Internship Reflection #4

3) Contents of the lesson

Lesson 2- Environmental Art

I would like to talk about the lesson, environmental art taught by the student teacher, Adair Stokan as my 4^th reflection. I could observe the interesting things going on in the classroom and especially realized, if I diverted ideas a little bit away from traditional tools, mediums or techniques, I could connect arts with anything around us. It could be inspiring and exciting enough to kids for making art.

1.     Direction (Inspired by Adair Stokan)

1.     Collect things from nature such as leaves, flowers, fruits or branches of vegetation, rocks or dirt.  

2.     Chose things and arrange them on the board. Arrangement or composition could be meaningful or not.

3.     Using glue, stick things on the board according to the previous arrangement.

4.     Wait several minutes until the objects are thoroughly fixed on the board.

5.     Cover watery glue on every objects and every part of the board.

6.     Select two color ground tempera cakes 
7.    Spread and pour ground tempera cakes on the board.

2.     Big Idea -Nature

I think the big idea of this lesson is nature. Enjoying various technologies for entertaining, young kids might not think that things from nature are interesting enough. They could easily ignore the value of nature since they couldn’t have meaningful experiences with nature things. I believe, through this lesson, they might realize that even though the stuffs are not special or unique but frequently ignorable, they could be effectively used for making meaning and turn into fabulous art if there’s artist’s intention.     

3.     Objective

I believe the objective of this class is to:

Think about the value of nature

Discuss every life’s circulation

Feel nature differently

Have keen senses about familiar things

Realize everything around us could turn into art

Make meaning by arranging or composing objects

4.     Student’s examples

While presenting, the teacher showed various images which could attract students’ attention as well as motivate them to make art. Environmental artists’ works gave great impression not only to students but also to me. They adopted mediums from nature and then, create totally new things or build something which could be in harmony with nature. It was inspiring enough. When the teacher showed the examples at the end of presentation, students gave an exclamation of surprise because they got to know the works were made by 2years old kids. I was astonished too. 

After that, I could also see students enjoying doing the work and it didn’t look like the work is too challenging since they dealt with familiar stuffs. One moment that made me smiled is when I found several girls gathered and saying “Where did you get that? Wow, that’s so pretty. Can you share with me please?” They were watching another girl in the same table arranging by using special kind of fruits. Discovering something outside the classroom and collecting own materials effectively inspired their enthusiasm about making art.     

This lesson was also suitable to this time of the year. Fall is not too hot or cold so students can enjoy outside activities and things from nature are more various and colorful this time than other seasons. Even if it is a great lesson content, I could find some weaknesses when compared with the host teacher’s lesson in terms of teaching strategy. The student teacher focused mostly on the obligations strongly related to the designated art making so she missed important moments to teach new things such as new words and skipped having a deep conversation to motivate students. The host teacher usually provides a chance for students to learn language things through having them guess what the word means and having a great conversation based on sharing the experiences. Through this process, students might not only have better understanding about language but also, based on this, develop their ability to understand and create art.