First Art PLC Meeting at my School!!

Yesterday was a SUPER busy day.  I had third grade ROW- (resource on Wed.) which meant I had ALL the third grade classes for 30 minutes each in art.  They finished their overlapping supplies projects, published them and worked on their PINWHEELS for peace!

After school, I was running around preparing everything for our first elementary art PLC- Professional Learning Community meeting.  Which basically meant that I threw everything in my storage room - LOL!!

Do you have a PLC?  Are you wondering what that even is?  Wikipedia's definition is: A professional learning community (PLC) is an extended learning opportunity to foster collaborative learning among colleagues within a particular work environment or field. It is often used in schools as a way to organize teachers into working groups.

Our PLC began over 6 six years ago when I switched from teaching third grade to art at my former school.  We had NO curriculum for art and I felt so overwhelmed.  Our school district's art specialist helped me reach out to other art teachers in our county and we began meeting on the first Wed. of each month at different schools around the county.  It is the single most crucial component to any success I have had as an art educator.  The awesome teachers in my PLC are like my family and we go out of our way to support, share and help each other be more effective and the best we can be.

Another great part of our meetings- SNACKS!! LOL Everyone shares a snack or treat- which we all know at the end of a long day is like a gift from above!

We had several items on our agenda-
1. OneNote notebook for all teachers to share lessons and resources
2. Our End of course exam
3. The next upcoming meeting and location
4. The FAEA conference in October
5.  Lesson Plan sharing

Our school district has adopted the Microsoft Office/One Drive platform for collaboration and I asked our tech specialist to help me start a OneNOTe notebook for art teachers to upload lessons for sharing.
We covered that and I added my Pinwheels for Peace lesson to share.  One Note is such a powerful tool for collaboration and I even want to try it with my students.

Our End of course is exam this year will be administered during the last 10 days of school and will only be 10 questions based on the Elements and Principles of art.

LESSON PLAN sharing-

I shared our Pinwheel for Peace lesson-  and I talked about how AWESOME Artsonia is for Art Criticism.

 Another teacher shared a color wheel lesson that she does with her students:

And a teacher shared a Deep Space Sparkle lesson that she does with fourth grade based on the Great Wave - that looks AWESOME!!

 

All in all- it was a GREAT MEETING!!!  Another teacher also reminded me about the amazing power of using a laser pointer with students!! LOL YYUP they aren't just for your cat-little kids go crazy for them and they are only like $4 at Publix.  You better believe I am running out to  get a new one today!   And another teacher uses a Crayola Light up Easel to write important notes for her students.  They love the luminescence and pay attention to the notes!!

First week back to school!

My art new apron for back to school- Star Wars!!! And yes I was up till 11:00pm the night before Open House sewin up this baby. 

Our PTO got us this cool rock for families to paint/decorate!  I got the honor of first dibs!

I don't know about you, but does the first week of school feel like THE LONGEST week of the year!!?  Well ...it has felt like we have been back for a month or more not just a week, it has been so busy!

I've been in a rush to get seating charts, class dojo, artsonia, and my welcome to art presentations all ready.  Its ALOT of work to prepare all that for 700+ students, but i try to break it up and do one day at a time and I feel like once all that prep work is done, it is well worth it.   

Some new things I am really trying this year are

1.  The Remind text messaging app.  I sent out the info to teachers and I put it on my web page and promoted it at Open House.  I am encouraging everyone to sign up for it in order to receive news and info about upcoming art events via text.  I also hope to send along encouraging and uplifting art tidbits throughout the year as well.

2. PLICKERS-  I havent gotten my classes set up with this yet but I hope to by next week or the week after.  I want to do this because even though our school is a digital conversion school and all students are issued an ipad (k-2) or a laptop (3-5)  they still do not always bring them to art and this year many parents were able to 'opt out' of allowing their child to remove their device from the actual classroom to avoid liability.  Plickers are paper clickers that I can scan with my ipad so I can still get actual feedback and do informal assessments throughout their art lessons without them all having devices.

3. Artsonia- I am planning on using Artsonia all year long and making it part of our classroom routine to show students how to photograph and upload their artwork with my iPad to their Artsonia art gallery.

4. Classdojo.--- DO you dojo?!  Its the best app and site for classroom management!  And its so easy to add students using an excel spreadsheet.

So - I wrote our objective on the board for every class this week :  OUR ART OBJECTIVE: To understand how to do my best in art!


And then I beefed up my welcome back to art powerpoint and called it "Welcome to the world famous art extravaganza!!"  (From Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess- if you have not read this book- I HIGHLY recommend it.  It will revolutionize your teaching!)

After the welcome and art room tour- I had most classes start their first project.  I was going to have a more open ended- Draw or make something that represents you but I found that having a more structured 'challenge' was better for the short time they had during their first class.  The projects all involved LINEs- the first element of art.

5thGrade- Name Illustrations

4th Grade Name Mandalas

3rd Grade Overlapping Supplies

2nd Grade- Hand line design
1st- Moving lines
K- Forsythia Flowers

Summer reflecting and camp

Happy back to school season everyone! As I look back on our short summer and think about my lofty goals of getting so much done, like planning, writing, blogging and flipping art lessons, I have to say, I dropped the ball!!!! But I did do some great things. I was able to attend and present at the awesome FAAE summitt in Orlando where I met some awesome teachers from truly arts integrated middle and high schools in South Florida.  One science teacher in particular even shared a TON of lessons and resources that he used to integrate science and art at his school.  I was so thankful and grateful for that experience that I truly plan on using as many of the resources as possible this year.  
I ran a lot (which is one of my other passions besides art) and I got to participate in some cool sketchbook challenges from Twitter. Here is one from the jfj15for30 challenge.

I also got to teach some awesome art lessons at a fun summer camp at the St Augustine amphitheater for a week in July. Another art teacher and I got to teach two awesome and diverse groups of elementary students that ranged in age from kindergarten to 6th grade. We taught a morning session and an afternoon session. The room we were in was really neat AND had air conditioning! ( which is pretty nice in fl in July)  we were able to order and use a variety of media and create several cool projects that the campers got to take home on Friday.   Some of the projects included a Koinobori wind sock, an air dry clay slab owl, a canvas painting of the St. Augustine Lighthouse and a cool collaborative mural.  The projects turned out so great!  And I really hope to be able to participate again next summer!

Rolling out slabs

Artist campers and our post lunch shenanigans

St. Augustine Amphitheater- the amazing room we got to teach in- (although we made a bit of a mess....)

Clay Slab owls painted with metallic paints  and free sculptures

Unfinished collaborative mural

One of my fav campers of the week with our Koinobori!

Ms. Amy teaching us how to create our beautiful slab owls!

Terra Cotta Air Dry Clay Owls

FAAE Leadership Summit-

The FAAE, Florida Arts Alliance, leadership Summit was SUCH an awesome way to kick off the summer for SO many reasons!  The theme this year was ABC- Achievement, Business, Community.
This was the first year I have gotten to attend.
  At first, because I was asked to present along with a music teacher cohort who also took part in the year long FAAE Art/Technology/ESE project, I was a little stressed trying to finish up my art room while ALSO preparing presentation materials for our session, titled Using Technology to Differentiate Arts Instruction for ESE students.  Honestly, it really was not too bad, since I had prepared materials that were similar for the FAEA conference.  I basically just took that Powerpoint and adjusted it to go along with the programs and info that we were going to introduce.
See the Presentation here

When we first arrived, my cohort Michelle, and I went to check out the room we were presenting in- which was, to my relief, small and intimate.  I have yet to present to a large conference room type setting and the thought of being in front of such a large crowd is a little intimidating.  We got our computers hooked up and checked the sound.  We were both going to discuss our experience with the ESE/Arts program and then present the tech tools we liked and used the most along with our projects that would be submitted to CPALMS- the Florida Curriculum site.

After we got everything hooked up- we went for lunch and then attended the Keynote Speaker/Welcome session.  There we got to make a lot of great connections and enjoy several performances from Satellite High School in Brevard County which is one of the Florida Arts Models schools for arts integration.

I also got to meet the FAAE president Enrique Puig, who is also the Director of the Morgridge Internnational Reading Center in UCF.  The teachers involved in the Arts/ESE program had one of our face to face sessions there and it is a BEAUTIFUL facility- designed as a model 21st century learning space with movable furniture and the latest high tech educational equipment. 

I also found out and got to meet the Florida Teacher of the year who just so happens to be an ELEMENTARY ART TEACHER!!! How cool is that!?  Her name is Christie Bassett from Highland Grove Elementary School in Polk county.  Apparently she is in the running for National teacher of the Year and I really hope she gets it.

The whole day was such a great experience and here are some of the ideas/things that have me excited to incorporate next year:

-ARTS integration- I got to meet some great Magnet Arts school teachers who shared so many ideas and resources that I am excited to use next year to truly incorporate art into the regular curriculum.

-REMIND app- I have used this app for a long time but I got to see how an awesome teacher, Nancy Brilliant, uses it with her students to pass along info through text messages.  I plan on using it A LOT more next year!

- Business partners-  I really plan on trying to build relationships with the businesses/companies in my community.  I saw and heard so many great stories on how big the impact can be when the arts are integrated with the community- it not only helps build your arts program but also helps the businesses connect with its customer base/families. 

National Flip Flop Day

YAY !! It's summer!  Woo hoo!  Last year one of my end of the year art lessons was the Elements of Art flip flops and my students really enjoyed it!  As I mentioned earlier we also made flip flops again this year but I tied it into a really cool event that Tropical Smoothie came up with called National Flip Flop day, which is June 19th this year.  So basically- all you have to do is wear your flippy floppies to your closest Tropical Smoothie and you get- A FREE SMOOTHIE and you can make a charitable donation of 5 bucks to a great cause called Camp Sunshine!   Now I do recommend going EARLY because the tropical smoothie near my house had a line out the door when I went last year...Just an FYI!  Have Fun!

Art room is finally finished!

I am fairly sure I was the last teacher at my school to finish cleaning and organizing their room for the summer. The teacher's last day was Friday but it has taken me until this afternoon to finally finish. My storage room was in desperate need of purging. And I am just not good at organizing.  I am so bad that I really want to read one of those  organization books like the magic of tidying up over the summer.

I think organization  needs to be something you are taught at an early age...and honestly I think my parents preferred to just clean up our messes themselves rather than having us make more of a mess.
Well after two long EXTRA days of cleaning, tossing, organizing and agonizing -here is a panoramic picture of my mostly completed room.
I say MOSTLY because I still feel like I need to work on my storage room but our maintenance manager  had to literally kick all teachers out after today.  I did manage to get rid of ALot of magazines I did not use last year, styrofoam trays, plastic cups, and a TON of wallpaper (I still have literally 3 boxes full of the stuff!).   I basically tossed or purged things I didn't use at all last year.  I also got rid of a lot of cardboard that I hadn't used.

But even with all that ...I still feel like there's more to do and on top of that- I want a SYSTEM that will help me keep up the organization throughout the year so I am not dealing with a gargantuan mess at the end of the year. which gives me the sinking feeling that I will have to deal with it during prep landing which is a stressful time already.   I also brought a lot of bins of things I thought I would use for summer camp and over the summer for my own art.....so basically I better make some cool art this summer or all that moving stuff to my house will be a waste of time. (Yes- I am playing mind tricks with myself to keep me motivated ;))

I also talked to my vice principal about setting up some times for some training sessions I would like to facilitate next year. I am our school's webmaster so I need to hold a training for Wordpress which is the platform we use in my district for official teacher web pages.   Here is my school site in case you are interested- it has some great links on my "Links to My favorite web resources' page.  My School Web Page

I will also be holding a training on the PBS digital media resources that goes along with my shiny title- PBS digital innovator 2015 that I was awarded with back in April..