Poetry Cafe

Having a fun and safe place to share art with a class is an important thing. Sometimes students don’t feel comfortable sharing their work or even their favorite work by other artists. Students get bashful and nervous to express their own opinions.

So, my professor’s idea to combat this is to create a safe and fun place that will hopefully lessen their nervousness and increase their comfort. She did this in the form of a poetry café for our class. She played soft peaceful music, decorated the tables with table cloths and flowers, and dimmed the lights a little bit. We all got to pick our favorite poems that we then shared with small groups during our café time. We then got to discuss what the poems meant to us, as well as why we chose it.

The poem that I chose was a poem by Shel Silverstein called ‘Don’t tell me.’ This is a poem that I have known since I was a kid, however I didn’t put much thought into it until a few semesters ago when I had to do a research project about Shel Silverstein. It was then that I noticed how much his poems can be prominent and encouraging even for adults. This poem speaks to the teacher in me; you can’t just expect to tell students to do something without modeling it to them as well

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Conversation during this café time proved to flow very easily with all of us sharing our opinions and poems. Some of us even chose the same poems! It was nice to see all of the connections that we made with each other simply based off of the pieces that we chose to share with one another. 

Five Artifacts

This artifacts project is based on the idea of what we believe represents our culture. So, in my opinion what items do I have that represents me personally as well as my family culture, school culture, etc? Obviously no one brought the same things for this activity. Everyone is different, so their family and self-cultures will differ from other people’s.

I chose to bring a few things from my ‘mustache box’ because I have a love for all things mustache, I also brought a few of my children’s book that I would be putting into a future classroom, I brought my dean’s list certificate to show my seriousness about my education, a stuffed red panda that my best friend Jamie got me, as well as a picture of my uncle Tim who passed away.

This stems from the idea of how the artifacts that we find from other cultures helps us learn about and understand these cultures. So, after we all shared the five artifacts that we brought with us we took a minute to just look at everything and take it all in. We then reflected on what we think people would learn or think about us as a culture based on the things that we brought with us.

This activity could be a great precursor to a Socratic seminar! I can imagine all of the good communication that would go on after such an emotional activity. 

Shoe box Activity

There were times in which people had to just leave their homes behind. As well as pretty much anything that they owned. This was especially true during the pioneer days. Many times these people had to leave everything behind, they didn’t have the luxury of big moving trucks to help them take everything that they wanted with them. They only had room to take pretty much what they could carry, essentially they could only take what they could fit in a shoe box.

My professor thought of this shoe box activity when reading the story ‘Pioneer Cat’ by William H. Hooks. In this story a little girl and her family were pioneers who were about to leave on the Oregon trail. She was told that she could only bring things that would fit in a box. She decided to bring a cat that she found.

So, the prompt for this activity would be if you had to leave your house now and could only bring what could fit in a shoe box what would you bring with you? However, for this prompt we were told that family and pets were a given; those are not things that we would need to worry about stuffing into our shoe boxes.

This was a difficult thing for me to think about. What could I not live without? It took me a very long time to fill my box up. To me, when it came right down to it I found that there weren’t really many things that I felt that I absolutely needed. So, for most things I decided to go with kind of survival things. I ended up bring an umbrella, my phone and charger, my wallet, a notebook, and a picture of my uncle Tim; he has passed away so I wanted something to really remember him by.

If you were doing this activity what would you choose? Would you go sentimental? Survival? Both?

Trade Fairs

Having a trade fair in your classroom is not only very fun for the students (and yourself) but it is also very educational. Doing a trade fair in this way mimics fur trading that happened in the past. At this time people didn’t have money to buy things so they had to trade things in order to get what they needed or wanted.

In the classroom trade fair that we did we had the option to either buy, make, or just bring something from home that we would like to trade. We then set of all of our stuff at our seats and began bartering with other people. For example, I brought a few scarves that I made and I traded one of them for a custom made bracelet from Jasmine. Some people even brought some homemade treats to trade with (I got a lot of cookie bars for one of my scarves! Yum!).

I have done something similar when I was in sixth grade. However, it was a little different. We called this a mini economy mall. Thorough the year we all had jobs and on Fridays we got paid for those jobs. We then chose groups to work with to create a business plan for the ‘store’ that we will want open from the mall day. This was similar to the trade fair because each group could either bring something that we bought, made, or brought from home. The difference is that we had to ‘pay’ for our products with our mini economy money just like a real store would have to pay for their merchandise. There was a whole system that our teacher put together to convert what we paid in real money to what we had to pay in our mini economy money. We would only buy what we had enough money for.

Finally, we got to actually open shop. We got to sell our things as well as go around and buy stuff from other people. This was a school wide mall; meaning that all of the other grades had turns to come to the mall to buy things. One thing that I still remember that was being sold were some goldfish; one group went to a pet store and bought about five goldfish to sell for mall day!

In the end each group had to track how much we spent versus how much we made. Were we in the red? In the green? We then had to reflect on our business plan and decided if it worked out well or if there was anything that we would have changed.

So, you see, there are some many ways in which a trade fair (or different variations of a trade fair) can be used in a classroom. What ideas can you come up with for a trade fair?

Creating Totem Poles

Photo Credit: Google

Teaching about totem poles is an easy and important way to connect students to a different culture. Students would probably love to simply look at different totem poles and learn about them. They could learn about what the totem poles stand for how they can differ from tribe to tribe, and so much more! These totem poles tell stories that are important to those who make them. They can tell about any event in a persons’ life.

We had the opportunity to create totem poles in class with groups. It was amazing to see all of the different stories that were being told by each group through their totem poles. Some were very colorful, they were made of different materials, and of course they all had different layers that tell their stories.

My group created our totem pole out of salt dough, this was my idea because I just love salt dough so much! The story that we decided to share was a story of our friendship. Each different level was a representation of each of us (Jamie, Alicia, Michelle, and I). Jamie was at the top and she made a fox to represent herself because that is her favorite animal. Alicia made Mickey Mouse for her level because of her intense love of all things Disney. Next is Michelle, she created a unicorn. Anyone who knows Michelle would not be surprised about this; she loves unicorns. Her level is a little different because she added sparkles to her salt dough. I think that really gives the unicorn more life and it just represents Michelle even more. Finally my level is at the bottom of the totem pole. I made a mustache. Again, anyone who knows me would not be surprised about this. I have a slight, ok maybe more than slight, obsession with mustaches. So, looking at that piece of our totem pole will truly make our class think of me I’m sure.

If we can put this much creativity and heart into this project as college students, I can only imagine the beautiful pieces of art and the amazing stories that younger students would come up with. A project like this is a great way to get the class to be hands on, get to know each other, and to get to know other cultures. In short, it is just fun and amazing! 

Socratic Seminars

I was recently introduced to a teaching strategy called Socratic seminars. In these seminars there is a big question that is to be answered after a main material/resource has been given. These material/resources can vary greatly. They can include things such as a picture, a reading, a video, music, and so on and so forth. These seminars are designed to truly get students thinking critically. They will also learn appropriate ways for them to express their thoughts as well as to listen and accept other students’ answers even if they don’t agree with what is said. The Socratic seminars also teach students the patterns of communication, such as when it is their turn to talk. There is no hand raising in these seminars so the students have to learn to analyze social cues to figure out when it is an appropriate time to share their thoughts.

Photo Credit: Google

I was able to take part in a Socratic seminar myself and I actually really enjoyed it. The leader of the seminar previously gave our group a reading that is what was discussed in the seminar. He asked the first initial question, but after that he let our group keep the conversation going on our own. We all discussed our thoughts and feelings that we had after reading the poem. We were able to connect this poem to our everyday lives as well as our lives as future teachers, and we made those connections without any specific guiding or direction from the leader of the seminar. If the conversation lulled he would ask another question that would get us talking again. The last part of a Socratic seminar is a very important part; reflections! After the discussion is over the students will be asked to reflect on either how they think the seminar went, any questions that they may have, or a specific question that the teacher wanted them to really grasp during the conversation.

This all sounded very nice to me, but I wondered how well this method could help those students who did not feel comfortable talking in front of the class. I didn’t understand how it would be beneficial if they didn’t participate. How would the teacher know they were seriously paying attention?  However, that question was answered for me. The leader of the seminar explained that in his class he has a few students who don’t like to speak in front of the other students, so he has them play the part of the ‘note-takers’ during the seminar. They will sit outside of the circle of students who will be talking and they write down what is happening; what is being said as well as what is being done. This gets these students involved and paying attention. He even said that these students are sometimes the ones that get the most out of the seminars. So, he found a way to really get everyone involved and having effective communication.

This is definitely something that I would love to try in a classroom!

For more ideas about Socratic Seminars click here.

Salt Dough Projects

Doing salt dough projects is one of my favorite art projects to do. I truly love to make the dough; it can also be very fun for students to make. Who doesn’t love getting a little messy? The great thing about salt dough projects is that you can pretty much do anything with it. Salt dough can be used as purely self-expression or it can even be used in the classroom as a teaching tool.

For the self-expression there really isn’t any limits to what can be done with salt dough. I recently even did an art project with salt dough. I made a lion. The lion was both a representation of my favorite movie “The Lion King” and a representation of the word that I want to work on for myself this year (explained in my first post): courage. In my mind lions represent power and courage, so with that in mind a decided to make a lion. It was a great way to represent myself at that moment in time. This can be something fun a creative for students to do.

Picture Credit: Pinterest

Another subject that salt dough can be a helpful teaching tool in is social studies. I have seen salt dough be used to create a small map of different states. The students would make the salt dough into

the shape of the state and then put different features that the state contains. They could even make bigger versions if they wanted to in order to add more details to their maps. Another thing that I thought might be a fun thing for students to do is to create the different phases of the moon out of the salt dough! Bring science into the mix!

Salt dough is a very versatile and useful tool in a creative classroom :) 

Focuses:

Self-expression 

Hands on learning

Versatility 

For salt dough recipe click here