Observation Three History

Andrea Noall Professor Mark McGuire Art Education 4300 19 March 2019 Observation Assignment Three In High Point’s art classroom, Katie uses a variety of teaching strategies and instructional methods in her classroom. Many of her teaching strategies involve discussion, guided discovery, seat work, and cooperative learning. By using attention-getting devices such as “fast five” and using little sayings to help reiterate information, she is able to help the students remember information in a fun and memorable manner. By animating her actions and showing enthusiasm for the activities, she keeps the students attention and helps them remain focused on their task. By gesturing, changing the intonation of her voice, and incorporating the use of displays and technology, she provides varying teaching strategies that are effective and useful. If the students are struggling to pay attention, she will start by having the students give her a “fast five” to measure their attentiveness. If some students are still not paying attention, she will ask them to consider their behavior and stay on task. If students are still unwilling to give their full attention or are fidgeting too much, she will stop completely and inform them that she is disappointed in their actions and needs them to focus. For one of the class periods I observed, Katie was teaching first graders how to use watercolor paint for the first time. She began the class by having the students watch a short video about the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. Afterwards, she had the students surround the demo table to demonstrate how water colors work. She used phrases to help the

students remember tips and tricks such as, “lot of water, little bit of paint.” After the demo, she had the students begin their own landscape. Numerous times throughout the class period, the students were saying the saying themselves and solving their own problems when they had trouble covering an entire page with the watercolor paint. The students were creating Japanese cherry blossom tree landscapes with watercolor backgrounds. As the class period wore on, she talked about blending the horizon, making variations, and taking a unique approach to the subject. The students had a lot of fun with this assignment and were very excited about how the water colors worked. As time drew short, Katie informed the students how much time they had left until cleanup. Once cleanup time began, she reminded students to help each other clean up and to take care of the room. After cleaning up, she gave a brief overview of what they would be doing with the project next week. During this class period, Katie used a variety of teaching strategies to help introduce a topic. By incorporating the video, she introduced the topic in a fun and engaging way that excited the students and gave them background information. Through the demo, she catered to students who need step-by-step instructions when she engaged in the guided discovery by showing students how watercolor paints work. Through recitation such as, “lot of water, little bit of paint” the students were easily able to remember how to “activate” their brushes and experiment with colors. At their seats, the students worked together to help each other and inspire one another. One student discovered that if they hold the paper up, the water drips down the page. This was the best part of the class because this discovery lit up every child’s face and changed their landscapes completely.

Overall, Katie incorporated many teaching strategies and useful tools to introduce a topic to the students. Her use of discovery, questioning, and experiments offered an eye opening class that made the students excited about their work, and sad when it was time to clean up.