Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Belated March Post
An update on my professional goal: My goal this year is to stay on schedule with the curriculum maps and adjust lessons as needed to stay on schedule. At first glance it appears that I am not doing very well at this. All my classes are a month behind schedule, except 4th, they are on track. I still feel that I am doing better than last year and that I will be able to fit everything in before the end of the year. All my classes have some extra time at the end of the year when nothing is planned on the curriculum map. The art teachers have done this on purpose because of the nature of learning. Sometimes things take longer than expected, or there are delays. I am still very aware of how much time I have left and what needs to be done and the extra days at the end of the year should be sufficient. The elementary art teachers did talk about the 5th grade map and have agreed it needs some tweaking. We added 2 new units this year and those have taken longer than expected. Some of the projects towards the end of the year may not get done, but as a team we have agreed that our new unit, Principles of Design, covers the concepts that those last projects would be covering. So the students will not miss out on learning, we just put the learning in a new unit. I have been able to follow the order of units in the curriculum map. Last year I did some juggling to avoid doing clay at the same time as other classes, etc. This year I have been able to stay in order and it has worked out fine. One thing that I am trying to remember is that sometimes you need to take the extra time to make sure the students learn things well and have time to practice them. That sometimes puts a kink in my lesson schedule and my instinct is to rush through things so we can stay on schedule. I have to keep reminding myself to take more time if the class needs it. Sometimes my dilemma is that if we slow down we'll need a whole extra day to finish. Or we'll need half of an extra day and then what do I do with the other half of the class period? Start the next lesson? Or do a mini lesson? What do you do when this happens in your classes? Do you cut the project short? Or adjust the next lesson to take less time? And what do you do if at the end of the year you didn't fit everything in?
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Oh, the struggles of an art teacher. I feel like this will be a lifelong struggle, because whenever you give, you must take as far as teaching art lessons. I know high school is very different, but in the event that you have a half of a class period, I just into the next unit (history, practice, etc.). I actually like to have overlap of projects, because it allows those students who are done to move on. I personally don't like to cut projects short, as the quality of the projects isn't as good. If you don't fit everything in, I guess that is just what happens sometimes. You can do an overview of what you missed the next year with that grade level.
ReplyDeleteI feel like with Elementary it is somewhat trickier to start a new project (with some grade levels). When I have done it they seem to meld the projects together or get totally confused as to what they are doing. No matter how many times it is explained and repeated back. Now this isn't everyone but enough to make it frustrating and mess things up a bit.
ReplyDeleteI have tried to only do half days too- but I feel that so many of them waste their time....
This year I have started to do "Make-Up Days" I think we decided to call it "Studio Time." I do it after every 2-3 projects as a time for students to finish projects, and fill out rubrics. When they are done, they have to show me- and put their projects away before begining something for fun. I have things already in place and I talk to them all at the begining of class about what is expected.
It has worked really well! Now if I could only figure out a way to make the students that are super slow methodical workers to finish everything on those days too......