Day 8 in the classroom!

I started the day off with ceramics in the high school. I learned that they were starting to finish up platters and begin mugs. I also was lucky and got to help a few students on the wheel.  I have taking ceramics twice now because I too struggle with the wheel but I am a hundred times better now. So, i really connected with these students and tried to give them some pointers when I could. My cooperating teacher was helping them most of the time but when he stepped away I would ask how things were going. I asked what they thought of the wheel and they both thought that it was extremely challenging.  I think that it’s almost too bad that there is only a few wheels for a whole class to attempt to throw on. Throwing is something that takes time and only being required to throw once in a semester just is not enough to really learn how. I had to take 2 semesters worth of college ceramics and I still feel like I need more. I just think it would be nice if each student could even have a week that they were designated to use the wheel just so they could have a something that they might feel a little more ownership over. Other

In the 5^th grade they were continuing to make their still life fruit. So today I had lots of students to help as they were starting to create fruits they wanted to make. I found myself reminding students that they were going to be cutting things out. The fruits would be cut out and pasted onto another piece of paper. Some of them also needed to be reminded that it was ok to make things bigger versus the size of finger. The other things that I found myself helping students understand where to put their shadows and highlights. Some didn’t seem to grasp that the highlight and the shadow should really be next to each other. So I tried to draw little sketches for them to remind them to think about where the light is coming from and what happens to the spots nearest to the light and farthest away. That helped most of them.  Even with the challenges the students seemed to be getting close to the finish. Each of them had several fruit made and were getting ready for the final stages of placing the fruit and platter on a piece of paper made to look like a table with a table cloth.  I look forward to seeing the finished product.

Today was the final day for the mask project.  For me and for the students I think this was by far the most enjoyable day as well. At the beginning I reminded the students to respect the tools they would be using. From there it was time to start adding thing to their mask. I really saw students getting into things that weren’t really before at this point. Students were excited to show me what they had thought of doing for their mask as well as asking for advice. I think the best part on this day was seeing how proud everyone was of the masks they had created. I think the room was all smiles. My cooperating teacher even thought they did such a great job that he would allow them to have a little more work time in the next class if they wanted to add some finishing touches. Over all though the project turned out great.