Time for grading!!!

Well, it's that time of the year again, the time that all teacher just love and look forward to with excitingly beating hearts... (note the sarcasm!). It's the end of the first nine weeks here in Metro, and it is time to grade all of the children's artwork. After years of lugging stuff home and spending my entire weekend sorting and trying to figure out whose paper is it that doesn't have their name on it, I decided that I was not going to waste my weekends again. So a few years ago, I came up with this method of easy grading that ensures that no artwork is dragged home with me and that the no-name papers are taken care of as well. First of all, I do not grade throughout the nine weeks at all, I grade only at the end. I take the last week of the nine weeks and call it "Catch-up Week". After explaining to the children that this is not the stuff that we put on our french fries, I pass back all of their artwork (the ones with their names on it). The papers without name go in a pile on the floor by the trash can. On the board I write down a list of the projects that we completed and that I am grading, so that if they are missing something they can search the pile by the trash. I then give them the first half of the class time to finish any projects that were not quite done, and to check their craftsmanship. Halfway through the class, I start walking around and grade their artwork. In MNPS, for elementary students we are required to grade with an E-S-N grading scale (E=excellent, S= satisfactory, and N= needs improvement). After spending years writing more S's on my grade books than I dare count, after all, most of the students get an S, I finally realized that if I wrote down just the N's and E's as well as 0's for missing work, I could assume that any blank spaces were the S's and I would save beau-coups of time. After taking a walk around the room and grading, the children then have a portfolio of work to take home that day, and I throw away any artwork that is left on the floor by the trash (unless there is a child absent of course.... I'm not that mean!)

Kindergarten Collage Houses

Kindergartners are very challenging. This is their first exposure to art supplies, and how to use them correctly. One of the lessons that I like do do with them is shape landscapes. This is a great lesson that covers shapes, scissor safety, and how to use glue correctly.

I start by talking about the correct way to use scissors, then I start giving them pieces of construction paper, one piece at a time, and have them cut different shapes (red square, yellow circle, yellow rectangles, brown triangle, brown rectangles, random green shape, and long wavy green shape.) Then I give them a 9x12 piece of blue paper and show them how we can put the shapes together to create a landscape (at this point I teach them the vocabulary word landscape). I also teach the children to use one dot of glue (one dot, not a lot). This project looks great put together and the students love them.

First Grade Cityscapes

I have just finished a great lesson with my first graders. They learned about cityscapes, by creating a crayon resist painting, using crayons and watercolors.




We started by folding the paper in half horizontally, and drew an outline of a cityscape on the top half of the paper. The students pressed hard with their crayons, so that they can transfer the drawing onto the bottom half of the paper by refolding the paper, and rubbing it with something hard (we used the handles of our scissors). The transferred image is light, so the student trace over it with their crayons, and then color in their buildings, again pressing hard. Once the buildings are colored in , the student paint one side of their paper with blue watercolors, and the other side black. This way, they have a night and day picture.