Reflection #12

WHAT?: This week my field partner and I taught our lessons. We did three lessons that were arts integrated. Two of them were visual arts and the other one was theatre. They worked really well other then classroom management is a lot harder to maintain when the children are doing arts integrated lessons. We taught the children about Greek mythology, art, and architecture. The first art integrated lesson we did was the children acted out a myth with their own interpretation in a group. The two visual arts was drawing their own modern architecture building and labeling it with the proper parts we taught them, and then the last one was the children made their own Greek influenced story telling vases.

SO WHAT?: My partner and I wanted to use as much art integrated lessons as we could because when we were first observing we did not feel that the children got to use a lot of arts in their classroom. We wanted to make sure that we switched things up for the children in the classroom and gave them a taste of using arts with their lessons. You could tell the children really just loved the art projects! We were so glad that they were a hit. I think that adding arts into the lesson plans really helped the children's comprehension because the next day we would ask them about the day before and they would remember so much about what we learned all because of the arts projects. I think that the children enjoyed the visual arts lessons more than the theatre just because they were a little shy getting up in front of the classroom to act, but once they got going the students did great. The students really enjoyed watching the other groups act out as well! It was a great activity especially to help the children's comprehension skills on the myths.

NOW WHAT?: Using arts integrated lesson plans in field really helped me learn what I need to do in my own classroom. I think that art lessons really needed to be planned out or else they can get out of hand really easy. I learned that using arts integrated lessons in my classroom you really need to make sure you have good classroom management during the lesson because if not the children will get off task and start talking a lot, which leads to the art projects not getting completed. I was really impressed with how the children acted out the myths, some groups were better than others, but overall the myths were acted out really great. I think that the children really enjoyed this activity, and it helped them to remember the myths a lot more than just reading them. I know that this is something I want to use in my classroom because it really does help the students. Actually using arts integrated lessons really helps you see how important they are to use in the classroom, and I know I will use them a lot more than I ever would have without this class!