Skip to main content

Starting a New School Year

This year, my room has undergone a number of transformations. My Home and School Organization was generous enough to replace my tables and stools. In addition to replacing my existing tables, they bought extra so we now have two tables set aside as flexible work stations. One of those is raised to the height of a standing desk for those kids who prefer to work studying up. My old supply table now sits by the sinks and it is a dedicated messy station for those kids who want to add a little ab ex to their project or when we are printmaking etc.

Of course no such good fortune can happen without some bumps along the way. Initially after the order was approved, there was a miscommunication about who would actually place the order. Consequently we did not order any tables until July. At that point, School Specialty was no longer an option as end of summer is their busy season and the tables I had selected would not be available for about two months. Thankfully, I thought to check Amazon who had something similar in stock and delivered within days (all but one anyways). I decided to get work benches for my classroom. I love an industrial look, but the butcher block top adds just a little bit of warmth to it. Also, since it's real wood, we can always just sand an refinish the tables if something happens to them. With a solid steel frame, and the weight of these tables, I don't have issues with tables wobbling, kids kicking them and shaking the table (which we all know can lead to some serious arguments as someone's drawing is ruined by a shaken table). Here is what I got:


In addition to the new furniture, I always like to start the year with a project that lets kids take ownership over the classroom. I have found that a great way to do that is with a large scale paper mache project. I start building an armature with my first classes. We just use the supply boxes and scrap paper taped together to construct the form.

Then classes start to do paper mache. Each class builds off the work of the students before them. It's a good lesson in team building and compromise as kids work to figure out their priorities for the project and recognize the contributions of others. It is also, convenient because it takes very little instruction to get kids going (which is nice after they spend the first half of class discussing procedures and expectations). It's also a good project because kids start off the year getting a little messy which is always fun and sets the a positive tone while also giving me an opportunity to work on clean up procedures with them on day one.

Last year we made a giant flying saucer. The year before that, we made a castle that occupied about 20% of the room. This year, we are making a pirate ship. In allowing students to take the lead in planning things, I have found some delightful surprises. Kids decided they wanted to make animals on and around the ship. One student had a brilliant bit of inspiration and suggested the captain of the ship should be a peg legged parrot with a tiny pirate on its shoulder.

This is why we need to empower kids to take the lead in their education. They have brilliant ideas just waiting for the opportunity to come to life. It has been two wonderful days of classes, and the project is coming along wonderfully. After three more days, I will have seen every class once, and the project should be done. I will post more pictures after it is completed.




Now that the pirate ship is done, here are some updated photos of the ship and the classroom with all my nice new furniture.

Here is the finished paper cache pirate ship students built in my classroom. Each class built off of the previous class's work and after a week, we went from scraps of cardboard and tape to a full ship.
 
The captain of our vessel is a peg legged part with a pirate on his/her shoulder.
I think we can all agree cupcake canons are the greatest thing we never realized we needed.
Students could never seem to agree if it should be an octopus, squid or kraken, but everyone seemed on board with the idea of a giant sea creature crawling up the side of our ship.
With new tables and stools, this is by far the nicest my classroom has ever looked.
       

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weaving with Monotypes

I have been doing a lot of clay and other messy projects lately, so I thought what better than printmaking to get my tables clean at the end of the day. I started by teaching my first graders a little bit about suminagashi, the Japanese paper marbling technique. Suminagashi translates to floating ink and it can create wonderful, vibrant marbled papers. While this was a great inspiration for our process, it wasn't a technique I believed the average first grade student could master. I also took inspiration from Helen Frankenthaler's "soak and stain" method of abstract expressionism. For this project, students started by making monotypes. I sprayed all the tables, and students painted in the puddles, then they pressed their papers to the paint. Essentially they were using the tables like giant stamps. The result was wonderful prints that seemed somewhat marbled, and somewhat like color field paintings. Each student made three prints this past week. One print was made up ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Make a Clay Maraca

My kindergarten students study Mexico as a part of their social studies curriculum. Early in the school year, we make pinch pots, and this video shows how we can build off the basic pinch pot project to make a maraca. It is a fun project that makes cross-curricular connections with both Social Studies and Music. Students learn about how a maraca produces sound, how to work with clay to prevent pieces from sticking together and they learn a bit of science (#STEAM) as we discuss what happens to clay and paper in the kiln. Students need to understand that clay will shrink by about 10% as it dries out but that the paper will burn causing smoke and that gasses will expand as they are heated. If the exterior is shrinking while gasses on the interior are trying to expand, it will cause the sculpture to blow up and that is why they need to poke a few holes in their maracas to allow smoke to vent out. Kindergarten students are able to handle about 90% of this project without much proble...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do I Really Wanna Know

As my school year winds down, I try to take a little time to reflect on my year. I try to do this while things are still fresh. Things are so fresh in fact, I still have another week and a half left in school. While this time of year is crazy and so many kids are checked out, i thought it might be nice to get feedback from students on all of the changes i have made this year. Of course when I think of all the work I've put into those changes, the natural question becomes "do I really want to know students opinions?" The natural answer all of us are taught to say is yes, of course we want feedback from all stakeholders and students should have a say in their education. Of course that sounds good in theory, but in practice, it can be much harder. Realistically, it is hard not to take it personally when a kid says they don't like the system you set up. I wouldn't want to gather data as a show of valuing student opinions while they feel pressure to compliment me, so ...
Post a Comment
Read more