M7U2A2

Thu Nguyen

Cohort 01/2016

M7U2A2

REFLECTION ON LESSON PLAN

In the three lessons planned in the previous activity, two were for grade 3 and one for grade kindergarten Visual Arts. I am going to reflect how 21stc skills were embedded, how technology was used, and areas for further improvement.

21stc skills outcomes

For grade 3 level, the lessons aim at the application of the skills learnt and collaboration with peers to create works of art. Students understand how art skills are used or related in art relating careers such as illustrators, storytellers, and photographers. Students are highly encouraged to demonstrate literacy skills along with creativity, communication, and collaboration with their groups. The Creative Dreamtime story lesson is planned to accomplish the above goals. Understanding Australian Aboriginal Art, its dot painting and X-ray techniques is the beginning part of the project; students will then apply these techniques to illustrate their own stories in groups, and finally convert stories into audio versions.

Skills can be learned at the very best when their application in life and in subjects is comprehensive and at least visualized. Many middle school and high school students tell me that they don’t see why they should learn something like trigonometry in mathematics. It makes me think about the purpose of education in general and of each subject in particular. Building cross-skill and cross-curriculum lessons helps students make connections and apply skills learnt from one subject to another. For grade 3, the digital versus symmetrical portrait lesson helps students to make connections between mathematics and Art through the symmetry concept and associating with photography skills. Likewise, the hidden number lesson for kindergarten focuses on numeracy skills and drawing skills. At this age level, according to my experience, some still write numbers: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 backwards. Helping students write numbers in a different subject than mathematics and then transform the numbers into animals is as fun as spying numbers hidden in artworks.

The use of technology and areas of improvement

In this digital age, technology is an integral part of teaching and learning. For teachers, it is an effective and assisting tool in working areas such as planning lessons, explaining new concepts, managing behaviors, and assessing students. Especially in visual arts, it is a powerful tool enhancing visualization and comprehension.

Two out of three lessons above require technology aids during my presentation; a computer, a projector, and speakers are fundamental normally. Furthermore, in the later stage of the Dreamtime story project, my 3^rd graders need thirty microphones to record their voices. This is an area being overlooked in my original plan because I couldn’t imagine a lab with thirty desktops had only headphones, not microphones. My original plan is to join IT teacher in the voice recording session at IT lab where students work in groups, record their voice, and combine audio and photo files using the Photo Story program. The finding leads to an accommodation. I provide my own laptop together with the only desktop provided for teacher use in my classroom, and set up two recording centers. It means I need only one microphone, which I could lend to my students. It turns out good as students have time to observe the modeling group and demonstrate respect when others are recording. However, I need to have plans for those who finish their work early.

Learning from the previous lesson, in the digital versus symmetrical portrait lesson, I tried to gather and borrow devices beforehand. I am pretty clear that the school policy does not allow elementary students to bring their own devices into classroom. To compromise, I provided my own devices plus some lent from my family and friends. As expected, the most exciting part was when my 3^rd graders use IPad and IPhone to take portrait photograph of peers, and then use editing functions to create own portrait styles. We had such a fun way learning with these devices even some of my students still thought they should have learned using mobile devices with IT teachers, not with an Art teacher.  

Regarding the use of technology in assessments, I honestly did not use it as much as I wish in my particular subject, visual arts. Most of our summative assessments take the form of real works of art displayed in the annual exhibition for the community to enjoy and to judge. In class, formative assessments are employed in the forms of art critiques, teacher’s feedback, peer feedback, self-assessment and group evaluation. If I had a chance to redo these lessons, I’d rather use Google forms, quizlet, and Kahoot to create quizzes or survey as pre-assessments and formative assessments to better address the needs of individual students, and their levels of readiness.

Relating to behavior and grade management using technology, I used the school paid system called Renweb, supporting communication, report cards, grades, and behavior related with parents. Comparing with some other applications like Class Dojo, Teacher Kit, Instant Classroom, etc..., Renweb is more inclusive and school-wide functional instead of individual class use. For exceptional cases, parents will be informed via the system, followed by meetings with respective teachers.

Hoping to take into account some 21stc skills at the elementary levels and to take advantage of technology of the age, I did some modifications and renovations when possible in order to make my lessons more interesting, more realistic, and more engaging for my students.