Entry #9:
Going Back to Earlier Entries
April 3rd, 2022
#movingforward
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This next week is my group’s peer teaching lesson— both Monday and Wednesday. It’s’ going to be the longest amount of teaching time I’ve experienced so far. Last semester, we practiced peer teaching with one session, which took up about 1.5 hours. That experience was also one-on-one, and not a whole class of our peers. So this will be very different, a little nerve-wracking, but mostly exciting, especially since I will be doing it all with my two other group members. I could not have worked out such an in-depth lesson, and I’m really thankful for their insight and contributions. I am optimistic about tomorrow, and feel like we are as prepared as we can be. There are so many variables that just cannot be planned, when it comes to class discussions. A lot of our ideation and brainstorming time will depend on how well we can prompt the students to talk and participate. However, the ideas are going to be all up to the students. We will see how it goes!
I’ve had a lot of fun doing the last two weeks of peer teaching lessons, and the first two groups made some really fun art activities. Through group discussions and sharing our final projects, I’ve learned a lot about my fellow classmates. It gave us some time to have fun, move around, and try out new techniques. Even though I don’t consider myself a fan of group projects, I can see how group work really facilitates some well-thought-out final pieces. I will utilize some group work in future lesson plans, and can see how they fit in well with a choice-based classroom. The only framework could be a big idea, and then I could have students approach that idea with a few other classmates. It might help students troubleshoot together, rather than the teacher (aka me,) having to help everyone individually.
For this week’s art journal entry, I decided to start reviewing my own preliminary landscape ink drawings, and choose one to try and push further into a more finished piece. I have quite a few that I really like, but want to test out some watercolor palette options, and figure out what kind of color theme will tie my landscapes together. I picked the first landscape I did as a tester, and like where it’s going so far. Watercolor takes a long time to dry between layers, a while to build up strong tones, and can’t be rushed. The process takes longer than I would like, but I really love some of the random effects you can get with layering the paints. Depending on how this first one goes, I will choose some other colors and pick 2 or 3 more to work on for the next few entries. Eventually, I’ll end up with some finished landscapes, and hopefully my “landscape as metaphor” concept will be easy for a viewer to identify.
