Lesson 5!

Maddie's Thoughts on Lesson 5!

I am really proud of how Katie lead the lesson this week!  In general, the whole class went smoothly and the students were engaged for the entirety of it. Great job Katie H! 

Successes:
Katie was personable with the students- the kids approached Katie with questions and exciting discoveries

Katie was well prepared-her powerpoint provided impactful images as inspiration.  Her demo seem pre-planned because her instructions were fluid

Students were excited to add colored sand and gold-leaf into their works as an added bonus element

Students engaged in the painting process for the entire allotted time

Because Katie did a great job keeping the students engaged, the students took it upon themselves to maintain the materials and not abuse them.


Suggestions for improvement:
It was interesting being the documentor this week because I got the chance to sit back and observe aspects of the class that are sometimes easy to miss while in the moment of teaching.  There was one situation that I noticed that I feel could be improved the next time Katie facilitates a lesson:
 I noticed that having a powerpoint presentation/discussion during snack time created some distracting factors.  It was not a complete disaster by any means, however, I could see some children loosing focus and walk around the room to throw out trash.  Having a discussion/powerpoint presentation may work out during snack time if a couple changes were made.  Maybe having the students sit together in a semi-circle on the floor facing the screen could allow Katie to keep a close eye on all the students at once.  Also, instructing students to keep all trash by their side until after to discussion/presentation would prevent them from walking around the room causing distractions.

Also, in the future, if there is more time than just 2 hours and if the weather outside was better, the students could look at nature with a magnify glass or take their own macro pictures with a zoomed in lens to paint from.  The students were very engaged in the images that Katie provided, but allowing them to create their own compositions may be a nice touch to add to the lesson :)

 ___________________________ Class Works ______________________________________
The students created beautiful work and had many stories to share that related to the image they were painting!!

Noella: Noella painted a frog because she said that she wanted to paint an animal.  She offered prior knowledge that she had about canie toads in a side discussion with some classmates.  She noted that if someone or another animal ate or squeezed a canie toad, they would die because the toad has poison!

Marisa: Marisa decided to create a cat with a spiral body because she wanted to create something unique and imaginative.  She said that she "didn't want to do anything regular".

 

Susie: Susie chose her image because her 1st and 2nd favorite colors were in the picture, which are yellow and orange.  She also liked all the details in the image

(side view of image: bottom is on the left side)

Kaitlyn: When I asked Kaitlyn why she chose the photo she did, she told me that the image looked like a challenge and she thought that it was a great chance to improve her drawing skills!  This is a great example of intrinsic motivation of learning! She also took it upon herself to make the aesthetic decision to alter the color, since she felt the photograph was too bright.

 Lena: Lena thought that the photograph she chose was interesting because of the contrast between the blurry background and detailed foreground.  She also made a observation that the background is black, yet its refection is green.  She thought that was weird!

Ez: Ez thought that the crab in the image looked like a King Crab.  When he was in Cape May, he saw a horse crab on the beach, which is why he wanted to paint this image.  He decided to depict the arm as if it were bigger and closer than in the original photograph. 

(side view of image: bottom is on the left side)

Ben: Ben also painted the crab image like Ez.  He was joking around that the photograph of the claw was pinching him.  This was a great sense of play in my opinion.  Throughout the past weeks, Myoungsun, Katie and I all noticed that Ben tends to follow what Ez does.  In our future lessons, we need to figure out a way to get Ben to be a little more original and trust his own ideas.

(side view of image: bottom is on the left side)

Joey:  Joey created his own image from his imagination.  He painted a tree from his old house that is his favorite tree.  He couldn't believe that he still even remembers the tree because it was 4 years ago and he was only 4 when he would climb it.

(side view of image: bottom is on the left side)

Krista: Krista said that she enjoyed mixing the greens and blues with black.  She felt that the dragonfly had shadows that went well with the background.  The furry flower in the image reminded her of the flowers she tickles her sister with at home.  this is a great example of bringing personal experience into the work.

 

Garrison:  Garrison decided to add sand to his image because the thought the texture would look nice on the front.  He never saw a Venus fly trap in person, but he was familiar with what it was.  He picked the image because he was attracted to its colors.

Genevieve: Genevieve told me that she chose her image because she likes ladybugs.  I was concerned about her because compared to previous weeks, she seemed a little down.   She is normally always very talkative, but I couldn't seem to get too much info out of her as to how she related to her image.  She said that she was feeling fine when I asked, so maybe she was just tired.  Next weekend will be her birthday though, so hopefully she will be more upbeat then!

  

Anna:  Anna made the decision to add more leave to her painting so that she could add more color.  She really liked the way she painted her edges because she purposely matched them to the reds, pinks, and purples in the image.  

 

Rouwa:  Rouwa's explanation for chosing the image she did was so creative!  The spiral of the plant reminded her of the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas because it resembled the curly cliff that Jack walks on.  She explained that she created shadows by mixing green and black.  I was able to explain what a monochromatic color scheme is because this is what she did!

 

 Briana: Briana painted a geico.  She said that is lives in the rainforest and it is very special because it is talented and can perform flips

 

Emily: Oh no! I don't have anything written for Emily about how she relates to her painting :( I feel awful!  She did such a meticulous job painting though and was very eager to show her mother and adorable sister at the end of class.