Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Comment on today's lesson

In the second lesson that was presented today the class was very quiet and well behaved in comparison to how behavior is and was for other lessons. As Dr. Luongo mentioned it most likely could have been due to the fact that there were a few students absent. In addition to this, I also think that when a lesson is something out of the ordinary or involves new materials that students never worked with, it plays a huge role in the students' behavior. I read a book about teaching art to elementary school and one point that was emphasized was the idea that a teacher should use a variety of materials, otherwise the students will become bored. For example, if every art lesson involved crayons only, then the students' work would not be as creative and they would not focus because they were bored. Thus, it is important to use a plethora of items such as paint (if your daring), oil pastels, colored pencils, markers, etc. The book insisted that these small changes would result in more successful outcomes amongst students' work. In Janira's lesson, the finger puppets kept the students challenged and interested. They took pride in their work and concentrated which ultimately resulted in a well behaved environment. All in all, I just wanted to reiterate the importance of using different materials while doing projects because a small detail such as that can make all the difference.