Final day in the classroom.

Today in the ceramics room the students were still finishing up their mugs.  It was interesting to see the though process that some of the student put into their creations. I watched one boy that really though about the placement of his handle and what his intentions were for it. He wanted it to resemble the rest of the mug but be comfortable for use.  He was really the only student I saw that put as much effort into their handles in terms of making it really a part of the piece and not just there because it needs to be.  Today was the day before prom as well so it seemed like many of the students had checked out already for the day. In general it really just seemed like the students were too excited for the weekend to really focus on their work. So, I am thinking that some of the projects might have had more effort placed into them if they were in the right mindset. Fortunately they still have more time to work on the mugs.

Today was a day with no fifth grade, which was ok because this gave me more time to think about setup for my lesson plan on tints and tones with the 6^th grade.  During the time I also had a chance to grade projects on my own with my cooperating teacher making the final call. It was nice because he told me what he thought of my grade. Sometimes he thought I was being generous especially when I didn’t know the participation factor. Most of the time he agreed with the grades given. So, for me it was kind of nice to be able to talk through what I was giving the student for a grade as well as receive the input of another teacher.  Even though I absolutely love being able to work with the 5^th grade class I am glad that on this last day I had to opportunity to grade lessons again for the second time.

In the 6^th grade I got to start my own lesson this time. This was a lesson I had created on tints and tones. I decided that I didn’t want to do the usual value scale I wanted them to learn about tints and tones by creating a project that actually allowed them to create something. So I wanted each of the students to create a tints and tones tree. Tints for the leaves and tones would be for the trunk.  I think I took a lot of what I had learned from teaching the other lesson and really tweaked things when giving this lesson. I did things step by step and gave all the directions as well as ask for questions before I had them begin. Which was extremely important to get everything squared away. The only change I thought about was that I maybe would have like to see what they do if I give them the paper right away. So, that they could draw the tree with me. This way the lesson probably would have made it closer to the one-day mark and I may have been able to see the finished product.  Most unfortunately I only got to teach day 1 of my project, as I couldn’t take off work anymore to teach more then one day.  From what I was able to see it seemed like the students were getting it and I have no fear that they will have a great tints and tones tree at the end of the project.