Last and final blog

This semester I have learned a lot especially in this class through experience in the field as well as watching others perform lessons. I really enjoyed the lesson activities in class. I think that everyone had many opportunities to learn from others. It also brought to light many things to think about like classroom organization, guidelines, standards, how to cause student interest, how to talk to a class  using invitational language, how to organize your own self, how to prepare for lessons, and what materials work best for a lesson. I definitely also learned how to introduce a lesson and get students involved and participate. I feel that opening up with artist images, asking the students what they see, observe, what emotions they get, and how they feel about an image is an awesome way to really get students involved and develop their understanding of visual images and culture. I also think that physical warm up activities are a great way to get the energy flowing in a classroom and that it is also a great way to invite students to loosen up, feel free, get creative, and get into it. Many of the lessons I liked this semester also involved not so common materials like the puppet lesson as well as Tanya's 3-d lesson with the foam boards, push pins, and mystery boxes. I feel that those were the most exciting lessons that we did in class. The teachers were having fun and were really excited about it which made everyone excited. What I also noticed was that no one really wanted to stop working which is an excellent sign of student learning and engagement. I definitely plan on snagging some of the lessons student's posted and using them in my own classroom some day with slight modifications. In the end, theory and practice really taught me a great deal and I feel that it was my most productive and interesting semester yet.