Educator:

Name of Artifact:

Katelin (Phelps) Serna

Literacy in the classroom

Date Collected:

5/2/2016

Domain:

2B. Establishing a culture for learning

The art room is not only a place to learn about and make art but is an environment for
students to always be learning. I strive to create a culture for learning in my classroom so my
students realize that just because we are in art doesnt mean that is all we are learning.
There are constantly opportunities to learn. For this domain I thought a great example of
how I establish a culture for learning was to focus on some of the other areas of learning that
we encounter in the art room.
For this domain I included ways that we incorporate literacy in the classroom. The first is our
word wall. Just like many elementary classrooms have I have included a word wall in our
classroom. This wall features the vocab we cover each year in each grade. This allows
students to remember their vocabulary and the artists they learn about while also seeing
how often they reuse and relearn terms, concepts, and techniques in art. It also functions as
a phenomenal visual aid as the word wall goes from being empty to jam packed with
vocabulary terms by the end of each school year. The second is our artists map. This is new
this school year. As I would introduce new artists I found students were curious to learn where
they came from and at times werent familiar with where some countries were. I thought a
great learning tool would be to use a map and to visually trace the artists to where they
came from. This provides my students will map literacy. We discuss the countries, the
continents they are on, and what other artists we have learned about are from similar areas.
Not only are my students learning/reviewing how to read a map but they are making
connections between the artists they have learned about each year.
I decided to talk about these types of learning rather than art because I think they help to
make my students art learning experience more unique and helps to make my students more
well-rounded students.