When you walk into a strange class room for the first time, you wonder what it is going to be like and am I going to succeed. My art room is very inviting, with the ceiling tiles all painted and the walls all painted elaborately with zebra stripes, camouflage, cheetah print, and Matisse Puzzle pieces, and my door painted as a Andy Warhol soup can. From the first day, students are aware of how to get a good grade within my art room. It is one single word…“Effort”. I grade primarily on effort. How can I expect students to produce anything at all with knowing in the back of their mind if they make a mistake they would lose points? This is middle school for god sakes and I grade from the effort that they put forth not whether it looks like a masterpiece or not. That is ridiculous in my opinion to put that kind of pressure on such a fragile mind.
Reinforcing effort is something that I strongly believe in. It does have a few minor draw backs, but for five years I have been developing a great art program in the middle school I teach. The Effort scale gives the students a piece of mind knowing that it is OK to make mistakes. I was take many years ago that, “In art we don’t make mistakes, we make new discoveries!” and it works. No matter what learning level or artistic skill they have, when they walk into my room they are more worried about running out of time each day than making a mistake. In addition, the technology that is available to promote this is a website called Artsonia. Not only could it enhance the initiatives but that could be the basis for a bulletin board, but could be used as an online tool for collecting a digital portrait of what is going on in the art room.(Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007) It allows art teachers from any grade level to put their student’s art work on display for free on this website. The art site can be viewed by all parents and grandparents from down the street to Florida. It gives a description of the projects and the students work. The families have a chance to order mugs, shirts, mouse pads, etc, that have their student’s work on it. The proceeds go to the art room of the teacher putting the students work on display. It a great use of technology.
For homework and practice it is hard to make heads or tails of this strategy. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the importance of homework and how it increases the understanding of a subject or skill, but in the art room it is a rarity until 8th grade. Even then it is sketchbook assignments that are due Friday. Nothing real big and not worth a whole of points but it makes the students think more openly outside of the classroom.
There is one aspect of the Homework and Practice strategy that would work in the multimedia areas. Practicing with multimedia allows students to shape experience to their individual learning style and increase their level of understanding and mastery. (Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007) Every grade level can benefit from the use of technology and use it to their advantage. I am currently developing and in house blog for my art students to use to comment of each other’s art work in a critique forum. It allows the students to demonstrate the understanding of the art piece and how it was made. In addition, it allows the students to pick each other’s heads for input into their art works meanings and why the created it. You would be surprised to see what these kids can think up. The other teachers of the building want to come in and read the comments and make some comments of their own and the students really enjoy that surprise.
These strategies are what works in my art room and the opinions I have are based on what is working for me. I am not against any other methods being used; in fact I am open to anyone that has any comments or suggestion that may work with children of the middle school age regardless of their learning ability or artistic skills.
“Think Openly and Draw Hard!!!”
References:
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
TEXTAREA_ID
Aaron, I wish I had you for an art teacher!!! I think I would feel right at home in your classroom. I think that Art is one of the few subjects that should be graded primarily on effort. It is hard for some people to ever learn to draw, paint or sculpt well. My poor son is in his second year of college (studying to be a teacher) and he can barely draw a stick figure. He has always had trouble drawing and with his fine motor skills... but he always put for the effort so his grades were good.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of art homework, I recall an assignment in college where I had 2 days to draw 35 sketches of my foot! I was hard pressed to find new angles of my foot to look at!