategy you picked up from our f2f collaboration time - From Tates's 20 Strategies

Brainstorming and Discussion - I always allow time for students to brainstorm their ideas and often require students create a sketch of their work, whether it’s 2D or 3D.  What I have started to incorporate more into my teaching is student discussions about the concepts they are learning.  Recently I have implemented this into my fifth grade classroom; students were instructed to get with a partner and show each other their one-point perspective drawings.  Each student was then to point out where the horizon line, vanishing point and orthogonal lines.  They were also instructed to find evidence of areas that their partner used a ruler in their drawing.  The last question I asked students to discuss with their partner was why it is important for us to learn about perspective drawing, what does it help us do?

The conversations that students were having during this time were fantastic!  After their partner discussions I brought them back together in a large group to review what they had just talked about.  I noticed a large increase in student participation during our large group discussion after they had been given time to review the information with a partner.  I will definitely be using this brain-based teaching strategy for more assignments and classes.

7 Principles to Inspire Success

1.	Believe in yourself. Always stay true to what makes you unique and trust your gut. See your differences as strengths rather than handicaps. And, instead of comparing yourself to others…be inspired by them!
2.	Work hard. Pure and simple. Ideas aren't worth anything unless you put them to work. You have to be responsible, dependable, disciplined and never stop learning or growing.
3.	Take risks. It's O.K. to be afraid but you just have to plunge in anyway. This isn’t easy, especially when it feels like the tide is against you, but it’s just necessary to take risks in order to stay fresh and relevant. You will make mistakes but your efforts will also make a difference. Just take a deep breath and step out of that comfort zone!
4.	Keep an open mind. Be willing to adapt and change when you need to. Adjust your sails to catch that wind. Be strong…yet flexible and resilient…like bamboo…and bend rather than break.
5.	Accept your limitation. Be willing to ask for help…and be able to say “no”. There’s no way you can be everything to everybody all the time! Surround yourself with good people and enlist their help when you need it most.
6.	Treat others with respect and kindness. That golden rule never, ever goes out of style.
7.	Never stop dreaming. Your visions can guide you to great things…but you need to be patient and don’t give up on yourself or on an idea that might seem slow in coming. It just might need a little more time to germinate and become strong. I have chosen to include all seven of the "Principles to Inspire Students". I feel that they each bring something very important to my art classroom and I try hard to incorporate each of the listed principles into the lessons that I teach. So many of the principles listed are what I tell many of my students on a daily basis! I love to see them on one comprehensive list!