Field assignments

Name: Emma Moran

School: Hall HIgh Teacher: N/A

City/Town West Hartford

Date of Field Experience: 9/22-11/2 Hours of Observation: all day

Grade level: High School - all levels Type of School: City Suburb Town Rural

Number of Students in the class: 26, 25, 27

List any special features of the school or classroom setting (e.g. charter, co-teaching,
bilingual, themed magnet) that affect teaching.

Hall high school has a very diverse student population- there are a number of ELL
students in all my courses, and I also teach a Visual Arts Concepts class that is half
special needs students half mainstreamed students. The classrooms are large, but so
are the class sizes; which makes it rather crowded. There was low enrollment in both
Ceramics 2 and Painting 2, so they merged them with the lower level classes. I am
teaching Ceramic 1 and 2 and Painting 1 and 2 simultaneously, in the same room. This
proves challenging when trying to give new assignments to the students because ¾ of
the students are doing one thing, and the rest of the class is doing something else; they
end up comparing themselves to their peers that are at the higher level, which I have
noticed to cause some students to feel self-conscience and lose confidence in their
abilities.
Discuss the variety of learners in the class, including students who need
accommodations and modifications for instruction.

I have a variety of classes:

Painting 1&2: There are three ELL students in this class, who have difficulty
understanding more complex directions. I need to reiterate directions to them individually
in more simplistic language, every time I assign something new. Further, there is one girl
who is very new to English, only Spanish is spoken at home. I have been able to
communicate with her using my basic spanish skills and google translate for the more
complicated words. I also have a behavioral special needs student in this class, who
presents as high functioning socially, but in reality can only read and write at a 3rd grade
level. For assignments in this class, I have had to adapt them to make them more
simplistic and achievable for her, and reframe the assignment using terminology that is
accessible to her. She is easily distracted and constantly needs to be redirected towards
doing her studio work.

Visual Arts Concepts: This class is composed of all students with varying abilities. I
have to do a lot of differentiation in this course, depending on the assignment. I have a
number of students who are unable to use paint, so for the painting assignments I have
to modify them so those students can use either tempera sticks, which work well for
most of them, or fat markers. I have one student who is mentally and physically unable
to hold anything other than a marker, and needs assistance in placing it on the page and
making marks. For him, it was necessary to have a para assisting him with all of the
assignments; so I was able to give instructions to her as I explained them to the rest of
the class, and she was able to adjust them accordingly. Additionally, I had many
students who couldn’t grasp abstract concepts, so most of our projects were centered on
very basic concepts such as pattern, repetition, shapes and colors. I had to modify many
of the assignments to make them accessible to the lowest functioning students in the
class by simplifying them, but also offering slightly more difficult versions for the very
high functioning students in the class.

Ceramics: I taught three different sections of ceramics, but I will focus on the sections
that I taught in period 3 and period 5. In period 3, I had the same behavioral student that
I had for period 1 painting, so she required the same level of assistance and attention in
ceramics. Other than her, my period 3 class was relatively easy in regards to
accommodations needed. I had two students join the class late, so i had to spend extra
time with them getting them up to speed on the skills that their peers had already
learned, and exempt them from some of the assignments that were not achievable time
wise. For period 5, I had one student who was so incredibly anxious that he had trouble
starting any of the assignments, and required lots of hand holding. I needed to make
sure that during every studio work period I went over to him first and reviewed exactly
what he would do in the class period, otherwise he would shut down and not get any
work done. I also had another student who was an ELL and had trouble understanding
the directions for assignments, but he was embarrassed and did not want to admit to me
that he didn’t know what to do. This proved particularly challenging because I did not
realize that he had no idea what was going on until I looked at one of his brainstorming
sheets and noticed that he was copying from one of his classmates, but he was on a
different page than they were so his responses made no sense. After that, I had to work
with him more closely to explain the assignments again, but in a way that didn’t make
him feel singled out which was challenging. I ended up being able to use one of his
classmates' assignments as an example to help show him what needed to be done, and
paired him up with a willing peer who was able to walk him through the steps without
making him feel inadequate.

The classroom:

Describe features and arrangement of the classroom, materials, and equipment

available for use.

The painting classroom (where VAC and Painting take place):

Large, well lit classroom with 30 desks arranged in rows. Projector at the front of the
class with all desks point at it, along with a speaker system and an Elmo document
projector.

Ceramics classroom:

Large well lit room with nice windows, 3 rows of 4 tables, 8 pottery wheels, 3 kilns, a slab
roller, wedging table, pug mill, extruder. All necessary clay tools for creating pottery,
except only a limited number of fettling knives and needle tools so the kids had to share.
(I would hand out and collect the needle tools and knives at the beginning and end of
every class period).

List other resources (e.g. electronic whiteboard, hands-on materials, online resources,
art posters, images, and/or materials for art production) used in this lesson.

Projectors in both rooms. Chrome book carts available for student use in both rooms,
although the wifi was very slow. The lesson materials for most class periods was
provided for me by the ceramics teacher at Conard, and I was able to tailor it to my class
and post it on google classroom. All the classes had their own google classroom where I
posted assignments and they submitted them, which I then was able to use to grade
them. Then I had to transfer the grades to powerschool.

Identify any textbook or instructional program used primarily for visual art instruction.
n/a

How much time is devoted each week to visual arts instruction for the selected class?

Each class meets once daily for 43 minutes M, T, TH, F and 30 minutes on W.

Visual Arts Concepts meets 2x per week, for 40 min, alternating days (for the special ed
students). The mainstream students attend class daily following the aforementioned
schedule.

The teacher:(professional background, philosophy, manner with students, etc.)

n/a It’s me! Graduate student, teaching experience from month long high school
ceramics camp.

The lesson: Second lesson: Monochromatic Paintings

How does the teacher connect the lesson to concepts and ideas, as well as skills and
techniques?

The lesson connects the skills of layering watercolors to the concept to the lesson
because the technique and skills are critical to being able to execute the concept.

Discuss the central focus and key concepts of the lesson.

-The students will be able to create the illusion of atmospheric perspective in their
monochromatic landscape painting through the use of receding color values.

Discuss the standards covered within this lesson and how the chosen lesson/instruction
supports the development of students’ abilities to achieve these standards.

VA:Cr2.1.IIa Through Experimentation, practice, and Persistence, Demonstrate

acquisition of skills and knowledge in a chosen art form.

The students are experiomenting and practing with watercolor techniques in the lesson
to understand how to create the desired atmospheric effect before moving on to their
final piece.
Describe how the teacher provides opportunities for student choice within the lesson,
promoting individuality and originality in their personal work.

-The students could choose what color they wanted to work with

Explain how the teacher’s instruction builds on prior learning.

-The last lesson used watercolor paints to investigate color schemes of warm cool
tertiary and secondary colors; this is building more technical skills with the medium as
well as expanding on the investigation of color schemes.

Supply Organization

-The students each have a painting bag that has a palette, watercolor paints, brushes,
and a cup in it. THey also have sketchbooks which they worked in for this assignment

Distribution of materials:

-The students have their own materials that they keep in their cubbies so nothing is
shared or distributed

How did the teacher elicit student responses, promote thinking, and/or help students
develop their abilities to express or understand meaning through interpreting art,
developing works of art, and/or relating to art context?

-this was a skill building aticivity, so I constantly checked in with students to make sure
they knew the goal of the lesson and what they were going to do. I had them point out
the layers and color value variation in examples on the board before and after working.
Classroom management techniques:

Describe management techniques that contributed to effective teaching. Include

discipline management and/or expectations for behavior. How were behavior
expectations conveyed to students (i.e. rules in room)?

-Students stayed in assigned seats, and were reminded to do so if they got up and
started to wander. Only two students can sign out for bathroom at a time

In what ways did the teacher promote a positive learning environment?

- I walked around and gave constructive criticism while the students were working,
and held up examples of students who were doing well to show their classmates
who were struggling to grasp the concept. I allowed the students to restart if they
felt they hadn’t done their best before submitting to google classroom.

Monitoring Student Learning:

Discuss how the teacher assessed student learning throughout the lesson. What kinds of
questions did you hear being used during one on one instruction?

-I had the students remind me what the color scheme was called, and asked how they
were showing atmospheric perspective. Formative assessment by walking around and
checking work while the students painted; summative assessment when the students
submitted their paintings to google classroom.

Clean-up procedures employed:

-The students were given 4 minutes to wash their brushes and palettes and put them
back in their cubbies; paintings were labeled and put on the drying racks
Closure:

What closure techniques were used to effectively review instruction? If no Closure was
observed, what may have contributed to the teacher’s inability to use Closure?

- I had two students hold up their paintings and other students identify the lightest
and darkest areas, and where they were in relation to foreground middle ground
and background.

Critical Incident Description (Can be negative or positive. Describe the main factor
affecting the students' learning during this lesson.)

-There is one student in this class who did the painting backwards; he is an ELL student
and sits in the middle row and must have had trouble grasping the assignment. When I
noticed that he was establishing the darkest hue in the background, I brought over my
exemplar and rexplained the concept to him until he was able to repeat back to me what
areas should be lightest and darkest. He was then able to restart and complete the
assignment correctly.

Reflection. Analysis (Why did the Critical Incident happen? What factors contributed?
Lesson structure, teacher's attitude, special circumstances, etc.?)

-He is an ELL student and I think some of the language confused him. I could have
provided translations or written the language on the slideshow and pulled it up on a
chromebook right in front of him to help clarify.

If you were teaching this class, what would you have done differently? Evaluation

N/A i was teaching :)