Miss Art of Teaching

The rock painting stall was a success! I ran the stall during Multicultural day. The purpose of the stall was to get as many rocks painted for the school decorative rock pathway. There was a huge turnout from the school community. We had students, teachers, staff and parents/carers joining in.  To prepare for the day, I... 1. Asked for donations from Flower Power and Bunnings. They donated rocks and a can of natural sealer (to protect the paint from rain, hail and shine!) 2. Sought funding to purchase permanent markers, posca markers and paint. 3. Asked Year 7-10 students in my classes to wash, dry and paint a based layer using exterior house paint. 4. Sorted out the rocks by colour. 5. Made teacher samples and asked every student in my class to make a few designs. 6. Advertised about the rock painting stall on the school Facebook, school newsletter, on assembly, Year 7 meeting and through word of mouth. 7. Asked Year 7 students to help make promotional posters and instru...

I am a huge believer on rewarding students and I try my best to get donations rolling into our school system. Over the past two years, I have been speaking to local businesses in person, sending out emails, letters and even asking for donations from the school community (via school Facebook and email). Sometimes we get monetary donations, other times we get tangible prizes. I try to be creative as well and ask if teachers are willing to provide services such as baking a cake, wearing a onesie, being a note taker.... If you want to know more about the different prizes, please remember to check out my links at the bottom of this blog post. This is the letter that I have been sending out to local companies: Dear I’d like to introduce myself, and outline the purpose of this letter. My name is Miss Kwan, and I am a High School Teacher at X High School. We are seeking funds to keep our school online rewards system running. Alternatively, you can provide merchandise to be placed i...

My students got creative and covered a lot of areas in my room with the contact donations. We probably went overboard. Initially we only wanted to cover the shelves but seeing that my demountable is more than 40 years old and never had a face lift in it's time, we experimented. If the time comes and we get the funding to paint over it, then we can easily peel off the 'contact sticker sheet'. We still have a number of areas to cover but at the moment it covers a lot of old vandalism (before my time) and a hole in the wall.

I might be overly excited about getting ready for work. I was shopping in Kmart today and saw a number of parents getting their children ready for school. My aim today was to visit Kmart and grab as many gold coins as possible from the party section. The gold coins are sold as a packet of 36 for $2. I was not after the typical plastic coins with the dollar sign, I was after a particular coin set with the words 'I was caught being good!' I am planning to use them as part of my positive behaviour learning strategy. It will be my own reward system in the Art classroom. I envision that every time a student works well, I will give them a gold coin. The coin does not leave the classroom, but contributes to the class jar. There will be little prizes along the way, but when the jar is full, a bigger reward will be provided. This new reward system is something I want to do personally for my students. It is a system on top of my whole school 'Vivo' reward system. The s...