Jessica Bisbee
Prof. Heather Roberts
Clark University
May 5, 2014
Rounds Reflection: Ariela South High School 4/7/14
For the second round of this last round period I really wanted to see Ari’s round as I hadn’t been able to see an art classroom at another school up to this point in the year. As I am pursuing teaching art (and have my art MTEL) in addition to Spanish I found this round particularly pertinent to see.
The first thing that struck me was the classroom and the difficulties that arose from the quantity of students and the limited space in the room. As art students need more surface space to work on with their projects, the room had high tables in a “U” share facing the front of the room. Stools lined the exterior AND interior of the “U” which meant once students came in their backs were facing the teacher. Also, there weren’t enough seats for everyone in the “U” so some students needed to sit at lower tables lining the wall under the window or at the back of the room. This was difficult because once students were seated on the higher stools it was difficult to see the teacher from these lower seats and to hear her. I imagine it is also hard for Ari to reach and include these students during discussions.
Students began class with an art carousel that included different examples of pointillism. They were to respond to the different works using post-it notes. They could respond to previous comments, or write their own and Ari instructed them to leave thoughtful comments which she had told us this group struggles with, but they hold better discussions than her other groups. Upon viewing the comments, many were version of “I like it” which they’d been asked not to write. Some were very thoughtful and included comments using technical art vocabulary about color and composition. Some also tied color to the emotions the works created in the viewer.
I think this would have been a nice moment to provide whole class examples to help scaffold the activity to lead to more rich commentary. Ari could begin by showing students sample comments: one that is similar to “I like it”, a second that is slightly richer, and a third rich, insightful option in conjunction with a painting. Students could write about which comment they thought was the strongest and why, share their findings with a pair, and then finally share out during a whole class discussion. This would help students prep for the activity and understand the expectations of the teacher. Ari could have also let students grade the sample comments and during the discussion used student comments to guide them towards more complete and insightful writing. Then she could have held the carousel and post discussion. Perhaps this would be the right amount of scaffolding to help the commentary quality. Students participated in the original activity across the board, but this could have made it a deeper experience.
I would also say it would have been worthwhile to run a tutorial from start to finish of the processes needed to finish the project students began as we left for the post round. There was definite confusion expressed verbally by the students concerning the transferring process. Ari did have examples on the walls with terminology that was very helpful and I saw students going over to examine it, but if she had slowed down the process and extended the lesson it may have been clearer for the students.