1st Grade Post-Assessment Results

For this particular group of students, my SLO stated that 80% of students would reach a satisfactory grade on their post-assessment (which was a range of 72%-80%).  Most of the students scored below a 65% at the beginning of the year on their pre-assessment.  Unfortunately, I did not reach my goal with this SLO, despite the fact that each student did in fact improve.

I have definitely learned a bit about writing my SLOs for next year.  One thing I learned is that I think it may be more realistic to set individual goals for each student, and then state that 80% of the students will reach their goal.  I also realized that I need to make sure I take the time to clip together each individual pre- and post-assessment.  I didn't have time to do that before I swapped with the other art teacher, and she did not take the time to go back and look for the pre-assessments to make a comparison to.  Therefore, some of her scores were probably a little lower than what I would have given the students.

In the end, I'm not worried about how these SLOs will affect my final score for APPR.  Since I had to do 4 SLOs (and other teachers only had to do 1 or 2), mine will all be weighted differently for that portion of my score.  And also... this is just a test year for our district!  I've learned from my mistakes and now I can fix them in order to succeed better next year!

So, without further ado, here are some of the examples of the pre- and post-assessments from 1st grade.  Students had to do a 6-square drawing test.  They had 5 minutes for each square to draw the subject given, show good craftsmanship and a good composition (meaning, have a horizon line, sky colored to the ground, good details, fill the square, etc.).  Students had to draw a rainbow, a fuzzy dog, a flower, a tree, their family and anything.  These were a little hard to grade using a 24-point rubric (4 points per square) so I think if I use this assessment next year, I will make more of a checklist for the drawings (i.e. a check if the dog looks fuzzy, a check if their is a horizon line, a check if the sky is colored all the way down to the ground, etc.).

Pre-assessment on the left, post-assessment on the right.

This student improved DRASTICALLY this year.  This student is very much behind the others maturity wise and also cognitively due to a health issue when younger. It's so great to see them draw people with bodies instead of arms and legs coming out of the head!

Nice improvement with color choice...this student is starting to recognize specific color choices instead of using one color.

Love seeing the sky colored all the way to the horizon line...and also when they stop writing words with arrows above their subjects!

Great improvement!  People are wearing clothes!

Love the details on the tree and rainbow for this one!

1st Grade Dinosaur Fossils

My first graders finished up their fossils over the last two days.  I originally saw this idea on Pinterest, which linked me to Panther's Palette.  Then, when I went to the NYSATA conference, Mrs. Matott had these in her Ceramic Celebration presentation.

To make our fossils look weathered, I mixed a little bit of powdered tempera with water.  Each table had one container of watery paint and each student took a tissue.  The paint dried rather quickly when it was applied to the ceramic fossils, so I just had the students use the tissue to blot it up if they used too much.

The day we used the clay and made the fossils was my first observation this year.  It went really well, but my principal was concerned that I was trying to focus too much on the fossils instead of the clay itself.  I was a little worried about the fossil vocabulary I was trying to get across (one class did really well with the words ancient, trace fossils, and petrified, but the class I was observed with didn't do so well with those words...) but it was the first time I was doing this lesson so I wasn't too worried.

To show that I'm reflecting on my lessons (that's Marzano's Domain 3!), I'm going to re-do this lesson at the end of the year as a review.  We'll go outside to collect leaves, grass and small twigs to press into the clay.  Then, I'll fire them in the kiln with the leaves still pressed in to replicate the process of carbon fossils for the students.

A Little Bit of NYS Common Core...TEXT HEAVY POST!

Friday was the last day of the 2nd quarter.  Usually we have a half day with students and a half day of time for grading and submitting report card grades, however yesterday, they cancelled school with the students and gave us a full day of staff development regarding the Common Core.  I'll have to admit, at first I was a little annoyed and not really sure how this was going to connect to my subject area, but alas, I was pleasantly surprised!

I didn't have to attend any of the common core meetings about math, but I was asked to attend the 1st-2nd grade ELA Common Core meeting.  Here's what I learned there:

NYS contracted out to a company called Core Knowledge to create  K-2 curriculum for the listening and learning strand of the Common Core.  Since the younger students, especially Kinders and 1st graders, aren't at a high enough reading level yet to start reading in-depth texts, the Common Core focuses more on listening to text for comprehension and decoding.  In other words, teachers at these younger levels are asked to do more read-a-loud activities with students for "Listening to Learn."  This right there took a little bit of weight off my shoulders...all along I've thought, how am I supposed to incorporate reading with my kinders?  Well, I don't necessarily have to have the Kinders read on their own (aside from my art sight words...shape words, color words, etc.) but it's OK to do read-a-louds with them!

The idea behind doing more read-a-louds at this younger age is that students will begin to have a larger vocabulary for when they do start reading.  There were some great statistics that I can't remember from the presentation...about students from fluent families (families who read to their kids at home) versus students from poverty (who don't get reading at home) and their drop out rates from school...and they obviously showed that students who are read to at home at a younger age, have a higher chance of graduating school.

Another thing is that these grade levels should be reading 50% fiction and 50% non-fiction works throughout the year.

Anyways, back to the exciting part.  Our school district is adopting the curriculum map created by Core Knowledge for K-2, and I rather like it!  Each year builds upon the other year and incorporates science and history in the younger grades.  The curriculum currently has 9 strands, or units, for the school year (before next year, three more NYS specific strands will be added).  Again, these units are just for the listening and learning strand of common core...not writing, reading, math, etc.

Here are what the current strands are and my brainstorming for extension activities in art class:

Kindergarten
Nursery Rhymes and Fables (3 weeks)
The Human Body: Five Senses (3 weeks): self-portraits, artwork with texture
Stories (3 weeks): Elmer, listen to a story and draw a picture from listening to the details
Plants (3 weeks)
Farms (3 weeks): drawing shape barns and animals, incorporating a background
Kings and Queens (3 weeks): design a crown
Seasons and Weather (3 weeks): trees in the different seasons, background details
Colonial Towns and Townspeople (3 weeks)
Taking Care of Earth (3 weeks): recyclable art

Now, some of these might not fall where I'd like them to, but it's okay for me to do a fall season tree drawing in the fall, even though the seasons unit won't happen until probably spring time...this will help the students have background knowledge in the unit when it happens in class.

1st Grade
Different Lands Similar Stories (2 weeks): Compare artwork from different cultures/styles that are of the same subject/story...i.e. compare Van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles with Lichtenstein's Bedroom at Arles...compare Mona Lisa with modern parodies of Mona Lisa and then draw your own modern Mona Lisa!
Fables and Stories (3 weeks)
The Human Body: Body Systems, Germs, Diseases and Preventing Illness (3 weeks): color mixing by squirting paint on hands and shaking hands...connect the spread of colds with the mixing of the paint all while reviewing primary and secondary colors....draw germs using organic shapes
Early World Civilizations (4 weeks): Cave art
Early American Civilizations (4 weeks): Native Americans, Colonial Quilts
Astronomy (2 weeks)
Animals and Habitats (3 weeks): shape animals with depth and appropriate background (fits right in with my shape animal unit I already did!)
Fairy Tales (2 weeks)
History of Earth (3 weeks) My dinosaur unit will fit great here! Plus, it will get both 1st grade teachers on the same page with what they teach...they'll both be doing the dinosaur unit before they go on their field trip to Dinosaur World!


2nd Grade
Fighting for a Cause (4 weeks) This unit is about people like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, etc.
Fair Tales and Tall Tales (2 weeks)
Cycles in Nature (3 weeks): Eric Carle, catterpillar to butterfly
Insects (3 weeks): viewpoint drawings...view from a bug...
Ancient Greek Civilizations (3 weeks): pottery with patterns
Greek Myths (3 weeks)
Early Asian Civilizations (3 weeks): Chinese New Year
Charlotte's Web I & II (two 3 week units): This unit is one the 2nd grade teacher is going to try out this year and suggested a large paper-mache type sculpture of Charlotte herself!
Immigration (3 weeks): Statue of Liberty, Keith Haring

1st Grade Fossils and Dinosaurs!

1st graders are currently working on a dinosaur unit in class, so I decided to do fossils and dinosaurs in art!  Since the NYSATA conference, it has been my goal to start doing at least one clay project per grade level each year.  I used to only do it with 3rd-6th, but I was inspired and learned some great techniques to teach the younger students with real clay, not the air dry stuff!

So, to kick off the dinosaur unit, I started off with fossils.  I also had my first formal observation this year during one of these classes.  (It went pretty well!)  Anyways, we talked about why fossils are important (because they help us understand about dinosaurs and the earth's climate way back when...), how they were made, and what they were of.  This is where I incorporated the clay....as seen on Pinterest!

Here's how the first day went:
     1. Viewed the power point together about fossils and discussed.
     2. Everyone sat in a circle on the floor while I demonstrated how to pass the clay from hand to hand to "wedge" it. (I had already pre-wedged the clay for them, but I wanted them to get a basic understanding of why we have to do it.)
     3. I flattened the clay with my palm, and carefully pressed dinosaurs and seashells into the clay.
     4. Everyone went back to their seats and got a piece of Manila paper to work on.
     5. We reviewed the process, and then together we "wedged" and flattened our pieces.
     6. I passed out trays with toy dinosaurs and seashells.  While students pressed into their clay, I went around and carved their initials into the clay with a needle tool.
     7. Students cleaned up, and then while we waited for everyone to dry their hands, I had them discuss in their groups at their tables a fact to share with the class about fossils.  This was their ticket to line up.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of them working...it was a tad bit hectic with their excitement.  After they are fired, we will paint them with watered down black tempera, and then wipe the extra paint off to make them look weathered.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the second day of this unit, we talked about the different kinds of dinosaurs and their characteristics, which they have been doing in class as well.  We looked at some fossil pictures of dinosaur skin and talked about texture as well.  I printed off some "how to draw" sheets for dinosaurs, and I had the students practice drawing them on their own for the rest of class.

Today was the third day of the unit for Class A, and we continued with the theme of texture on dinosaurs.  I had seen multiple posts on Pinterest of doing close-up drawings of animal eyes so I decided to alter it for 1st grade dinosaurs.  We reviewed texture and talked about how to draw the dinosaur/reptile texture using lines and shapes.  I told them I wanted them to choose one interesting part of a dinosaur to draw close-up.  I also showed them three examples I drew, since I knew this was a little bit of abstract thinking for their part.  (Next time, when I'm not behind on my school work, I'll have print-outs of dinosaurs and view finders for them to use.  Either way they did quite well with this concept anyways.)  We drew them with pencil first, outlined with black Sharpie, and then colored with crayon.  

I am punching a hole in each corner so that they can all be tied together in a "dinosaur quilt".  Here's our progress on these so far!

1st Grade: Shape Animals With Depth

I guess I need to figure out how to do better organization for blog sharing!  I forgot to post these and we finished them back in November!  After we finished our realistic pumpkin patches in 1st grade, we moved onto drawing animals using shape, based on this project I found on Pinterest.  The link for the pin takes you back to the We Heart Art blog, but I can't seem to find the exact post on the blog.

We spent a day practicing how to draw animals using shapes, using a worksheet I created, and then drew them on watercolor paper the 2nd day.  During this process, we reviewed what a horizon line and background is, as well as what good details would be for an animal drawing.

We traced them with sharpies, and then on the 3rd day, we painted them with watercolor.  Finally, on the 4th day, we talked about the foreground and middle ground.  We cut out leaves from green construction paper and glued them around the edge.

Now, this happened to be one of those art projects where I didn't have an example to show them...I wanted them to have a "discovery learning" moment as we pieced the entire thing together.  However, I did do a demonstration of how to draw an animal big on the watercolor paper.  Just like always, I had about 90% of my students draw a cat for their animal because I drew one on the board, even though we had practiced drawing dogs, birds, and bears as well!