Teaching+with+Technology-Week+Three

Week Three

“Much of the art of teaching patterns lies in selecting and presenting numerous, effective examples”

I found this quote to be quite powerful. I teach 6 th grade Art and over the last few days we have been creating 3D Paper Mache letters. After the students complete the Paper Mache process they must design and paint the letter. Last semester was my first semester to teach Art so I have had to learn quite a lot this year. I didn’t have “examples” to share last semester like I do now. The examples from last semester aren’t that well done but it is the only thing I have (so far). Today I was explaining how the students so go about the actually painting of their projects. I didn’t realize that I was actually using “examples” and “counter-examples”. Giving the students the various types of examples led to better art being produced. I was able to show that what worked and looked nice compared to what didn’t. They obviously didn’t want to emulate the works of art that weren’t well done. Having that example gave them a thought/idea in their head of what they wanted to strive for (or not strive for). As of this afternoon, the pieces of work far surpass most of the ones from the first semester and this I believe this is because of the examples I was able to show. It’s great to see what we are learning in our courses here are being used so deeply in our teaching.

Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). //Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning//. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online at the Center for Applied Special Technology web site, http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/.