Talcott Elementary Reflection | Vessel Visions Lesson
“The artistically talented child brings a strongly visual point of view to the content of his art work. Other children, as well as adults, are less able to isolate the visual from other sense experiences. Their visual images are encumbered by sounds taste, smell, tactile and muscular sensations which are associated and inextricably enmeshed with their visual experiences” (Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, & Luca, 1967, p.135).
In Piaget’s formal operation stage, the middle school child can understand and synthesize metaphorical language and analogies, such as the exterior scene in the interior of a vessel logic reversal. Because the 7th grade students in Sally Havlis’ art classroom are statistically considered to be both in the concrete operational stage or early formal operational stages, from testing of this very age group, I aimed to challenged both egocentricism and their communication of their own imaginations. I wanted to challenge their egocentricism and the “what is best is what is logical” thought processes common amongst students in middle school. (Biehler et al., p. 39)
As verbal and nonverbal communication patterns differ amongst different ethnicities, there is a great deal of respect given to Sally judging by the body language volume of class conversation , and the hesitance to make defiant, direct eye contact when spoken directly to or reprimanded. (p.146).
“The social class from which student comes plays an influential role in behavior” (p.148). The socioeconomic status of an ethnic group is influenced by years of discrimination that has historically resulted in families with less of a chance for education, less prestigious occupations, and lower incomes than the average White person (p.148).
Social class, health and living conditions, family environment, student attitudes, classroom environment, and teacher expectations, and the Pygmalian effect or the self-fulfilling prophecy greatly effect low SES student performance in all ethnic groupings. In my observations with Sally, the students have come to behave in ways that is consistent with what she expects, presumably and sometimes unavoidably in good and bad ways. Educators communicate their student achievement or failure expectancies in both obvious and subtle ways, unintentionally and intentionally for motivational purposes. There are various documented factor which facilitate factors crating expectancies, some factors being a result of human nature, and others, such as running a classroom while being too reliant on discipline and classroom management to set the tone of authority and respect other than inspirational and challenging material for the students to learn collectively and individually from the educator. Being over zealous in guided practice as an art educator, or interrupting the students’ processing of information to make corrections before any cognitive processing takes place is also a bad thin, especially in the ELL classroom and a classroom with students with special needs like the classes I observed at Talcott (p.154-155).
Sally knew the IEP protocols for each special needs student in her art classrooms at Talcott. Sally can maintain in-class ability grouping for special needs students who are still able to achieve in the art classroom because of the special needs classrooms, specialists, and after-school support in various capacities. She scaffolds a lesson over the course of several days if needed and can tell whether a students behavior is spinning out of control before it reaches a boiling point, showing a knowledge of the student individually and the behavioral markers an educator must remain weary of throughout a career. (p.153) Her classroom atmosphere is filled with enthusiasm and a great deal of informal-formative assessments, and a realistic expectation and communication of criterion to students throughout every lesson.
Teacher belief in student ability and the student’s belief in their own abilities and potential parallels as well as crosses paths. The students I observed in Sally’s 7th grade where on the back of his pre-assessment contour drawings he wrote, “I’m sorry, I suck at art!!!”. Student B in the post –assessment exhibited far more ability than he thought he had because I assured him that he could create imagery that equaled ability if he put forth the effort to convince me while meeting objectives demonstrated in the lesson. As an art educator, I do not expect all of my students to be artists, but I do expect them to think creatively, value creativity, create art, and meet lesson objectives with intent. My goal is for my students to become entity theorists in their favorite subjects that they are most passionate about, but to approach art as incremental theorists, adopting the belief that learning the materials and techniques to create art and develop artistic ability is a lifelong, gradual process. (p.414).
In terms of formative evaluation and monitoring student progress, I chose an informal approach to questioning the students during guided practice. For implementation of this lesson in the future, however, I plan to create a goal card chart for each student, with ELL students paired to facilitate reading and responding to their progress in terms of skills, key points, or concepts presented in a K-W-L framework outlining the lesson objectives corresponding with standards and listed clearly on the goal card, which they will respond to each day of the lesson. My first goal of formative assessment for the ELL student is to diagnose comprehension and vocabulary processing difficulties as well as to facilitate the following of directions.
For this lesson I implemented the use of the scoring rubric and criterion referenced grading, although I am analyzing Student A, B, C, and D according to a criterion-referenced grading system where the student achievement of Sally’s 7th grade class was assumed to fluctuate because the amount of time spent with them and the class learning profile matched this approach best. (p. 494).
To introduce students to the manner of such engagement is to strike a delicate balance between helping learners to pay heed--to attend to shapes, patterns, sounds, rhythms, figures of speech, contours, and lines--and helping liberate them to achieve particular works as meaningful (Greene, 2005, p.125).
Incorporate environmental literacy theme, a socio-economic literacy theme,
For the ELL Students and the closure activities, collage may by used to supplement written interpretations about their artwork. In the next implementation of the lesson, I may also choose to focus on Adrian Saxe as the artist focus and the use of personal literal and metaphorical symbol. The lesson I implemented could become a printmaking lesson or an installation lesson, and the project could also end with the students creating their own ceramic vessels (Gaudelius & Speirs, 2002, p.379).
I designed this lesson so that students would be encouraged to find personal meaning in an object explored and chosen, however since there was little time for the students to explore this object through a cultural analysis and the lesson should actually be a three day lesson, I would invite the students to collect souvenirs or personal objects that they can bring for display. Inspired by a lesson plan developed by Jim Elniski at The School of the Art institute of Chicago, and further inspired by Gaudelius’ and Speirs’ chapter Exploring Culture and Identity through Artifacts and Claes Oldenberg and Jeff Koons, the media I choose fit the technology and timeframe allotted to be to deliver the Talcott lesson, although the lesson has great potential for translation and interpretation through multiple art media:
In setting up a classroom or school ‘museum display’ according to real-life museum display format, the students would display and write about their artifacts finding common themes or developing narratives behind the objects. The students could personify their object or vessel and conduct an interview with it, inquiring and charting information about its contents, its origin, how it was constructed, how it was acquired, previous owners, the artist/sculptor/producer themselves, and aesthetic value. The students could explore then how the artifact represents personal and communal experience in time and place; interpret connections between the artifacts, and then “defamiliarize the familiar or functional in order to ‘see’ an object or an artifact in a new light, becoming aware of its formal, physical properties such as shape, color, texture, materials, image, and details. (p. 286-287)
In designing my lesson, I wanted the students to attend and create beginning with the idea that “art has the possibility for investigating inanimate objects with an animating principle, for infusing ardor, energy, and life into objects that become alive in our imaginations.” Artists merge the formal elements and conceptual basis of art with the spiritual inevitably. I also believe that in looking at the world, artists possess aptitudes in phenomenology as originally proposed by philosophers Hegel and Nietzsche, long before the contemporary views on the subject have surfaced in Art education. Art embodies the “ineffable experience that defies precise description”, art is possessed by spirit, and so is the artist during the act of creating art (p.131). In working from a variety of drawing materials and techniques, students are asked to not only represent a still-life vessel object, but to transform it by integrating their own vision of its contents. After delivering the lesson, I felt it prudent as a proponent of arts integration to further refine where this vision is inspired from, and that a greater connection needed to be made, so I plan to incorporate school text in the content areas of science or world history. There is something to be said for the experiential aspect of art make and art criticism, and that leaving their vessel vision topic more open-ended might facilitate a more pure creative experience, but I find that students need direction, especially middle school students who simultaneously crave order and chaos. In giving them a structure of the elements of art to work within, I though t that that structure was enough. I felt that the scenery they were inclined to draw without guidelines from other content would be a reflection of their view of what was relevant, beautiful, or inspirational enough to put into their work, and that the experience of finding their own vision and sense of beauty was an invaluable experience for each students (p. 138). Sally comment that the students asked about their drawings and me even after their return from Spring Break, and I suspect some may have wanted to continue working. More than furthering artistic creativity and personal experience, art can always make the ordinary special. “When art celebrates ordinary experiences, these experiences take on a new significance. By making events and things stand out from the commonplace, art transforms and reorganizes our conceptions of the world. ” (Wachowiak, 2010, p.5). ****watch the date on this reference. After planning for them to work from ‘ordinary’ objects, I planned out the elements and principles I wanted them to employ based on prior knowledge. This included a strategic decision for the limitation of palette through their use of one metallic crayon color, and ebony pencil for the interior. The metallic pigments and wax make-up of the crayons allow for smooth application to Bristol board, they add a sense of light to the background and a subtle shifts in color and temperature. I sought a method of creating space that was far from true perspective drawing techniques, because there would be cropping involved in creating their images within an uneven organic shape. (p. 15-16).
The pre-assessment allowed me to determine (or would allow me, in the case of implementing the lesson in my own classroom). My concern with guided practice in setting up a reference for them was to “choose subject matter for art expression that relates to human-interest activities, community and worldwide events, and current projects in ecology, medical research, space, and undersea exploration—in other words, whether to integrate content area topics (p. 234). I think this is a viable alternative lesson, but I was struck with their developing their own vocabulary of what they wanted to see in their art while adhering to several formal objectives. Elaborate still-life setups, mythical themes, shading, hatching, and stippling are popular themes and techniques for students in the seventh and eighth grades (p.235).
Biehler, R., McCown, R., & Snowman, J. (2009). Psychology applied to teaching, (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Clements, R. G., & Wachowiak, F. (2010). Emphasis art: A qualitative art program for elementary and middle schools, (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Gaudelius, Y., & Speirs, P. (2002). Contemporary issues in art education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Greene, M. (2005). Releasing the imagination. San Francisco, California: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Herrell, A. L., & Jordan, M. (2008). Fifty strategies for teaching English language learners, (3rd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
Lark-Horovitz, B., Lewis, H.P., & Luca, M. (1967). Understanding children’s art for better teaching. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Books, Inc.
Snowman, J., McCown, R., & Biehler, R. (2009). Psychology Applied to Teaching. (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Vatterott, C. (2007). Becoming a middle level teacher: The student focused teaching of early adolescents. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Co.