Week 6- Wire Marks

This was the first week where we had a more formal critique of student work. By displaying the murals in the front of the room from the start of class, it allowed students the opportunity to go up and investigate what they had created. In the beginning of class, some students were going up to the murals and having their own informal critique among themselves about their artwork. They talked about the parts they liked, the parts they made, and other parts that they remembered seeing last week. This video captures one of these informal critiques in which Melanie was able to participate and guide the students in a small discussion.




The actual class critique portion of the lesson was rather effective and enlightening about student engagement with the artwork and their reflection about creating it. They stayed more engaged in the discussion because they had the opportunity to go up to the mural and take a picture of the part that they liked the most. After the picture, the student had to explain in front of the class their reasoning for why they liked that particular part of the mural. Planning for a lot of student interaction and student-led discussion helped to keep them focused on what was going on.

There was some wonderful dialogue that occurred with the students. My favorite was when Kiran showed us his favorite part of the painted mural:

Melanie: "And why did you choose this part, Kiran?"
Kiran: "I chose it because it uses all cool colors and Ginger's used all warm colors."

Hearing him apply his knowledge about the color wheel to this activity was music to an art teacher's ears.

One of the many issues we ran into this week was the fact that we, as instructors, did not work with the materials beforehand to work out the kinks of the projects. Unfortunately this caused a lot of frustration among the students and it gave off a vibe of frustration to the whole classroom in general, including us teachers. In response to this overall frustration, we worked with the students to try to help them with the task at hand with the allotted materials for the activity. At the end, instead of working with the wire, I had the students try using yarn in the jig. Toby played around with the yarn and was able to create a great project using modified materials.





Through this experience, I think we learned as teachers that adapting to "special needs" students needs to have a broader definition in that the student may not have an IEP, but they are tired that day, or confused or have some other issues going on that are affect his or her performance with the project. Although working out some issues before we even presented this lesson to the students would have deterred a lot of the frustration.

One of the most special and gratifying moments of the lesson happened in the last 10 minutes of the day where they were instructed to sculpt anything they wanted out of the wire. Here the students were so imaginative and animated. You could see them making objects that made sense to them and that they could relate to their lives. For example, the picture of Kiran shows him holding up a pair of Darth Vader glasses he made, and the picture of Madisyn holding up her wire mustache. I also included a video of Ginger explaining her 2 wire objects which shows the increased level of creativity and enjoyment than the previous frustrations earlier in the lesson. This part of the lesson allowed them to have the most imaginative play which as we could see was the most fruitful and rewarding part of this week.