Katie Hopkins reflection to lesson 6

Unit Title: Exploring Nature's Elements Through Art
Lesson Title: What a Relief Printmaking: Nature Inspired Patterns
Grade Level/Ages: Late Elementary/Ages 8-9
Instructors: Katie Hopkins & Maddie Tyska
Day /Date of lesson: Sat. March 31, 2012
Room No: 204
No of Students: 22

REFLECTION
Maddie was the lead teacher in this lesson and she did an AMAZING job! She was really prepared and had really clear directions and tips posted around the room. Maddie did a good job practicing with the materials while writing her demo instructions. She seemed really confident during the discussion and made concrete connections when discussing patterns, by pointing out patterns in the students clothing. During the discussions, I sat on the floor with the students and I could tell they were really happy to have me sitting next to them, and I was glad I could video tape their responses from their eye level. During this class I noticed the kids were really showing their personalities more than other classes and it was very interesting to me. There was a lot of laughter going on and I smiled a lot, which made me realize how much I love these students!

We had 4 stations (earth, wind, fire, and water) where the students were split up into groups and did drawing/observing activities at each station. I was at the fire station, the visiting art ed students were at earth and wind, and Maddie was at water. At the fire station, I had incense sticks for the students to observe the patterns in the smoke while the incense was burning. A few students observed the ribbons they saw in the smoke and we talked about drawing ribbons that look twisted and three-dimensional. We also talked about how our minds and bodies felt around the incense. One student drew a picture of a throat because he could feel the smoke tickling his throat. I thought this was a good connection between an observing- feeling- drawing. We noticed the students took the observing part seriously and were labeling their sketches with words.

After the students went to all 4 stations, Maddie gave a demonstration on printmaking, and the students were eager to get started! I really liked how the students were using their earth/wind/fire/water sketches for a reference for their print design. Their designs were really unique and original. Our unit theme focuses on the transformation of drawing to another medium and we can tell the students understand this concept because their projects relate to their primary sketches. By having them draw before they use another medium, is showing them how an idea can be shown in multiple layers. We noticed that most of the students like to do their drawings in uni-ball pen compared to pencils.

It was very exciting to see the students mixing ink colors with the rollers. They had to communicate with each other to share the tubes of ink and the rollers. Maddie provided them with paper and fabric to print on so they had options. One student didn’t like his printing plate, and he made a great color mixing the ink, so I told him he could just roll the ink straight on to the paper. He loved it! And it came out looking really cool because of the multiple layers of ink!

Changes: make the 4 stations 5 minutes instead of 10. I also would have gotten different Styrofoam plates for them to carve into because the plates we had were difficult to carve into because they had a plastic film on top of the foam.



sketchbook drawings


being creative



directions


Water station- water and oil on paper


fire activity


sketches from the 4 stations

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using observations for print making design