Blog 18: 2-Hour Meeting Answer #3

1. What is the best way to use art as a teaching tool in middle school?
2.  The best way to use art as a teaching tool in middle school is to create activities tailored to each lesson that gain the students' interest, have a good balance of art and content, and help relate what you want to teach the students to other things in the students' lives.
3.  a.)When you hold their interest there is a greater chance that they are paying closer attention to what they are doing or to what you are saying.

b.)Art is fun but if you don't have a good balance of content with the art, what you are doing is just an art activity for fun not a teaching activity.

c.)To be able to relate things to your students' lives can be a great way to help them remember something and understand what you are teaching them.
4.  Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences helped me create this answer because his book talks about how the different intelligences intertwine and work. Mrs. Clauss and Ms. Hodapp also helped me create the answer.
5.  I plan to look into different ways to improve the art integration activities I have created with my mentors and look into creating some more. I also want to see if I can work with some students with some of these activities and see how much they help the students and see where I need to improve them.

Blog 17: Fourth Interview Questions

1.                  What is your first opinion of my First answer “The best way to use art as a teaching tool in middle school is to create activities tailored to your individual lessons to improve a student's first learning exposure.”?

2.                  What are some simple answers that come to mind when you think about my EQ “What is the best way to use art as a teaching tool in middle school?”

3.                  What is your definition of art integration?

4.                  What do you like about my First answer?

5.                  Where do you think I can improve my First answer? Specifics please.

6.                  What types of activities would you say best support my First answer?

7.                  Explain in detail how they would prove to be helpful and how you would go about introducing them to the class.

8.                  My Second answer is “The best way to use art as a teaching tool in middle school is to create art integrated activities that help the students' review and practice what they learned after they learned.”?

9.                  What are some things that stand out to you about my Second answer?

10.              Where do you think I can improve my Second answer? Specifics please.

11.              What types of activities would you say best support my Second  answer?

12.              How would these activities you suggested, to support my Second answer, be introduced to the class and how would you go about helping them without doing all the work?

13.              What are some difficulties you see when trying to create an art integrated activity.

14.              What types of activities do you feel work better than others? (Examples and Explain.)

15.              Do you think any specific subjects work better with art integrated activities than others? (Please list them, give examples, and explain.)

16.              What are some major problems you see in students during an art integrated activity?

17.              What is the greatest accomplishment you or a student had due to art integration? Explain why it may have worked

18.              What is your biggest failure in your many attempts to use art as a teaching tool? Explain why you may not have gotten your desired results.

19.              What do you think I should think about for my final answer?

20.              Is there anything else I should look into, to gain a better understanding of my topic and more importantly gain a better answer for my essential question?

2-Hour Meeting Answer #2

1.  What is your essential question?

What is the best way to use art as a teaching tool in middle school?

2.  What is your second answer to your essential question (write your second answer in a complete sentence)?

The best way to use art as a teaching tool in middle school is to create fun, hands on, learning activities to help students review and comprehend the lessons they are taught.

3.  What are three details to support or justify your second answer (details are examples or facts)?

a.) Students learn by doing- We can be told how to do something multiple times but until we do it ourselves we may never truly understand how to do it or the importance of doing it.

b.) Nav’s Notebooks- By going through the process of looking for or creating pictures to help represent important points in history our class was able to make reference’s to these things and therefor learn and retain the important history knowledge.

c.) posters and presentations- By having to present what they learn in their own words in a way that others may understand them students not only learn important life skills but they also gain a better understanding of what they learned. You can’t teach something to another till you understand it yourself.

4.  What source helped you prove this answer is justified for your essential question?

My two mentors Susan Hodapp and Heidi Clauss by letting me sit in on some of their class and see students working on these activities and begin to understand things they would have never understood by just listening to some person lecture.

5.  What do you plan to study next with your second answer and why?

With this answer I plan to look for different studies performed that help prove my answer and continue to work with my mentors and observe their working environments to see how it helps the students and how to improve the process even more.

Independent Component 2 Plan Approval

(1) Write a description of what you plan on doing for your independent study component.

I plan on working with my mentors to create a variety of different art integrated activities to help teach the 4 main core subjects. (Math, History, Science, English). I also know that most of the activities I create can be used or altered for more than one subject, maybe all four, so I can will alter the activities in that way as well. I will also be creating a rubric for each activity and for some of the simpler ones I will create an example.
(2) Describe in detail how you think your plan will meet the 30 hours work requirement.

I think this will make my 30 hour requirement because creating a good activity that would catch a student’s attention and have an equal balance of content is hard, then add a rubric plus the possible example of what the finished activity could look like, and the possibility that the activities could be used for all four of the core subjects I will be using that is already hours of work. Then add the fact that I will be doing more than one activity so I should have no problem reaching the 30 hour work requirement.
(3) How does your independent study component relate to your working EQ? 

My whole project is based off of mixing art and school in a way that will both teach and engage a student in a fun, and hands on experience. So by working to create activities to actually fulfill this goal I will be learning a lot of what I need to make my senior project a success.