Aiming for Higher Achievement

Over the past 5 years, I have written about my passing rate, reluctant learners, and working to increase the number of students successfully passing my Art 1 class to earn their fine art credit. But this year, I have grown tired of pulling teeth for my students to achieve the minimum. I am tired of begging for students to do work when I really want them to learn more than the minimum, try more than the minimum, and achieve more than the minimum. So, I wrote a goal on my whiteboard that hangs in my office this year, "Aim for A's, not just passing."
Until this semester, I believe I have been aiming too low at times for my students. So, this semester I have been working through some new strategies to increased achievement, rather than simply pass rate. And, it is working!
Here is what I have been trying:

Page 1 of the catch-up packet

• Emailing all students who are missing assignments from the previous week every Monday morning with helpful strategies and scaffolding worksheets when applicable
• Increasing my phone calls by an average of 20 more reaching out calls per week, encouraging students to complete their work and addressing any questions
• Freeing myself of the "passing packet" and replacing it with a catch-up packet (click here to download) which includes more weeks of art projects, better directions, and is marketed towards improving a student's grade with no promises of receiving a passing grade.

Surprisingly, students seem to gravitate towards the catch-up packet far more than they ever did the passing packet, and it doubles as an intervention tool for students with an IEP or who simply prefer to work in a worksheet-style method. It works well as a way to help students who were added late to the course get caught up as well. 

We are only halfway through the semester and already I am seeing an overall 10% shift to higher achievement (letter grades) than at this time last semester! 

With 2% more A's and 8% more C's (and 8% less D's) I am over the moon. Go students go!

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.

ECOT Teacher Uses Google Glass in Online Classroom

Preparing for a Better Year, Every Year

I have had a long and exciting summer and I getting very excited for the 2013-2014 school year to begin. Between new technology tools, implementing common core standards, and carrying out SLO's, we are in for some big changes. I am working on bettering my asynchronous content through more varied visual examples. At the end of last school year, I surveyed my students about how they best learned in my class. The results surprised me.

I had an idea that my WebEx lessons (live/synchronous lessons) would score highly with my students, but I was surprised at how helpful they found my step-by-step instructions. Last school year only 2-3 of my lessons actually had step-by-step lessons pages. Therefore, I have big goals for this year! I know that I want to implement step-by-step guides and videos into every lesson in my asynchronous content. Google Glass continues to be an innovative and convenient way to do this. Below are two new lessons that are ready to go for my classroom. One is a step-by-step guide, and one a video, both made using Glass.

Understanding Linear Perspective Through Glass

In the past I made a video about how to draw a building using one or two-point linear perspective but I hadn't yet made a video about how to relate linear perspective to what my students see in the world around them. I attended the Ohio State Fair today and recorded a fun video about linear perspective that will hopefully engage students and help them understand that linear perspective isn't simply a drawing technique but also relates to the way they see.

Google Glass Lessons

I have just ordered Google Glass and I am so excited about using it in my online classroom. Here are some ideas I have come up with so far. Check in to see how they are received by my students!

Virtual Field Trips

I would stream field trips to art museums around the state through Glass. Students would be able to “attend” the field trip by logging into a live session and could ask questions and participate in the field trip while Glass acts as their eyes and ears. Sections of the field trip could also be recorded for watching later in the asynchronous classroom.

Demonstration Videos

I will make a large collection of art demonstration videos to be used in all 4 sections of Art 1. These videos would show students how to use drawing techniques, what to look at when drawing from observation, and how to set up a still life scene. I would like to have one of these videos in each week of our semester course that students could access any time in the asynchronous classroom.

Interviews and Artist Studios

I would visit local artists in their studios to discuss what it is like to be an artist and I could use Glass to show students the artist’s work. Students would get a taste of a “day in the life” of an artist.

Perspective and Proportion

I would use Glass to teach students the difficult concepts of perspective and proportion. By students being able to view the world from my eye level, I can show them how objects get larger as you approach them and the objects in the background are smaller and how to capture that concept on paper. When I teach student about linear perspective they can view buildings through my eyes and see what a vanishing point looks like if they were to stand right in front of it. Many concepts in Art 1 involve students looking at the world in a different way. These lessons could help give students a more authentic experience that will help them understand the content better.

Stay tuned for more!

The Perks of Data

Pre-test grades earned by students

I am beginning the second week of my semester this week and learning a lot about my students. As I have talked about in previous entries, I have students fill out an “interest inventory” or get to know you assignment at the beginning of my class. This semester, I am also piloting a pre-test that measures what students already know about art. At the end of the class they will take this test again (with some different questions on the same information) to display the growth they have made in my course. My interest inventory has always told me much about what my students wanted to learn and what they already knew, but the pre-test has taken it to a new level. I am now able to gage the level of understanding for specific concepts. I put a question in the pre-test asking students if they had ever taken an art class before, it turns out that 55% have prior art experience while 45% do not. Almost half of my students are completely new to this subject so depending on their interests, they may have never drawn realistically before. I analyzed the data from the test to see what concepts students were widely familiar with and which they were often incorrect about. Students understood foreground, pattern, texture, portraits, primary colors, mixed media, and abstract art, or they were at least able to guess the correct answers for them. I was surprised to see how much they already feel comfortable with coming in. This tells me that when I get to these concepts in the curriculum, students won't need as much time in the lesson to focus on the terms, but perhaps we can spend more time going over examples and brainstorming for their projects. On the other hand, students were often incorrect on the questions about linear perspective, value, art criticism, and cubism. This data seems to match up with what are usually some of the most difficult lessons to teach. Having this information early will help me focus in on these lessons and provide multiple ways of learning. I added a question to my interest inventory that I found to be very helpful in understanding what methods I should use to teach these lessons. When asked which method students preferred for learning a new technique, they preferred demonstrations most often (see below).

Now I know what my students feel more comfortable with, what they will most likely struggle with, and how they learn best. With a class of 260 students, trends in data are very important to pay attention to! I will use this data to guide my instruction and look forward to seeing student growth at the end of my semester. 

Developing an Online/Blended Studio Art Course

I have recently been asked by a former cooperating teacher to share my incites about creating an online art class. His department is being asked to do this for their brick and mortar school. So many schools are starting to create blended learning programs within their schools and I decided to share my ideas I'll be presenting to these teachers here as well.

Important Points to Remember

• Set a timeline and due dates-This allows a flexible class to still have structure and keep students on track with their work. See image to the left.
• Provide multiple forms of instruction (written instructions, visuals, student examples, videos)-You should provide everything you would in a traditional classroom but in a digital format. If you were to do a demonstration, make a video. Images of artwork and student examples can really get students interested and communicate the content better.
• Provide multiple forms of assessment (quizzes check reading, project demonstrates mastery, reflection questions show understanding)-I use projects as the biggest form of assessment in my classroom but I find quizzes and written work show another view of what students understand and are taking home from each lesson.
• Simple materials unless provided-Unlike the traditional classroom where you order supplies, in many cases students need to provide their own. Keep it simple when choosing supplies keeping in mind safety and cost.
• Be available for questions-Students need to know they can reach you if they need help by email, telephone, or in person.
• Give feedback for every grade-Written feedback is essential for communicating to students who are working independently about how they can improve or what they are successful at. In my classroom students are also able to make corrections and resubmit work for a better grade. This is something I have found to work well but it is up to you.

Sample Lessons

For a complete look at all the elements I include in the lesson visit my What Does a Lesson Look Like? post.
Here I have provided some images of what the curriculum pages look like in my classroom.

 

Art 1 Sample Lesson

This Art 1 lesson includes many visuals, some vocabulary, and many written instructions for students because this is an introductory course. I also included a video in this lesson to show what it looks like when someone is doing the shading techniques. I encourage students to include objects in their still life that tell a story. For most Art 1 projects they have a week to complete them.

 

Art 5 Sample Lesson

By contrast, this Art 5 lesson includes lesson visuals, more writing, and a project about concept rather than technique. The students in Art 5 should have much more experience in working independently on projects and are working on creating a portfolio for colleges. For Art 5, students have multiple weeks to complete projects but I ask for in progress work checks to provide feedback and direction when needed.

Perks of Live Instruction Time

This year, as with every year there were changes made to the structure of our office hours as high school teachers. While last year I spent about two hours a week in live instruction, this year I spend about five. One day a week I go over the weekly lesson and project and another day a week I offer an informal art critique for students to attend. Last year I did occasional art critiques with my students but not weekly. I have always been able to help foster discussion in these critiques but this year I am noticing students develop into a tight-knit community quickly and they have surpassed the stage of only making positive comments about each other’s work. Now, they also give suggestions to improve a piece of art, something they had previously not done on their own. The big change this year was going from one hour a week for homework help time to three. Three days of the week, I spend an hour each time with my live classroom open for students to “walk in” and get any questions answered. At first, I was skeptical about how many students would attend or how useful it would be and I have been pleasantly surprised. Last year I had one day a week students could attend to get help with their work and rarely had any students attend. With three guaranteed days a week it seems students are able to find time to attend. I am finding that students without working phones or who might be too shy to call me back are not reluctant to come to a live lesson. Today I worked with a student with special needs to get caught up on some missing projects. I reviewed the examples, instructions, and demonstrated some of the techniques we were learning while he drew them on his paper. These opportunities are difficult to have during a lesson day when I have many students attending but they work well in the smaller homework help time. This student was able to correctly complete a drawing using linear perspective and has been using these days to receive one-on-one help from me. I am making a concentrated effort this year to really slow down and get to know each student and I feel I am starting to be successful in this.

Professional Development and Integrating the Arts

Over the last month my colleagues and I have been preparing for our upcoming professional development meeting in October. We are a little bit of a unique school because we have so many teachers that we cannot fit in many venues all together for a PD day. Therefore, our October PD meetings will be taking place in a convention style where teachers sign up for workshops they would like to attend from a large pool of choices. The presentations and workshops come from a variety of categories such as instruction, technology, and engagement. Our art department will be offering a workshop on integrating the arts into different subjects, which is specifically geared to our online curriculum. With teachers being asked to differentiate lessons for different learning needs and styles, and the changes coming in the Common Core standards, it seems that integration is more important than ever. For our presentation we are focusing on providing online resources, specific lesson plans that can be integrated into existing content, and SMART notebook activities that can be used in live instruction to make lessons more visual and interactive. I have focused on Language Arts for my portion of the presentation and I have worked with the Language Arts department to craft several examples of integration specific to their curriculum. I look forward to presenting this information to colleagues at PD and learning from others.

(Re)Learning to Blog

This school year I have joined a community of blogging online educators (http://inacol.wordpress.com/). I am so excited to be a part of a community of teachers who work in an environment similar to my own. This community has provided me with prompts for blog posts to help us learn together. The first prompt is sharing my blog’s purpose. It has been almost a full year since I began blogging here and at the beginning, my purpose was clear. I set out to inform anyone who was interested about what it is like to teach art online. At this point most of my audience was family and friends, many of them teachers, interested in education, or just interested in how on earth I could teach art online. I was writing to start conversations involving the questions people had about online education. I had the traditional educational experience in which I never attended an online school or took an online course and I had plenty of questions about online education before I became an online educator (and of course I still have questions!). Now it is my second year as an online educator and as a blogger and I am re-evaluating the purpose of my blog. I feel I have written about many of the questions people had and as my audience expands my ideas about what to write are changing. I still feel it is valuable to inform readers of the things I am still learning every day and how my online classroom works but I also hope to be a resource to the teachers in the online education community. I hope we can be resources to each other and learn together.