Practicum Reflection

For my practicum art lesson, I taught students about geometric and organic shapes. First I taught them the difference and then we found them in pieces of art. Finally, students created a piece of artwork using only geometric shapes.

I was very proud of how this lesson went. When it was all said and done, every student, the lows and highs, were able to tell the difference between geometric and organic shapes. I still had students a couple of days later pointing out shapes to me. I felt like I met my overall objective completely. I also think I was able to guide students based on their level pretty well. Based on their performance, I either had them add more details or add more color. The discussion went pretty good too. I had a lot of art for students to look at and the pieces were all different from each other. Students enjoyed finding the shapes. I ended up having to not do a few of my slides for lack of time.

If I were going to do things differently, I would have wanted to narrow students’ choice of what to draw by integrating it into another subject. Some students had lots of detail and lots of shapes. Others seemed to do as little as possible. I think if I would have limited their choice it could have sped up the process and could have forced students to do more. At the same time though, I liked that this was sole their own.

I really loved teaching this lesson. It made me want to do more. So many times I walk into an art lesson and find that it is just cut and paste. I feel like we’re limiting students’ potential by doing that. This lesson seemed much more valuable to me and enjoyable. I think students actually felt like they were getting better at something and learning something.

Here are some examples of students work:

Batik

Mask

Technology

Modeling Clay Animal

This is Hogitha. She is princess of Pen state. Her subjects consider her to be just a little piglet. Someday, however, she'll grow to be the queen everyone's dreamed of. Pen state is the messiest place in the world and she plans to keep it that way if not make it even dirtier. It's actually something she takes pride in. The beautiful mounds of mud she can swim in is like a day at the spa for her. It's really a miracle she was clean when she posed for her sculpture. It was also difficult for her to not be eating for that long. Hogitha loves to eat. Mostly she eats slop. She never gets bored of it though because it changes from day to day. Sometimes it's leftover pizza. Other days it's week old Chinese take out. Her favorite is half eaten BBQ chicken though. Something about the previous persons saliva really leaves her mouth watering. At the end of the day, Hogitha is just your average fair tale pig. She dreams of living in a brick house and worries only about the big bad wolf. No wonder her subjects love her so much!

Wire Sculpture

This is my circus lion. He is about to pounce. I made this lion by using only my right hand and my teeth. The reason why I did this was to simulate not having a limb. To be honest it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in school. I was so frustrated with myself and the wire. Everything took much longer than I wanted it to and I ended up not putting some things I had originally planned. Taking that much longer would have made me go crazy. From this exercise I realized that some of my students are going to need more time to complete things and they might still not be able to finish. They might have to simplify things. It also helped me see how some things are going to make my students very frustrated and they might really dislike an assignment just because it's hard. Overall, it was a good experience.