Action Research Update

One of the articles I have recently read is How to Help Students Take Ownership of the Learning Process, by Jeffrey Carpenter.  Carpenter suggests five strategies that encourage students ownership in school.  One suggestion is to use formative peer assessment as it can provide "more immediate and individualized attention".  I have used formative peer assessments in my fifth through eighth grade visual arts classes and have really enjoyed the feedback that students are providing for one another.  Today I had students in my fifth grade class conduct formative peer assessment with their one-point perspective drawings.  Students were to locate the horizon line, vanishing point, orthogonal lines and comments on their partners' details.  The conversations that students were having were great and some realized that they needed to change or add things on their drawings which is so helpful as I don't always have a chance to get around and talk one-on-one with each student every single day.  I will continue to use formative peer assessments for a quick way for students to gain useful feedback about their work.

Reflection

My action research work has focused mainly on encouraging my art students to take responsibility in the art classroom.  Throughout the past few weeks, I have been creating classroom routines with each group of students that I see - grades five through eight.  I am beginning to see students adapt to these routines including multiple cleanup routines, conducting pair share discussions and checking artwork with self assessment checklists.  One additional task I will be starting with students is to have them photograph their artwork (whether at the beginning stages, in progress, or finished) and email their parent(s) with a description about what they are learning in art and what the project is that they are working on.  My goal with this activity is to encourage students to take ownership of the work they create as well as providing important information about the art classroom to our middle school parents while opening up lines of communication for parents to discuss talk about their child(ren)’s work.

I am feeling very good about the work that is going on in my art classroom.  I do realize that it will take some time to continue to make our new routines a part of our everyday procedures, however each day we are improving and it is getting a little bit easier each time we go through with these classroom routines.  I am very hopeful that parents will enjoy hearing about what their students are working on in class, as well as seeing pictures of their work in class.  

Praxis Folio

Question 1: Why is teaching my content important to what I believe about teaching? How do I see these beliefs aligning with my teaching practices?

I truly believe in providing students with a well-rounded education.  Offering students core subjects as well as specialized subject areas is important for their growth throughout their school years.  Teaching art is a passion of mine; I feel that it is important for all students to have the opportunity to explore the world of art because it opens up opportunities for self-expression, provides students with opportunities to develop independence as well as collaboration skills, develops higher order thinking skills (critical and creative thinking) and provides a means for every student to learn and achieve.  I feel that I directly align my teaching practices with my beliefs; I provide my students with the opportunity to be creative in their own personal way while developing higher order thinking skills.  I have recently incorporated more collaboration among students within my classroom and will be doing so more in the future with other school staff and school administrators.  

Question 2: How is my understanding of content concepts guiding me in making needed changes in my teaching practices in the area of my content?

Although I teach the same units each quarter, sometimes in the same day, they are never the same for each group of students.  I am constantly assessing my students to see how they are doing, to see if I can move ahead or if there is need for reteaching.  Everyone works at a different pace, especially when creating art.  I encourage my students to take their time and in turn I need to make changes in my teaching to accommodate for their individual needs.  Encouraging students is another passion of mine, as it is difficult to hear students say that they “can’t” complete a task that I have introduced to them.  My goal is to make it very clear to my students that I do not accept “I can’t” in my classroom.  I work with them one-on-one every chance I can get to help them along and work through their struggles with the concept at hand.  Although I provide my students will project outline I think it is also important to encourage students to experiment with materials and technique in the art room; I want them to feel comfortable to think creatively and try new things.  I have learned so many great ideas from my students and I know this would not have happened if I would not have allowed them the opportunity to be creative.

Question 3: How am I coming to connect the depth of understanding and application needed in the learning process of each student? How am I changing my  content delivery to account for the cognitive processes of my students, engaging them in solving real life problems for building knowledge?

One main technique that I use in my classroom to account for all cognitive processes of my students is to work with them one-on-one.  This is not always an easy task, however, it is something I try to do with each student on a daily basis.  I get a new group of students each quarter; once I get to know each student my goal is to provide them with any information they may need.  Some of my students do better with information in writing at the board, while some need a copy of the information in their hands.  I currently have 6 sections of student for art each day, so my daily/weekly goal is to be organized for my students.  With so many kids coming into my room each day, I know how important it is to be organized so that they know exactly what their job is in class each day.  

I do think it is very important for students to engage in real-world problems.  I have begun working on creating projects for my students that prepare them for the real-world interactions that they will (or have already) encountered.  Collaboration is one of the ways that I encourage real-world situations in my classroom.  Students will work work collaboratively with people all their lives, and I feel that it is an important aspect for them to learn.

Question 4: How can the gifts, backgrounds, and interests of each person in the classroom community be used to help one another learn and make my content understandable and meaningful in their lives now?

I love learning about my students on an individual level.  Each student brings different experiences to my classroom and I enjoy giving them the opportunity to share their personal experiences with their peers and myself.  I aim to connect the material that I teach to student’s everyday lives.  Allowing students to work collaboratively opens up the lines of communication between students.  I love to see students work with one another to solve a problem and it takes various experiences to do so in the classroom setting.

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.