6M- I had students write some reflection today. This group lost collage a couple of weeks ago, and since earning it back, they have been exceedingly careful to clean up well afterwards.... Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the written responses to the two questions I asked. It was pretty easy and straightforward, I think. I just asked them to choose a piece of art and tell me about it, and then to tell me if they think there's anything that could make choosing better, and how they feel about choosing. Some kids wrote great explanations about their work, and the overwhelming consensus on choices was that they want more choices. I told them we will open up Painting first thing after break. This group of students has a history of being banned from painting last year. I told them, and I think I have demonstrated that I will not hesitate to take the materials away, so hopefully, everything will go smoothly. Studio time was great, and clean up went smoothly. I am pleasantly surprised by the response to Choice in this class. I guess we're starting to get over the initial "panic" phase of choosing...

4D- First day of opening Collage for this group, and also discussed tracking Choices. Things went pretty smoothly. This is a very creative group, and they want to build stuff- they immediately started building scenes with paper. I told them that if it can fit safely in their folder it's okay... that rule was bent in a serious way! I really have a hard time telling them not to make a certain thing! It doesn't seem fair...

2W- Played Art Detective with this group for the first time. They did fairly well. I still almost think that the first graders I did this with did the best so far... but they did well enough. Past couple of weeks, I don't know where this class went with clean up, but we need to have a discussion before the start of next class. I told them that Painting would be closed next time because people didn't take care of materials....

5Ru- This class has a group of 5 or so negative nellies. Drives me CRAZY. I held the group back after class and told them that they're on their way to a 1 for art this term and I need to see some drastic changes.

3Sp- We made folders and handed back work. Things are starting to look a little different with more classes making folders and having Choice.

too many snow days and tons of other crazy stuff in life going on.... I'm just going to update today and let my notes from my planbook help me for the past week or so.

5M- We talked about more possibilities for Collage. Using negative space, overlapping, using pieces of paper to make a larger shape, tearing edges instead of cutting, and wrapping/weaving paper around each other. This class is super creative. I think every single student is already pretty deeply involved in a project, many lasting more than one class period. I need to get some pictures of what's going on over there. This group especially takes a lot of pride in their work, and loves to tell me about it when it's in progress or finished.

6Fz- Probably one of the best classes so far with this, sometimes trying for me, group. We talked about the same collage stuff as the 5th graders had. I have had one student in this class who has been "working with" other students a lot. I finally told the student today that she needed to be making work. She started working on a project and seems enthusiastic about it. I feel like maybe it's one of those situations where the student didn't expect their work to come out so well, and now that it is she's surprising herself.

Schedule change this afternoon to accommodate an observation for my mentoring.

1L- Probably the worst observation I've ever had. Actually, definitely the worst. I'm trying to figure out what the best thing is to do to introduce the littler grades to fibers. I read online that really young kids should be able to do simple finger knitting, so I thought this might be more successful than the god's eyes. Nope, Fail. Several kids were able to successfully figure it out. In the future, this needs to be a small group project, then those in the small group can teach others who want to learn. Blargh.

KD- We played Art Detective with Seurat's The Circus, and they had a painting or drawing choice. It went well. At the end, we handed back clay projects from the last couple of weeks.

1N- Went over glazing. I put a hold on Cardboard Construction for this week, and instead many kids did clay building or glazing. They were very loud. But it was kind of funny, because everything they were talking about was having to do with their work. I had a hard time telling them we had to have silent art because it was just deafening, but it was the only way to get the volume down.

Anyway- craziness in life this week coupled with the most chaotic observation ever makes me not very verbose....