Standard III Reflection
ELEMENT A: Teachers demonstrate knowledge about the ways in which learning takes place, including the levels of intellectual, physical, social and emotional development of their students.
By the end of the quarter in my high school placement, I could tell that several students were starting to recognize the importance of self-reflection and the elaboration of details when writing their self-critiques. The final project, in particular, yielded excellent examples and results with how people were able to synthesize information that they used in their art work along with reflecting on their own work when it was complete.
This example in particular did an excellent job of organizing thoughts and reasoning in the first part before talking about their work in the second. They were clearly thinking about the topic at hand along with thinking critically of their own work in reflection showing what they'd do different next time and admiring what went well this time around. Another key point is how they are able to view things for a neutral standpoint as if seeing it for the first time and not using their prior knowledge. Considering the topics being handled, they did an excellent job. |
ELEMENT B: Teachers use formal and informal methods to assess student learning, provide feedback, and use results to inform planning and instruction.
At the beginning of the quarter, after finding out the concepts, skills, and ideas that needed to be taught, I developed an interactive pre-test where students would be tested in a way that would actually show what they knew about art rather than what they knew. This one was designed with the intention that they'd answer some questions with words and others with drawings of what their ideas of the concept were.
In doing so, I was able to see their basic level of artistic skill with drawing, their understanding of certain terms, and take note what would likely need more focus when it came time for the subject to be covered. |
ELEMENT C: Teachers integrate and utilize appropriate available technology to engage students in higher level thinking skills.
One of my favorite things to be able to integrate into the classroom, and not just because I'm an Electronic Art focus, was a PearDeck presentation where the students were able to interact with parts of the presentation and answer questions during it.
I was able to use this to gather feedback immediately on where the students were along with using it to shape how I'd handle demos and the next parts of the assignment. Having a television set in the front of the room definitely helped with making this work along with students having personal laptops provided by the school. This allowed for students write responses, draw lines connecting answers, and drag elements around to create a variety of possible responses instead of having it setup to be a fillable form. |
ELEMENT D: Teachers establish and communicate high expectations and use processes, such as questioning, to support the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Throughout this semester, I made sure that students had a personal way to reflect upon their artwork. In many cases, the reflection usually ends up being "I think I did well because (insert reason or 'reason' here)" and offers little to know information to grow from.
In that light, I wanted to make sure that the students were thinking about three key points that would help in reflecting on their own work:
These three points allow the student to think about how their art would look from a viewer's perspective, what is working well that should be celebrated, and something that could be worked on for the next project. |
ELEMENT E: Teachers provide students with opportunities to work in teams and develop leadership qualities.
In the beginning videography class, students had the option of working with fellow students in order to create a short video. In many cases they would then act in the others' videos and give each other the chance to be the director. Each student was in charge of writing out a storyboard and script in order to show that they knew what they were going to do before filming.
Then they'd collect their peers and be tasked with organizing them, being the director, and then editing the entirety of the footage on their own. During this time they have the opportunity to work in partnership with their peers and will sometimes bounce ideas off one another if they're still working on a script or wanting to change a scene up so that it would flow better with the rest of the film. |
ELEMENT F: Teachers communicate effectively, making learning objectives clear and providing appropriate models of language.
For every project, I would make sure that learning targets were present for each day or that goals were displayed where students were able to see them. In particular, this was best represented in elementary school where students would be ready for the next step or phase when they were in class again. This meant I was able to easily chunk up each day under a learning target that reflected what goals we would meet on that day.
This helped immensely in making sure students understood what the plan was for the day ahead of them, so that they were ready to go when work-time started. |