Art Educator
Bellefonte Elementary School
Student Teaching remotely, but with students in-person- how did that work?!
For my second 8-week placement, I had the pleasure of working with my fabulous mentor, Mrs. Elizabeth Stover, and her wonderful K-5 students. Elizabeth, along with every other specials teacher in the Bellefonte/ Benner elementary schools, is teaching on a cart this year due to the pandemic.
At first, I was incredibly overwhelmed because student teachers were not allowed in the school also because of COVID restrictions, so I had to teach art on a cart, between two schools, with all of the students in-person but I had to teach them virtually from home. Phew! This would have been a nightmare if it weren't for the seamless collaboration between Elizabeth and me, and for her amazing willingness to allow me to take risks with what limitations we had.
Those risks included a head-scratching journey leading kindergarteners through quiz assessments on their Chromebooks (SO much more to this than I initially anticipated), a chaotic TASK party with 5th graders making wigs, crowns, and plenty of other wacky things, and venturing outside with 3rd graders to look for nature items with different textures. I prepared all of the lessons, Elizabeth prepped the materials needed, and hooked me up to the Promethean board for each class. I took it from there with teaching visually and verbally with instructional tools including Jamboard, Flipgrid, Google Forms, and Kahoots, showing examples, and engaging students with fun starter activities like dance parties and singing songs.
Through this experience, I was also amazed by the flexibility the students had, and even though I couldn't be right there with them, it always was the best when I heard the class burst into excitement about what they were making, or when they came up to the Chromebook to show me their artwork. This placement definitely looked different than any other student teaching experience, but in a lot of ways, that made it even more of a worthwhile learning experience.
Loopy Line Sculptures with First Grade
Based on a lesson taught by Cassie Stephens (she's the best) students made these awesome sculptures with long strips of colorful paper. Once we learned the different names for types of lines by acting them out with our arms and learned about the line-inspired artwork of Henri Matisse, we shaped the paper into curvy, zigzag, and spiral lines that sprang off of our paper base.
Students were building the paper up like there was no tomorrow!
Below is a PDF of the lesson plan, and it took about two class periods.
Wet-On-Wet Watercolor Paintings and Shape Landscapes with Kindergarten
Students learned about the wet-on-wet watercolor technique in this process-based lesson. We started off by visiting a virtual art museum on Google Slides, featuring the watercolor work of Emma Larson and Rebecca Poarch.
When their paintings were dry, students cut out different shapes and glued them on as houses, trees, suns, and anything else they wanted to create in their abstract landscapes.
Below is a PDF of the lesson plan, and it took about two class periods.
Paper Plate Weaving with Second Grade
Students learned how to weave and weaving vocabulary through singing a song with the words (that I wrote) at the start of every class. We also looked at fiber artists Mark Lewanski, Genevieve Giffiths, and Toshiko Horiuchi-Macadam to see the vast capabilities that weaving has!
Below is a PDF of the lesson plan, and it took about four class periods.
Third Grade Texture from Nature Printmaking
In this lesson, students started off with a Jamboard to learn about Texture and brainstorm what textures different objects would have. Then they went outside and foraged for different textured materials such as leaves, sticks, and acorns.
Using these materials, students got messy and made prints of those textures by dipping them into paint and pressing them onto the paper. Students used all of their objects to create an abstract composition.
Below is a picture of the Learning Plan, the lesson plan format for Bellefonte, and it took about two class periods.
Fourth Grade Nick Cave Sound Masks
Students looked at the work of Nick Cave and his soundsuits and for a whole class had an in-depth classroom discussion about it. We also started off every class with a dance party because Nick Cave usually incorporates performance into the suits. Then, students created "SoundMasks" inspired by his work with assembled materials.
The three main objectives of their masks were to use texture, pattern, and movement. Students were assessed in these areas by creating Flipgrid videos with their finished masks.
Below is a PDF of the lesson plan, and it took about four class periods.
Fifth Grade TASK Parties
Fifth grade LOVED this lesson, so much they were even asking to do it again for weeks after! I showed a video of Oliver Herring's TASK parties to show them the general procedure for writing and fulfilling spontaneous tasks. Then, we went over some conditions for having TASK in the classroom and I had them begin from a list of premade tasks to get them started.
After that, they created their own tasks like rapid fire, such as making silly wigs/ crowns (they wanted to keep these on all day) or spinning in a circle 50 times. Students were fully invested in this collaborative activity and learned that not all art needs to be made for the final outcome but for the temporary and fun experience!
Below is a picture of the Learning Plan and this took one class period.
