Kids' Opinions

So on the last week of camp I decided to have an overall share time encompassing all their thoughts for the summer.

First my reflections:

• Choice with middle school was much tougher than choice with 4th and 5th grade. 
• Possibly a modified choice for these students to start them off with an inspiration as opposed to complete free choice. 
• Possibly an overall theme for the week. 
• Maybe even several choices to create art about so that it doesn't go back to the way it was of me telling them exactly what to do. 
• The portfolio project lasted WAY too long for some of the members and that is where they put most of their effort. I think that this one should have a time limit. Or maybe even just their name on it and not all of their interests.
• Removing the stencils and stamps because it became too easy to just make random tracings. It became a cop out for making their own art, so those will disappear. 

Kids' Reflections:

• They liked the independence and freedom but liked that they were able to get help when they needed it. 
• Liked not being told when something needed to be finished.
• Felt like they had more ownership of the classroom and their personal work.
• They were able to make their idea comes true.
• Now that they know the function of the classroom they feel like they can make higher quality work. 
• The pictures at the centers helped them clean up the right way. 
• They miss the cleanup chart that I had done in previous semesters and like that they were held responsible and could compare themselves to other classes.
• Wanted to have some HAVE TO projects. Some that were lead by the teacher and wanted to do some large group projects. 
• I never told them they couldn't, they just didn't. So I will have to make that clear in the coming semester. 
• They loved having a large variety of materials to work with.
• They felt that there was less pressure on them by having no previous examples. 
• They wanted more video examples.
• This is due to THE ONE TIME I showed them the bob ross remix video on youtube. They loved that so much I must have played it 100x. 
• They want to learn specific techniques like stippling and hatching.
• Totally caught me off guard there but so willing to teach that. 

We ended with a girl who told me a poem she saw at an art supply store.

A dot isn't just a dot

It is more than a dot.

You can make stuff out of the dot.

So think about that dot. 

LOVE IT.

Overall  a successful summer with some rough spots. That is to be expected tho and I wanted to deal with any snags now as opposed to when I am doing my capstone. It was a lot of fun (minus missing two weeks and coming back to a lot of broken things.) Plus I learned how much I love blogging about my teaching experiences! 

The best thing  I heard today was "Ms. Alexa, with art, alot of times its the teacher that makes it awesome and you make it awesome. Those two weeks without you were really boring." Oh how they make my little art teacher heart melt.