Lesson #3 reflection Education 466

Malea Vitt & Katrina Cronin

Entry #3

October 1st, 2021

Experience Narrative:

Friday was our third day of Service Learning teaching at Lopez Elementary. We taught our rotation Week 1 class, which has 19 students in total. However, many students were absent making our class a relatively small group of students. In this class, we focused largely on the idea of composing, or how to fit things together to create meaning in art. We focused on concepts that we thought could be scaffolded into their actual lesson to create deeper and more meaningful connections. One issue we ran into was during the ideation activity, some kids accidentally got more shapes than others which they stated was unfair. Some kids are also less excited to speak about their ideas on how this connected to the lesson than others. The insight I gained from this is that it is very important that everything is fair to the students in the classroom and they all get the same access to materials as each other as this allows for an equal playing field for all the students to create upon, and that sometimes class conversations are better for certain students than others, but you can check in one on one with students and they are more comfortable sharing their ideas with you then.

What Worked Well / Interpretation/Content Meaning:

The activity that we planned and the initial connection from our previous lesson into this one were great, and the students seemed very interested in working together and ideating on composing. They seemed comfortable communicating with us and asking questions and for help when they needed it. They were a little more reserved as far as class discussion goes than they were for the first time we met with them, but were very vocal about how they planned on using their ideas and composition planning when I spoke with them one on one. I think by continuing to build those relationships and open conversations with the class they would be more vocal in class discussions, or even coming up with other exit strategies to help those who are less comfortable talking aloud could benefit us as we could better assess them individually.

What Did Not Work / Personal Significance:

Some of the students still struggled with where to include or how to construct a composition within their portraits. Some students went from no ideas to ideas they did not feel comfortable executing, so we had to have a discussion on things like background and how to execute what is important. I think distinguishing between things like foreground and background as opposed to layering would be beneficial to the students as the pre-activity made clear the importance but some children still assumed that the best way to the layering was to put things behind them. Given this, I talked a little more about how placement can give meaning to a piece and this allowed them to think about how they were using placement effectively and what putting something behind them meant. The moral of the story is that I think there is even more scaffolding and interactions that we can talk more about in our ideation activity that would benefit them when moving to their final work.

Future Actions: In the future, I will try to incorporate more discussion between myself and the students as well as between peers for the motivating/ ideation activities for students who may not be as comfortable with talking to the entire class. This lesson was a great way to see how they can connect and build from previous experiences, lessons, and activities to understand and think about art. Now that we have done this I think it is highly important that we continue to build on those discussions and ask them to communicate things a little more to help them in the planning process. My goal for these students is that they continue to build upon their knowledge and grow into complex and creative individuals.