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Strategy 3 - Cooperative Drawing
Strategy 3 – Cooperative Drawing - JoAnn Kossow

I very seldom do cooperative learning with my art students, so I wanted to give this a try. The students were paired up and given one sheet of white paper. I gave only a few directions.

You will be creating a piece of art during this class period and will be following these guidelines.

1. No communicating through talk or writing while doing this artwork. ( not easy, if extended beyond 15 or 20 minutes )
2. Groups of two will share the one sheet of paper and each will select one crayon color, different from each other to draw with.
3. When you feel you are finished, turn your artwork over.

It was interesting to see how the various partners handled their situation. After the drawing session was over. I handed out a list of questions and students gave written responds.

1. What did you draw in the beginning?
2. What did your partner draw in the beginning?
3. Were you influenced by what your partner was drawing?
4. Did you share the paper space? Did you share crayon colors?
5. What do you like about your finished artwork?
6. What do you dislike about your finished artwork?
7. Was there a point where you felt you were working together?
How did this look? How did you do this?
8. Rate your teams’ ability to cooperate:
Excellent, good, fair, poor

It was interesting to compare the students' answers to their finished artwork. Interesting too, was comparing the entire classes artworks. How did working cooperatively affect the outcome of the artwork?

I believe I will offer this strategy in the future as cooperation is key to a successful team project. It would be great to use prior to doing a cooperative learning art project such as a mural assignment. But, I believe I will do this in groups of 4 students and pre-select my groups so as to include a strong and weak art student, as well as a student who may take a leadership role. I believe it will help my students to see that everyone is able to contribute and that working together makes for a more successful final outcome with a team project.

I really enjoyed offering this strategy to my 4th grade Art class.

Laffin Strategy #3
It did sound like abit of up front work required of you. Explaining to the students that their activity was to be based on their pretest was a good way to handle all the questions and make them feel comfortabl with the activity. The way you differentiated the tiers for vocabulary was very successful. They all were able to work with the vocabulary words at their ability level,

TIered Instruction-Burton
I like your 1-2-4 strategy. It's a great way of getting the kids to think more deeply about the subject matter and then determine what is most relevant through discussion within pairs and then the small group.

Wiemers Strategy #3
Hey Kathy, it is so interesting to hear about what is going on at your level. I know at the Middle school level the students are so concerned about what everyone is doing and why they are doing it. I love the idea of privacy screens and it is interesting how we never see that technique at the MS. Sound like a successful lesson!

Laffin Strategy #3
This does sound like it could be really affective and it reminds me of an activity we did in class. I liked being able to do different things, and in this lesson everyone is learning and understanding at their level. I can see how the students would like the variety as well. I too have had to problem solve the questions why are they doing that and we are doing this... and I also like being upfront with the differences.

Round Response
Jean Mohr- Strategy #3
Response Rounds p.143

In my 8th Grade Art Class, I had my students divide into assigned groups and brainstorm about Tim Burton. The strategy I used was like round robin and I gave the group 1 sheet of paper and they had to be silent and write something they knew about Tim Burton, and had to pass the sheet to the next person. Students could only write one thing at a time.

This strategy was a great way to make everyone to be accountable to write something down. It also was great to see how the kids learned from each other's ideas and created a spiral affect.

I grouped the students so it would be a mix of high and low achievers. I did this because I didn't know what their past knowledge was. I also did this because it was a way for the low achievers to be successful because it may be in their interest group.

I was so surprised how they honored being quiet. I think they also respected the rule of "pass" and in my opinion didn't abuse it.

I really feel like it was a calm way to get their brains ready for a conversation. Some times when I bring up a topic that I taught the kids about in the previous year, and I know they know, students can still have a foggy recollection of the topic. I think this is a tool that I will use again in my next unit on Careers.

In the book, it refers to it being a vocal way as well. In addition, it doesn't always have to be academic. They gave an example brainstorming for topics or how they would do something differently. I can see how this would be fun and a great way for students to get to know each other at the beginning of a semester.

I would absolutely recommend this for getting the cobwebs out of the brain. Besides I also enjoyed watching the kids be the teachers as well.

TIered Instruction-Burton
Jean Mohr
Tiered Instruction
8th grade art- Tim Burton

In 8th Grade Art, we are in the Photoshop unit and starting to talk about Tim Burton and careers in art. He is an artist and movie director.

I always have my students read about an artist and write a 3 paragraph summery about what they have learned. I have found in the past that there tends to be some plagiarism and I was trying to come up with a way to avoid that. I also was aware that there were students in my class that had different comprehension levels. I wanted to address that as well.

My solution was tiered instruction. I found two different articles on Burton and created a worksheet that had could be used for both articles. With the help of Language arts teachers and my own prior knowledge of the students’ ability, I plan to divide students into two groups and hand out the articles in class.

Because the students will be answering the same questions on the worksheets, they might not pick up on the differences of the articles. One is in more of a paragraph format and the other is as well but shorter and has additional bullet points of the main topics and visual broken down more.

This is going to lead into our next lesson. All students will watch a video on Burton and everyone he collaborated with in the movie Nightmare Before Christmas. In this video clip it address the people who played major roles in the making of the movie. For example: musicians, artists, set designers, storyboard writers, graphics and visual affects. While the students are watching the video, they will be filling out a worksheet.

Once students have their information they got during the movie. I want to try a strategy called 1,2 and 4. In this the first step is for the student to work independently. (Which they did by filling out their worksheet.) Then they are grouped with a partner, and look at both answers and figure out if they got the main ideas. Once they have some time to do that, I want to combine two groups of two and see if their answers are similar or different.

I believe this strategy will make the students the teachers and also will allow them to have a deeper level of learning when they are reflecting their answers. I also think I will have better participation from the students.

This maybe a stretch but the movie is about whom Tim collaborated with, so I love the idea that the kids get to as well to come up with their answers.

Response Rounds
I assume this was a finish to an assignment or reading about or creating an art work related to Tim Burton. Your round robin ideas work well for being able to summarize what the group has learned or for that matter what with everyone's input all should be able to pick up on the subject of Tim Burton.

Strategy 2 Tiered assignments
One Pont Perspective Lesson

Low ability- After creating a cube using a computer program based on one point perspective, students will make a larger version of this assignment on white paper to create a house design using the same vanishing point for details of windows doors, shutters, siding or brick.

Average/Advanced Ability - After creating a series of cubes using the one point perspective computer program, students are to create a number of building along a central street. The vanishing point will be used to create details of windows, doors, brick, bill boards, street signs and sidewalks.

Advanced Ability - will incorporate sky walks, bridges, automobiles and people using the same vanishing point for one point perspective to complete their city street scene.

Response Rounds
In my 8th Grade Art Class, I had my students divide into assigned groups and brainstorm about Tim Burton. The strategy I used was like round robin and I gave the group 1 sheet of paper and they had to be silent and write something they knew about Tim Burton, and had to pass the sheet to the next person. Students could only write one thing at a time.

This strategy was a great way to make everyone to be accountable to write something down. It also was great to see how the kids learned from each other's ideas and created a spiral affect.

I grouped the students so it would be a mix of high and low achievers. I did this because I didn't know what their past knowledge was. I also did this because it was a way for the low achievers to be successful because it may be in their interest group.

I was so surprised how they honored being quiet. I think they also respected the rule of "pass" and in my opinion didn't abuse it.

I really feel like it was a calm way to get their brains ready for a conversation. Some times when I bring up a topic that I taught the kids about in the previous year, and I know they know, students can still have a foggy recollection of the topic. I think this is a tool that I will use again in my next unit on Careers.

In the book, it refers to it being a vocal way as well. In addition, it doesn't always have to be academic. They gave an example brainstorming for topics or how they would do something differently. I can see how this would be fun and a great way for students to get to know each other at the beginning of a semester.

I would absolutely recommend this for getting the cobwebs out of the brain. Besides I also enjoyed watching the kids be the teachers as well.