Teaching: DAY 2

The second day of teaching our lesson came and went like a breeze. I honestly cannot believe how fast the class went. Today was my turn lead the review and demonstration, and it went very smoothly. I reviewed the powerpoint that we showed yesterday, and the students were surprisingly willing to answer my questions. I was worried that I would have to wait forever for responses from them, God forbid. But they participated in the review and listened well while I gave a brief demonstration about a few more ways to use the pastels. As Ms. G suggested, we then had the students create a worksheet in which they demonstrated 10 different ways they could use the pastels, and suggested that it would be a good idea to take inspiration from the photos that they were working on. It was clear that this practice helped them to learn how to represent certain areas of their photographs that they were stuck on.

During work time, the students were constantly asking me questions about what they should do next in their drawings. I thought I did a good job of explaining to them the best course of action, and most of them really, truly listened to what I was saying, and it showed in their end results. A lot of the drawings are coming along very nicely, and Ms. G said that she is very impressed by the students. Most of the feedback that I gave to the students was along the lines of using a variety of colors, rather than just one flat color. For example, in the snow on a lot of their drawings, I would tell them to incorporate some blues and purples, rather than just laying down white. After the lesson, we had a great discussion with Ms. G about how learning to see color takes a lot of training. It wasn't until my Drawing 2 class when we practiced broken color that I was truly able to see all of the colors that are present in shadows and highlights, and ever since that class I cannot stop seeing the different colors everywhere I look. When I told Ms. G that, she laughed and said the same thing happens to her.

Our biggest problem today was that the time literally flew by. We had planned to leave about 20 minutes for an in-progress critique at the end, but we wanted to give the students as much work time as possible and before we knew it, there was 15 minutes 'til the end of class and the students still needed to clean up. Instead of holding each drawing up front individually, we had them set their work on the table and walk around the room to take a look at everyone's. Then when they sat back down, we asked them to point out a few particular pieces that showed a good understanding of tint, shade, and atmospheric perspective. Tomorrow, we will have the chance for a more in-depth critique where the students can discuss the work together in groups. After class, we asked Ms. G what we should have done about the shortened time for critique, and she gave us a great suggestion that we never even thought of. She said that what she sometimes does is have the students go up to the front in groups of 4 or 5 to hold up their work, and then the rest of the class could pick out of that small group which ones were the most successful and which needed some improvements. She explained that the benefit to this is that the students can see the drawings from a distance, which gives them a fresh perspective. I will definitely consider this for future lessons.

I'm excited to finish our lesson tomorrow. We are going to give the students as much time as possible to complete their drawings to the best of their abilities, and then we will use the remaining time to frame them and critique them. I can't wait to see them all framed; Ms. G says it completely changes the drawing into something spectacular. I'm so happy that the students are all working hard, and I'm positive that the final results tomorrow will show this.