Miss Art of Teaching

During period 6 today, my co-worker sat in my class to observe my lesson. It is a requirement that the head teacher sits in on one of our classes and that everyone in the faculty takes turn observing one another. Feedback is then documented on BlueSky and given to the teacher verbally. This helps us to reflect and improve on our pedagogy. The lesson observation was based on my period 6 Year 11 Visual Arts class.  The focus of the lesson is based on the short documentary: Jim Carrey: I Needed Colour.  Read up this blog post to understand the lesson's content:  Lesson idea: Jim Carrey I changed a few things in the lesson. I started off the lesson by showing students a few examples of Jim Carrey's artwork without revealing the artist. Students worked in groups to write down whether they liked the artwork. We then had a class discussion and they were required to explain their choices. I then showed them the YouTube video. Afterward, we talked about how the docum...

I'm always on Facebook and Instagram but for the right reasons. I love looking at what other teachers are doing. They become my source of inspiration. The purpose of my blog is to reflect on my own teaching practice and to share resources. Some ideas of mine are original and others have been borrowed or modified to suit my own classroom. There is so much to learn from one another. I'll use my lesson from today as an example of how I used what I learnt from social media. Year 11 (Senior students) Visual Arts: FIRST INSPIRATION  I joined the 'High School TAB' American Facebook page recently (just yesterday) and even though the system in America is different to Australia, I was still able to get A LOT of ideas! First, I found a blog post about 'Creating a High School Schedule and Culture in My TAB Classroom'. The teacher shared her methods of organising her lesson structures in advance. I was interested in how she experiments with assessment to help push...

I've been thinking of ways to make theory more fun AND to encourage class participation when it comes to discussion time. I don't want the same students to be giving me the answers. I want the whole class to contribute. What works: I downloaded the free PDF file from 'Expressive Monkey' on Teachers Pay Teachers. The resource is called 'Ping Pong Art Critique'. It provides a list of 32 questions to help facilitate class discussions on ANY piece of artwork. For example: -What title would you give this art? -What feeling or emotion did the artist create? -Where did the artist create contrast? -Does this art tell a story? -What would you change about this art? -Would you display this art in your house? Why? Why not? You can either purchase real ping pong balls and write the questions on top or simply print and laminate the resources. I decided to save money and go with the second option. I passed out one ping pong ball per st...