Transitions in the Artroom: Hands-On Demo, pt. 2

In my first post about the hands-on demo part of your class structure, I explained how I got everyone in place and ready to learn - Whew!

Now it's time to start the demo - On my demo table, all the materials the kids will use that day are laid out. I have labels, if necessary, spelling the terms (and simple definitions) for the students so they connect the written word to the object - crayons, oil pastel, paintbrush, tooling foil, brayer, etc. Start your demo going over this media vocabulary as well as the terms for the technique/standard/principle/element that day. The final 30+ years of my teaching career was spent with a HIGH percentage of English Language Learners at school. Chances are the only place those kids are going to see some of these words are in your classroom! Have a word wall to post these words as you introduce them to your groups and keep the words up year-round. Categorize the vocabulary by grade level but you'll be exposing everyone!

If time permits, create step-by-step examples ahead of demos. I prefer to only introduce one step per class - by the time we make it through all the components of a class, there may be only 10 - 20 minutes of hands-on project time. Always review what was done in previous classes (because somebody has been absent or you gained a new student or two). These examples help in a pinch for those kids who show up on the last day of a six part/class project. Give them an example to finish and they can jump in & gain exposure to using the media while working alongside the others! Grades are optional if they did less than half the steps by themselves. It gives you a glimpse of their visual and listening skills - file the info away for future projects.

As a project approaches the end of the process or when you won't be introducing a new step, use the demo time to critique in-progress student work. Use student work from a different class. So, projects from A group in 5th grade are critiqued by B group in 5th grade. Choose 3 examples - 'A', 'B' and 'C' work. With each artwork, have students point out what's working and what needs improvement. Teach respectful comments and do NOT reveal the student names of the work being analyzed. The goal here is for students to reflect on their own work once it's passed out. Hopefully, they will use the discussion to guide their choices when completing their assignments.

When time's up for the demo, you need to quickly transition to the next activity - passing out supplies. After calling table helpers to the distribution area to wait for your directions, dismiss the standing students first - reminding them to walk to their places. Seated students go next once traffic clears then finally students at the demo tables put tables back into the correct area & everybody except helpers are seated in their places - Ta Da!

Art Table Helpers

You've read here before how I prefer to appoint one person as a helper for each of my table groups. My room is s-m-a-l-l so I don't want everyone and their dog wandering around during clean-up time. I have found that most behavior issues arise during transition times so I prefer to have most kids in their seats while giving helpers specific directions on how to clean up in a timely way.

Anywho...there are always a few who take it on themselves to 'help' the helpers so I was inspired this summer to identify those who should be out of their seats and those who should not. I was shopping at my fave, Treasures 4 Teachers and found blue, printed lanyards in the stuff-a-bag-for-$5 section that seemed just the ticket!

So I tried them out our first week back & the kids felt really special wearing them but...the lanyards didn't 'look right' to me. The curse we carry with us - for something to earn a place in our rooms, 'it' has to 'look right' - right?!

So, I tried sewing a 'sleeve' of patterned fabric over the printed lanyard which was more artsy looking. But it was too time-consuming and my sons (ages 19,23 & 26) said they were too 'girly'.

So then I crocheted a rainbow of cotton yarn over the blue fabric but again was told by my boys that NO boys would ever want to wear them so back to the drawing board!

By now I was thinking of making/sewing my own lanyard with ribbon and keychain rings. Fortunately, I was able to find a rainbow (color wheel) grosgrain ribbon at JoAnn's fabric store.

The tags needed to be able to withstand constant pulling, licking, chewing, etc. so I cut up some of my valuable plastic trays.

I cut the table numbers out of scraps of wallpaper or magazine pages and used book binding tape to secure it all together. The 3-hole power punch in the office was used to punch a hole in the top.

I installed a row of hooks on the side of a cabinet to hold all the lanyards when not in use.

After a week of classes, I can say that it is a rousing success on many levels. The kids take pride that they have something the others do not. The students can easily identify who their helper is that day. I can easily identify who's missing when I'm giving clean-up directions as well as who's wandering when they shouldn't be...

But I still may tweek them a little, I'm thinking about making the numbers more brightly colored - they don't seem quite 'right' yet...