A quote that resonated with me during this week’s reading was “When students complete the main assignment, they can go to a center and work independently on planned activities at a center. Learning centers allow students to be self-motivated and pursue their own art making interests” (Boughton, Freedman, pg 16). Growing up as a naturally independent type of person, I would usually be the type to finish relatively early in comparison to other students, from taking tests to finishing art projects in high school. Since all kids come from different past experiences and learning environments, art educators will always need to have a solution for their students and what they should be focusing on if they finished a project to the best of their capabilities. Of course they cannot exactly skip too far ahead of the class, and the idea of ‘busy work’- work that sounds like exactly what it is- something to keep them busy, usually with little to no meaning is not really helpful in developing a student’s skills further assuming they are ready for the next challenge. I think that having learning centers to accommodate for the farther along students should be available for all grades, but when specifically looking at the pre-k to elementary demographic, it is even more important since projects tend to lean more activity and motor-skill developing based, so students finishing early is a given. So, creating a station or work for them to do that not only interests them, but further advance their skills is helpful and erases the concept of ‘busy work’ that does not challenge their advanced skills or stimulate their creative thinking. Although I did this at a high school level, a type of ‘busy work’ project that my art teacher would have us do if we finished early is a grid collage of sorts (picture below). This concept can be translated to other grades as well where you give students a paper and have them create a grid and either work on small individual drawings or one big drawing that just happens to be divided by a grid. Students can then use the confinements of the grid to devote mixing or practicing with certain materials, as well as teach them how to create multiple compositions or how to plan a large scale drawing. With this as a side project, students who finish early could possibly all sit and work on their grid collages, further developing their skills in other areas. Boughton, D., & Freedman, K. Introduction to Art Education. Elementary Art Education: A Practical Approach to Teaching Visual Culture. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. An example I found online of a grid collage, a side project that students can do if they finish a project early.
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DescriptionPosted here are my reflections from class as well as readings in the textbook, Elementary Art Education: A Practical Approach to Teaching Visual Culture written by Freedman and Boughton.
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