Giving my first test

The end of the semester is almost here and that means I will be giving a semester test to all of my 1st-5th grade classes for the first time ever. The elementary art teachers wrote these tests as a group and the tests cover the information and vocabulary we taught in 1st semester.
Honestly, this is the first time I've EVER given a test. So I'm trying to figure out how to do it and how to prepare the students. I'm planning to have a review day before the test and I plan to make a Jeopardy style game to use for the older students. I am not sure though if that will work for the younger students (like 1st and 2nd), any thoughts or suggestions? Also, should I send home a review sheet? Will elementary kids even look at it? What if a kid is absent on review day? Maybe I need a review sheet for those students.
And what if a kid is absent on test day? Do I ask them to come in during recess or my prep time to make it up? (During my prep time means they would be missing something in their regular class, and during recess sometimes means I miss my lunch so neither one is great.) Or maybe I have one day the last week of the semester where I have all the absent kids come at one time. Or do I not worry about it at all?
Can I have the students trade papers and check each others' when the test is done? Or is that not fair because then their grade isn't private?

In summary I am wondering: What is the best way to review (specifically for younger students) and what if someone is absent? If someone is absent on test day what is the best way to have them make up the test? Should students grade each others' tests?

Handing Back Artwork

Sounds easy right? I don't know why I have trouble remembering to do this!

Some classes I have a few projects from. I remember of course right while they are in line or right after they leave.

I have been better lately.... I have pulled the old artwork out with the stuff they are working on during their 5 minutes of drawing time (I love this time! I don't know how I did without it last year!). But even then I sometimes run out of time.

I don't like to have kids hand it out because the grade is on the back with their names. So that leaves it to me- and with all the questions and management of students I forget more times than not.

One of my goals this year was to get artwork graded and handed back in a timely manner. It is all graded- so I have half of it down! :) I NEED a system! Any suggestions???

Time on Task

As an art teacher I find it challenging to keep kids on task for the entire period. There is a huge range of abilities from students who create high quality work quickly, students who create high quality work slowly, students who create poor quality work quickly and students who create poor quality work slowly. All of these combinations have to do with ability levels as well as motivation to do well. I find myself mostly struggling with the first group: high quality work quickly. I will often have students who are done days before others. I have tried and implemented lots of differents things like overlapping projects, creating ongoing semester projects to fall back on, creating multiple assignments for each project (worksheets, readings, projects, written reflections/evaluation, critiques, journaling, etc.), yet still I struggle. I don't think it is fair to just create more work for those who finish early, and I am completely against using my class time to do other homework. Obviously I suggest revision to those who require it, but I don't always know how to handle it when a student uses their time wisely to complete tasks, and finishes before other. It never seems to create behavior issues either.

Do any of you have suggestions to keeping all students on task all the time?

November Post (Late, I know)

I've had a couple instances in the past few weeks where a student and I haven't seen eye-to-eye and in hindsight I think I let it go to far. 2 times were students who refused to do their work either because they didn't like some aspect of what we were doing or they didn't like art in general. Each time I tried talking with the student about what they didn't like, I tried reasoning with them, nothing would work. Numerous times I would remind them to get started or encourage them again. The students always remained stubborn and upset and unproductive. I got very frustrated and eventually threw my hands up in despair (figuratively speaking). When I thought about the situations later I wondered if I spent too much time trying to convince a stubborn child. The attention I gave them definitely took away from helping the rest of the class. Perhaps I should have tried a few times and then ignored them? But I don't feel comfortable doing that because then it feels like the student wins and gets away with doing nothing. I don't think they should be allowed to sit in class and do nothing (especially when these are students with a habit of acting this way). Should I send them to the office if they refuse to work? I was a long-term sub at a school where they had a list of "bottom line behaviors" that automatically got a student sent to the office and "defiance towards a teacher" was one of those behaviors. I think I would try to work it out with the student myself first, and sometimes they are attention-seekers and ignoring them is the best solution, but at some point if they continue to refuse to work and they are taking a significant amount of time away from helping other students would it be beneficial to send them out of the room? Or is the office reserved for students who misbehave in more disruptive or serious ways?
I am leaning towards the idea that sending them to the office may be the right choice. And in that case I need to work on recognizing those kinds of situations quickly and not letting it go on for too long.
What do other people think? Do you have criteria for what is "office-worthy"?

Substitutes....

I unexpectedly had to have a sub last week... and she was a little nervous to be in the art room.
She had quite a bit of trouble with one of my classes in particular- problems that I have never had with them. They are generally a very well behaved class- there were a few others that I was worried about but not this one. They had trouble listening, following directions, 2 boys cut their art shirts (!), throwing things, etc. I am really shocked that they would behave this way and don't want to let it go just because I wasn't here.

Anyway, my question is this: If you have a sub and there are behavior problems what do you do? She didn't know which kids they were- so I can't address individual students. Also they are 1st graders and I had the sub last Monday and don't have them until this Friday (a long time for 1st grade)! Their teacher had them write apology letters- however, I want them to know that this is not an acceptable way to treat another teacher.

Homework Completion

I am currently working on increasing completion rates for homework in all of my classes. I have noticed that students who typically fail my classes or are receiving lowers letter grades have done so not because of poor test results (although on rare occasions this is the case) but rather because students fail to turn in their homework. Because homework makes up 40 percent of students' overall grade, this can have and does have a dramatic impact. My next goal is to try and implement new strategies in the classroom that will increase homework completion. Some of the things that I will try to implement include allowing students to start their homework in class before they leave for the day. Also, I plan on grading their homework on a much more regular basis. In addition, I hope to try to create new types of homework that allow students to see the relevance in the material and how it should matter to them. Lastly, I plan to differentiate my homework so that it reaches all learners of of different styles and learning types. Although I have given students choices in the past on which homework items they can complete, I will continue to do this as it seems to be rather helpful for students of all levels of learning.

SIOP

So at the high school our goal is to have everyone SIOP trained this year, which is happening through building in-service time. To be quite honest, I am feeling overwhemed with the MANY strategies, expectations, and truly understanding all of it. I do however, understand that it is an important model to desgin instruction around. My goal for quarter 1 was to have the objectives posted in my room, which is happening on a daily basis. Since I am new to this, and all of my SIOP objectives are new, I am finding it very time consuming. I have created a document that I used (and shared with my colleagues), that I can write them objectives down on a daily basis, and not reinventing the wheel each semsester. My goal for next semester is reinforce them by actually disucssing them at the beginning and end of every hour. So, right now, I feel like they are just there, but not for any reason. I felt that this was my solution to really understanding if my objectives are good, and easing to the new system.

Question: If you are SIOP trained, how do you use the model in your classroom. Any suggestions for an art teacher who feels overwhelmed?

Common Assessments Help Lesson Planning

On the inservice day this month the elementary art teachers met and developed a test to give our students at the end of the semester to assess their learning. This was very helpful for me because it forced us all to talk about what exactly the students needed to be able to do and also what we each emphasize and how we defined certain words or concepts when we teach them. Although the basic information is in the quarterly check-in, if we are to use common assessments I feel we need to be emphasizing the same things to our students and using the same explanations and definitions.

The test we made has already been helpful to me when I'm deciding what my lesson objectives are because I can look at it and ask myself "What do I need to do to make sure my students learn what is on the test?" I remember learning this strategy in college (plan the assessment first, then the lesson) but it was hard to apply to art because there was no emphasis on giving formal assessments in elementary art. Now I am starting to see how it can work.

Behavior Management in the Art Room....

I have a few classes, but one class in particular that continually waste time. Therefore they are incredibly behind on projects. They are the same group of kids that had a hard time last year.

Yesterday the class that I had wasted so much time during instruction time (they are generally okay during work time, for the most part) that at the end of class I called them all to the carpet to come up with a plan for how we are going to fix the problem. They told me that they are the only class that has assigned seats in music. Also in gym on their "first offense" they sit out for rest of the class. So apparently it is not just in the art room. When their teacher picked them up- I let her know that we had talked about behavior and hopefully come up with a plan to fix it. She said that she is really working with them on it too. They loose out on a lot of fun activities- i.e. Friday Fun.

I talked to the gym teacher to see how he is working that out, does he give a warning- then out or what. He doesn't give a warning, he said by now they know the expectations and he is tired of punishing the whole class for something that they didn't all do.

I am wondering how this would work for art? I am hoping that I would only have to do it a few times for them to realize that I am serious and to begin doing what they are supposed to.... my problem is that if I don't then they are even further behind. Also, what do they do so they aren't distracting the rest of the class. Do they go to the office?

Anyone have any thoughts/ suggestions???

October is Here

I am really looking forward to having a break so that I can catch up on all of my grading and planning for class. Work again is starting to pile up now that my graduate class at Saint Mary's is back in full swing. With the Twins in the playoffs now it has been a real struggle to stay motivated with school work and grad work. I am finding that the implementation of SIOP objectives is allowing me to organize my classes much better than I use to. Students have also expressed gratitude for the expectations and notes to be listed at the beginning of class. Homecoming week is upon us and keeping the students has been challenging, but the objectives piece has allowed us to keep focus. Managing my time in and out of the classroom continues to be my biggest challenge and I am glad that I have found strategies and resources to help me achieve my goals in a timely manner.

September has lasted FOREVER

My mini goal for the month was to plan a schedule for the year to determine how many days each of my lessons should take in order to fit everything in, and to give me a quick idea of what each day will consist of. I accomplished my goal! I have a schedule for all 5 grades now. The tricky part is knowing when to adjust the schedule. As Tiffany said in a comment on another post, sometimes you have to go slower to make sure they learn it, and then adjust the next project accordingly. Because I do want to stay somewhat on schedule I think what I will adjust most is the type of artwork students do to learn a concept. I think for 4th and 5th I will be doing fewer large drawings/paintings and more smaller ones that won't take as many days to finish. This way I can spend time helping them learn and also encourage good craftsmanship, knowing that it is a small enough artwork that they will hopefully finish in a reasonable amount of time. In the past they have done some large artworks that take so long that instead of taking time to make sure they are learning the concept I just have them work on the art to get it finished. I struggle with finding a balance between work time and discussion/teaching time. I know it is important to learn vocabulary, think about essential questions, look at art and talk about it. But making art is important to.

How do you balance teaching or "learning" time with time to work on assignments? (Knowing of course that sometimes these things overlap.)

Grading Rubrics Posted!

One of my goals this year is to have the grading rubric for each project posted so that students can see how they will be graded ahead of time. Last year I just discussed how they would be graded with them the problem is not all kids listen and I also felt that a visual would help. So far it has!

My plan is to discuss the grading rubric with them on the day we start the project and show them where it is posted for them to look. It is nice to also be able to point and refer to it while students are off task and remind them of how they will be graded.

I also plan to attach grading rubrics to EACH project this year for 2nd- 5th grade. :) I tried to last year- but I didn't always do it...... it is so much easier not to.

For 4th and 5th grade they will be grading themselves and then I will grade them. I am just not sure how to explain this becuase some kids were very confused last year. Any suggestions???? My thought is to walk them through it the 1st few projects and take it from there.

Emily do you give rubrics to 1st grade too? I just found last year that they didn't even care what their grade was they just wanted their artwork back.

Goal

My goal this year has been to start implementing various aspects of the SIOP model. Specifically I am working on adding language and content objectives to each of my classes. While this has been difficult and time consuming, I hopefully will be able to save myself a lot of time by saving the objectives for the next few years. I have been especially thorough in implementing my objectives (both content and language) in my English Learners class. The students have benefited greatly from the extra focus it provides on my lessons. Even mainstream students have benefited from the organization. This in turn has minimized questions from students who either arrive late for class or miss a class. In addition to the implementation of objectives, I have also reorganized my room so that missing work and late work is easy to find and to turn in. I continue to update my website for students and parents and use the template as a reference for myself when teaching specific units.

Emily poses an interesting question, because it is something I am also working on. As the only art teacher teaching three different courses, it is up to me to come up with my own unit pacing guides. It is a lot of work, but important work. It is my third year teaching here in Shakopee, and each year poses a different obstacle. The first year felt like chaos - learning the rules, procedures, ordering, teaching, curriculum, teaching!. The second year I felt more comforable with everything, and the third year (this year) is more about improving the curriculum for student learning. In some ways I feel like it is my first year again, because I am so busy improving curriculum, re-arranging units/projects, timing, etc. I really wish I had the unit pacing guide done before working on the curriculum, but it just doesn't work that way. I think we need to be comfortable teaching the content and understanding how long it takes for students to complete and understand a unit before moving on. Creating unit pacing guides is one of our vertical team goals for this year (as secondary art teachers).

Hey

Just re-figured out how to log back into my gmail account. Hopefully will be able to start blogging again here soon!

Emily's Goal

My goal this year is to revise my lessons to more closely follow the timeframe of the curriculum maps and provide clearer expectations for my students. So far I've worked towards this by comparing my 4th and 5th grade lessons from last year with the curriculum map. Then I created a "skeleton" outline of the lessons for the year, mostly focusing on making lessons the correct length to match the timeframe in the maps. This took FOREVER. But it made it very clear to me that for those 2 grades I do not have time to mess around and let an art project run on for a million days. I have to stick to the outline I made in order to fit everything in that the curriculum maps require. I cannot go over by even a day for most of the projects.
I haven't done this with my 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade yet. I did not have as much trouble getting everything done last year for those grades. I think my goal for September will be to make an outline for the 3rd grade lessons.

Question: How important is it in your classes that you stick to the timeframe of the curriculum maps and fit everything in before the end of the year?

my first blog

Art Rules!

Overwhelming!

I find all of this digital/online technology so overwhelming, yet interesting. Part of me really wants to learn more about it, and part of me says "too much, too little time".

Question: In the next month, what do you hope to have accomplished in terms of using new technology?

First Post

Does this work? Hope so!