#extension activities

I'm subbing long term for the art teacher, and while I'm excited to be adding more hours to my weekly punchcard, I'm less than thrilled with the behavior issues that have cropped up as a result of little - to - none classroom management. Initially I thought that teaching art would be simple, and in reality it should be, but this classroom has absolutely no boundaries, rules, expectations nor consequences. The result is a scary mix of 6 - 8th graders with free reign. It's too free even for MY conversational and easy-going teaching style...and that's saying something. 

Tomorrow I'll be re-starting the class, going over and creating classroom rules with my students, expectations and consequences for breaking these rules. It's sort of a blessing (not really) in that I get to try a rule making strategy I've never tried before. From there we'll get into the classroom norms/set-up. In Language Arts we start with a Journal Entry or 5 minutes of silent reading. I wanted to do the same thing in this class, so I've mocked up an Art Journal. Each day they'll doodle, write, draw or whatever in response to a question, prompt or picture up on the document camera. The point is to get them warmed up for Art 2-D and to get their minds to switch gears. I can also use this time to review previously taught techniques and whatnot. 

The second set of pictures is the "I'm Done Jar." Last week I noted that students finished fairly quickly with their sketches and rather than simply put the materials aside and continue with other work, they began doing silly sketches which I felt wasted the material. Scouring the internet for various other early finisher projects, I found this jar idea. When students are finished with a project they come to this jar, pull out a strip of paper (of which there are 200) and continue a focused artistic exploration of whatever it is listed on the paper.

Because we are setting up new classroom expectations and rewards/punishments, I'm hoping that these two activities will assist in creating some semblance of organization and structure to my lessons. At any rate, I hope they can serve to fill time at the beginning and end of each lesson while allowing me time to check in with early finishers and my stragglers alike.