Scheduling to Help All Students

As I have written about before, phone calls are a major way that I reach out to students in my courses each semester. Phone calls act as one-on-one time between myself and a student (or sometimes their voicemail) in an effort to connect and engage. I am guilty sometimes of focusing more of my time on re-engaging reluctant learners rather than building up my students who are engaging consistently. This year I have made a plan to help myself stay on track with giving each and every student the attention they deserve.

This schedule helps me have target groups selected to focus on throughout the semester in a way that makes sure no student goes very long without hearing from me. For the first time in a while I was able to reach out to the parents of my students who are doing excellent in my course. I also mailed achievement postcards to students with high live session attendance. This schedule has kept me on track and balanced this year and my student engagement is higher as well.

The Open Art Room - Creating Structure as a Team

During my first semester this year, I had a student ask to meet with me one-on-one in our synchronous classroom software, WebEx. Often when I am trying to help students get caught up with their work, we meet and discuss which assignments to focus on and I can show them examples of the projects and answer any questions. I also showed this student demonstrations using my document camera. He really found our meeting helpful and we continued to meet like this once a week until the semester ended. He told me that working with a teacher like this made him feel more like he was in a classroom, like he was not working alone.

This got me thinking, how can I regularly create this environment for students? After speaking with some of my colleagues, "Open Art" was born. Open Art is offered to students once a week. The session is run by myself and 3 other teachers and it is open to students in any of our sections. During the session, we walk students through each step of the weekly project, demonstrate over the webcam, and answer questions as students work individually. We allow students to work at their own pace by letting them roam freely through the slides after we have reviewed them. At the end of the session students will have their project done or developed enough to finish on their own.

Here is a sample presentation from one of our sessions:

We have seen consistent attendance at these sessions and find that students appreciate the extra structure that Open Art offers them. Students know that they can plan to do their art homework during the session and can have someone there to guide them through it. Also during these sessions, our special education teacher is able to open breakout rooms to work with students one-on-one. It has been wonderful to collaborate with other teachers on my team to make sure these sessions run smoothly. I will definitely be implementing Open Art again next year!

FIPing the Classroom

As a team leader this year I have attended a training to learn about Formalized Instructional Practices as a new-ish more formal way of teaching with a focus on student growth and evidence of learning. I am still learning and have more trainings and online courses to attend but I wanted to try something new in my classroom last week just to see how this teaching philosophy might play out in my online classroom.

"Formative instructional practices (FIP) are the formal and informal ways that teachers and students gather and respond to evidence of learning. It helps to think about learning as a journey, and formative instructional practices can guide teachers and students along the way, just like a GPS. These practices include four core components:

• Creating and using clear learning targets
• Collecting and documenting evidence of student learning
• Analyzing evidence and providing effective feedback
• Preparing students to take ownership of their learning" -from the Battelle for Kids Ohio Student Progress Portal

The week focused on Feldman's Method of Art Criticism. Generally students go through this lesson by first reading the content in the classroom (like a text book) and then writing a paper using the 4 steps. We practice using Feldman's Method in a live lesson as well.





New setup for FIP

 

To try out "FIP"ing my classroom I incorporated a different structure this week in my classroom. First, students were to read all of the content they would normally read for the lesson. Secondly, they check their understanding in 2 different ways.

First, they take a non-graded quiz that gives them clear feedback about why they are correct or incorrect.

Secondly, they complete a self-assessment on the learning targets for the week. They include their biggest weakness and what steps they will take to earn a 3 on all of the learning targets. This allows students to take ownership of their learning.



From there, students have options. They may use the additional resources available in the "Expand" folder such as a structuring guide, more in depth instructions for art criticism, and the live lesson where we practice. If confident about all of the learning targets, they may go straight on to complete the summative paper assessment for the week in the "Project" folder.

I was pleased with the results of this so far and am excited to learn more about FIP and new ways to help my students succeed in reaching and exceeding learning targets in my classroom.

When it Doesn't Work

Most often when I write in this blog, I am writing about the positive things that are working in my classroom. But let's be honest, not everything we try in our classrooms is successful. Yesterday I taught a lesson that I have taught before but I received very different results. In this lesson I have students critique a piece of art for the first time using Feldman's Method of art criticism. They then use what they have practiced to critique their classmates' portrait drawings. I have written about critiques in my classroom before, and I had grown to believe they were always exciting for students because that is what I have experienced the last 3 semesters I have held them. In previous cases I had students come to class on optional days, beg me for more critiques, and stay over an hour in class just to discuss the work as much as possible. Yesterday, this lesson was a flop. I asked prompting questions and heard crickets. Students were exiting my classroom left and right. The thirst for discussion was non-existent, polar opposite from what I am used to seeing. What went wrong? Is it just a different group of students or it is something more? I looked at the factors that have changed since I last tried a critique. This semester I give students credit for attending my live lessons by completing guided notes. This has increased attendance and seems to improve student performance on quizzes and projects. For this lesson I did not require students to complete any guided notes because I wanted to free up their time to be immersed in the discussion. For some this translated as no credit=no reason to participate or even stick around! This semester I have been teaching Art 5 lessons during the time slot so I have not done my weekly optional critiques for students this semester. These had previously been a very popular time for students to meet and it offered them a social outlet and opportunity to make friends with their classmates. Perhaps these optional critiques showed students that discussing art can be fun, and even something they look forward to. I never realized these small changes could affect the culture of my classroom in such a strong way. The guided notes I have added seem to encourage more students to attend my live sessions and watch the recordings of them, but has it discouraged those students who attend my lessons for social opportunities and the pure pleasure of learning? Too often in our educational system are we focused on the grade and away from what we have learned. How can I both hold my students accountable and remind them that the learning is more important than the grade? An age old question I can't answer, but if you have ideas please share.

Preventing Plagiarism in the Online Art Classroom

The risk of plagiarism in the classroom is not a new concern. However, we are used to seeing it in the form of writing. In the online art classroom because I do not see my students completing work, I am vulnerable to the risk of receiving plagiarized work from the Internet. Especially with sites like DeviantArt, students have many places online that they could find amateur artworks to pass off as their own. So how do I make sure students are submitting their own work? Part of what I do is pay attention to style and quality of work submitted. If I have a student submit something that is clearly above the level of previous work they have submitted, that is a red flag. If I receive a drawing that has very low resolution (especially 72dpi) this is also a red flag. However, just because I think it is plagiarism does not mean I can prove it. For this, Google image search is a wonderful tool so I have created a step-by-step guide you can easily use if you are ever suspicious about student work.

Step 1:

 

 

 

Go to Google.com and click on Images

 Step 2:

Once in Image Search, click on the camera icon

Step 3:

Click upload image (make sure you save a copy of the image in question)

Step 4:

Click browse and find the image on your computer

Step 5:

Once submitted you will see one of several things. Google may provide you with a best guess of what the image's search terms were (you would then click on the link for "sketches of rooms"). It also will provide you with visually similar images and sometimes the image in question is present right there!

Here is another example of what you may see. Sometimes you won't see the image in the list of similar images but Google will provide you a list of websites where the image is present. If you have the option to click "All sizes", make sure you do as this will widen your search and help catch students who are clever and re-size the image before submitting it.