Today I am eager to see how well I planned my lesson on cubism. I have spent a good amount of time preparing the lesson in hope that it will be both educational and fun for my students. I arrived and began to set up the classroom for the day. My first class of the day is first grade, of which there are four classes. This is the only class that my lesson plan is for, however I stay for half a day just to continue to gain classroom experience. I have about an hour of prep time before my first student arrive so I use this time to arrange the room, distribute folders, materials, and tools to each students seat. I am careful not to completely change the classroom dynamic that the students are already familiar, choosing instead to use the model of my cooperating teacher.
As the students came in I was at the door to greet them, ask how they are doing, and see if they are excited to see what I would be teaching. They of course were quite excited, and eager to get started. I began by seeing who was absent, and by making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. By this time most of the students have gotten to know me and have become comfortable around me so it would prove to be a fun day. I first showed the students a Georges Braque image, on the interactive whiteboard. I then asked them to raise their hands and tell me if they could identify any shapes, or outlines of an object within Braque's very cubist work. As I am showing the image, I am also being sure to discuss the history of cubism, and the people who made it work. I have the students repeat terms, and names several times so that they get comfortable with the vocabulary. The students surprisingly only saw simple shapes such as triangles and squares at first, but as I drew an outline around the hidden objects a bottle was revealed. The students truly enjoyed seeing the shape emerge.
After completing the history, and building background knowledge and working to establish vocabulary words, they were ready to begin the creative process of replicating cubist style and design. Each student was asked to pic from several printed shapes. The shapes included, grapes, apples, bottles, guitars, etc. I then asked the students to use the ruler in front of them, to make lines across the outline of their shape. This was as far as the students were able to get today, as we slowly ran out of time. They all seem very eager to come back to finish their project. One especially high point for me was one of the students who really engaged the project was a student with special needs. He enjoyed and contributed so much that his para comment at my ability to get him to interact with the project, and the other students. Honestly, I don't intentionally do things like that, but am always happy when a student begins to develop a new skill. It just so happened that this child had a special need.
