CI 5155 Book Club

The new drawing teacher at our school has started using the ideas from the book. It is really interesting to see some of the student work and to talk to the kids about the process. He used the viewfinder with the crosshairs on a transparency--then the students placed it on their hand and drew a contour image directly onto the "picture plane". Then they used that drawing as a reference when drawing a new image on the regular piece of paper. Of the two pieces of student work that I saw, one was pretty talented to start with and the hand drawing turned out well. The other was at a lower skill level, but her hand turned out a lot better then I had expected. It is exciting to see that these theories actually work to drastcally improve the drawing skill.

Are we ready for our presentation? For some reason I am feeling a little unprepared--I hope people are in a talking mood.

See you all tomorrow.

Posted by eisch049 at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is what we came up with in class as far as how our presentation should start. Please feel free to add ideas so that we can figure out a good way to wrap up.

1. Ice Breaker- Tinker toy activity (Amy brings tinker toys; I will also bring a set so that we are sure to have enough.)
a. Round one- easy
b. Round two- difficult
2. Follow up questions- Continue with the questions while the class is still in their tinker groups. Each group should be given one question to discuss together first for a few minutes. Private group time will then fold into whole class discussion with each group reading their question and then opening up to the class for further discussion.
a. Questions we came up with so far:
i. What does this game have to do with the reading?
ii. What moments of crisis if any did you or your team go into during the activity?
iii. What were some strategies that you developed to help you be more successful?
3. Drawing activity (Edi has picture of face)- Now to go into something that is going to isolate the right side of the brain.

That is about as far as we got. I think that if we have three teams then this might be enough but we should maybe look closer at them and see if they are getting to the root of the subject matter. It might be nice to do a similar thing with more questions to follow the right brain activity. I also think it might be interesting if some of the questions between activity one and activity two might overlap, just a thought.

I don’t know how we want to wrap things up but I do think that it would be useful to have some perspective that is not necessarily an art teacher perspective but much more general. I’m not sure at the moment on how that would look so we will need to talk more about how we can do that.

Hope all of your papers are going well, see you Tuesday.

Posted by pupov001 at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Are we still thinking of coordinating the tinker toy activity as a type of "ice breaker" for our instructional session? I believe my set would have plenty for our small class. It might be fun. Thanks for pulling together some options for the drawing activity!

See you all on the 14th.

Amie

Posted by apence at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interesting connection on the VTS (visual thinking strategies). This also reminds me of our discussions in an earlier art course about our currently developing visual culture. So much that we see today is visual. I think it’s important for students not only to learn to participate in the visual arts, but also use those skills & knowledge that they gain in the art room to help them “decode” and understand the visual world in which they live.

Many times, it’s challenging in my seventh grade art class to have students just work. They’re constantly asking questions “is this ok?” or “does this look right?”. We have a few documentation cameras at my school that I’ve taken a liking to. They’re a great camera that works like an overhead, but it projects what you’re doing up on screen.

I’ve found lately that by using this tool, I’m able demonstrate a specific skill and have all the individuals see clearly. This tool has greatly reduced the continuous questions and allows me to work with the students. They can see that I’m working and it helps them to keep on task. I’ve also found that I’ve had many more moments of complete silence, which signals that they’re able to get a better grasp on the concepts and are able make the switch to their right brain.

I’m looking forward to finishing the book. There have been many good insights and examples.

Posted by apence at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)