A few Friday’s ago we wrapped up our studio choice challenge and our state testing. Here are some thoughts on how it went, along with how I might go forward with the project in the future.
Student Reflections: The last day was spent on reflection. Students needed to select ONE work of art that best showed their growth and learning during the 5 weeks of the challenge. They are then grading that on a rubric. For the artwork they are looking at Student shows Skill with Media Chosen, Student Shows Creativity and Student explains skills learned. For the Artistic Behaviors they are looking at Artists Develop Art Making Skills, Artists Solve Problems and Artists take care of materials. Â After scoring themselves and their art on the provided rubrics, they need to answer a question about problem solving and describe some of the skills they learned to support how they scored themselves on the artistic behavior rubric. REFLECTION_studiochallenge
Next Time: I need to help kids better understand the difference between the experiments to learn new techniques and a WOW piece that is a finished work of art, along with how to balence time between these two types of art making. Many kids turned in a basic experiment (like a value scale) for their final work of art. So I think I did not make myself clear on what I wanted.
Plus I think I tend to over complicate my reflections and need to simplify it. A few kids chose the boost to upload a work of art to artsonia and reflect there. I think I just need to make that a requirement and skip having them reflect on paper. But that means a day in the computer lab to realistically get them to all upload and reflect on the same day.
I also think 5 weeks and 150 points was too much and too long. Shorter periods between grading and less stuff/points needed for that grade would keep kids on track. I thought my point check in days did that, but it didn’t.
Here are a few student thoughts on what new skills they learned:
- “being sloppy isn’t good”
- “A rough draft can really come in handy, but sometimes you can just draw out of your heart!”
- “A new technique (I learned) is to always have lots of paint on the brush.”
Here are some student thoughts on problem solving:
“When I was doing the expert level in painting, since my painting was in the ocean, I tried to do a mermaid tail but it didn’t look like one. Instead of a mermaid tail it is now a monster tounge eating a fish.”
“I accidentally dripped paint on one of my projects, but after looking at the mistake I created a story to my painting.” (to include the drip)
I am still grading and reflecting on the process and thinking of ways to simplify and refine it for next year, so you will hear more on this unit.
What are your thoughts on getting kids to self-grade and reflect? How important is it and do you use it to grade them?
