I was so excited to teach my first art lesson last Wednesday.
After visiting her 5th graders at Alpine Elementary, I was so impressed with Mrs. Washburn's class and her teaching skills. The students are so excited to make art! While I was there observing, students kept coming to the back of the class where I was sitting and handing me little notes telling me how much they love art.
I got to the school about 15 minutes early. Even though I have taught several lessons before, I felt very very nervous. I had printed out my lesson plan and reviewed it a dozen times. Before that, I had worked and reworked my lesson plan. Teaching elementary school students is much different than teenagers and adults! With help from my mentor, Molly Neeves, I was able to get an idea of the things I needed to be prepared for... Such as giving an outline of events before beginning the lesson, giving detailed instructions on how to do an assignment and how it should look and shouldn't look, and how to handle art materials for 30+ students WHILE teaching.
Even though I was nervous, as soon as I got up in front of the class to start teaching, I kind of lost my fear and was just happy to be there. All of the students were so excited and engaged. We did a color experiment, where I gave students red, yellow, blue, white, and black paint, and asked them to make as many colors as they could for 15 minutes. Everyone was so excited! I gave an additional challenge to students who finished early to create a new color they had never seen and to give it a name. Having a class of 30+ students with painting going on is a LOT of work.. I was constantly walking around, helping, giving encouragement, and cleaning up little messes. Many students kept calling me over to see the awesome colors they were creating!
One boy exclaimed while painting, "Why have I been playing video games every day after school? This is WAY more fun!" Ah it made me so happy.
We also had a discussion about how color influences art. We looked as several artists such as Matisse, Rothko, Mondrian, and Picasso. We had a great discussion about color, and several students gave their opinions about Rothko- whether they liked his paintings or did not and why.
Last, we learned the basics of the color wheel, and then each student painted their own color wheel.
I had such an awesome experience. I felt good about my lesson and I also noticed several things I could do better- such as set expectations for handling paint (what is ok and what is not ok), and giving directions before making art on how we will clean up when class is over. These things, and more, I will definitely implement into my next lesson!