Planning

Here's my plan book. I always fill it out on the weekend so I have some time to think about what the week ahead will look like; where this rotation is in the lesson or unit; what guiding reflection sentence stems we will address.




Art educators know this; sometimes you need more or less time than you've allotted. Planning is like budgeting. We are budgeting the time according to the need of each particular art class. Often I think of the plan book as a map. A suggested way to get there but this can and will change with each class. The goal is the learning. I write the learning at the top of each class period so I can keep track of where we are going and when I need to, not if I need to but when I need to, I refer back to it. I am, at heart, still wondering around the studio classroom with my students. We get interested in something and we go in that direction but it is my responsibility to bring them back to the learning by helping them to see or discussing where the cool thing we just figured out about color fits into our learning about harmony or portraits. One way I have found are guiding reflection sentence stems. These are direct fill in the blank questions that students begin with one sentence stem and end with another sentence stem. We close the class with the students either offering their learning to the whole group or a turn and talk model at tables. The reflection process helps the students 'do what artists do..' that is to say they are thinking about what they have done the day or rotation before and they they are looking ahead to considering the possibilities of their work in the current class.

Here are some examples from 4th grade collograph portraits: