Today I taught two blocks of Jewelry/Sculpture. It was an A/B Schedule day, so the classes were actually 90 minutes each. We started at 7:40. I began the day by re-introducing myself, just in case some of the students had forgot about me! I then, asked if any of the students had "parent forms" or their "locker combination". After I collected some of those things, I pulled out my attendance and grade book and instructed the students to find their "Wearable" art piece and bring it me for a grade. I told them they needed to also introduce themselves to me when they brought it up, so that I could take attendance as well. As soon as I received all the information for attendance and grades, I told the students to put their pieces in their lockers.
When all students had set their pieces in their lockers I told the students that we were going to trim our journal covers today. I said, "You will need to find your journal cover and then come stand by me because I'm going to demonstrate how to use the "RotaTrim" to trim the journals". So the student's haphazardly strolled to the pile of journals to dig through. Some of them were quick and some of them were slugglish. I had to continuously remind them of what they were doing. It's amazing how many times and how loud you can yell something, but student's will still not hear you or understand. It is quite amazing. Anyways, once student's had gathered around me, I begin demonstrating. I started by saying, "OK, so this is the RotaTrim. You can see that it looks a bit different than the paper cutter in the other room. And it actually cuts a much cleaner line. All of the blades are underneath everything so it's difficult to cut yourself. I mean, you probably could if you really tried...but I think it would be difficult. What we want to do is trim the edge of the journal cover, but not cut so close to the edge of the paper. If you get too close you'll probably, for one, cut into the manilla paper, but also possibly cause the lamination to come apart. So you'll want to cut just a smidgen, or a hair close to the paper. Leave just a little lamination. Now, the most important part to cutting your journal cover correctly is cutting it in the right direction. As you can see, there is a label here right int he middle and it says "Cut this way", with an arrow pointing left. So, put the blade to the left, and not the right. If you push it to the right..you will cause the paper to bunch up, and you may even clog the blade area. I actually made that mistake yesterday, and it wasn't pretty...so don't do it! Pull the blade to the right side before you slide the paper under. You will slide the paper under this long plastic strip and line it up with the metal edge. Hold onto the paper and slide the blade to the left. You may want to put some pressure on the blade as you slide it, this helps it cut evenly."
I did this demonstration in the first hour and felt like I was a little nervous and possibly not acting it out naturally. I could tell in the 2nd block that I felt more comfortable. The words I used seem more natural and my body language was more comfortable and natural. Yesterday I actually used the blade wrong because my first time using it was DURING my first demonstration. But it was OK. I laughed and apologized and said, "That is exactly how you DON'T do it!" and moved on. Today felt better because I knew a little bit more about what materials I was working with and how to use them and demonstrate with them. I also felt more comfortable taking over the students or feeling like an authority figure. It was challenigng to take on the responsiblity of the students AND of the equipment at the same time. I feel more comfortable handling the students today more so than yesterday. Although, it changes with the different students. There are classes that act out more than others. After the "trimming" demonstration, I instructed the students to get their pages and organize them correctly with "two signatures" and then meet me by the drill press. I drilled three holes in each of their books, so that we'd be ready to sew the books together!
SEWING WAS A CHALLENGE. I believe this part of the activity was the most difficult. Student's would get behind, or student's would get bored. SO. I learned to put student's in pairs. However, while this is a smart idea, it also is difficult because student's don't like it. But I did it anyways. I yelled "Hey! If you have finished your book, I want you to pair up with someone who is not finished and help them." Actually..I think I said, "Hey! If you know what you're doing and are done, then I want you to please help someone who doesn't know what they're doing". I'm not quite sure, but I believe there was a combination of those two statements and I think it was wrong to say "know what you're doing". I feel like that might have made a couple student's feel dumb. It's a definitely hard to figure out what's appropriate. The way you phrase things can come out wrong and possibly make student's feel uncomfortable. I'm not sure if that happened, but I was conscious of my choice of language and decided it probably wasn't the best. The student's may have not noticed. But I'm going to assume they did. In the second block, the sewing went much better because that is when I paired students up to help each other out. It was still a bit of a challenge, but it was better because I wasn't pausing to help every individual student. Some of the girls that were sitting next to me were pretty chatty and I kept having to say something. But for the most part student's were attentive and finished their books!
When the books were complete I had everyone go back to their seat and pull out a pencil pen for note taking! Cortney had me develop a PowerPoint for the "Elements of Art and the Principles of Design". It's kind of ironic that the first PowerPoint I made at North was for the elements and principles since KU cringed at the first thought or mentioning of teaching them. However, Cortney just wanted this to be a review because they will have a final at the end of the year about these things. Student's NEED to know the elements and principles because their the basic foundation of art! So, I made a PowerPoint for the class and had time to go through just the Elements of Art. Giving the "Elements" lecture was fun. I enjoyed having their attention and getting to describe these elements. It was fun having examples of pieces of jewelry and sculpture that fit with each element. I got to ask the student's about the pieces and get their opinions as well about work. They became engaged and I had fun talking to them. The first day I introduced the power point (yesterday), Cortney said I was clear and paced the room well. The only thing she said I could work on was timing. She said I should jsut work on feeling out when to move on to the next slide. This was actually something I noticed while I was talking, too. I tend to talk too fast, or go through presentations too quickly, so I tried to slow down during the lecture. However, I guess I slowed down too much. So today I tried to pick up the pace a bit. I think it was better. It's funny though, because Cortney said she had an observation from the principal once, and he told her she needed to give more response time to the students. Ha! So, she did actually say, "Well, that's actually something I'm bad at so, giving them time is OK".
No comments:
Post a Comment