A Short Introduction

Ello, I am a first time blogger from fairmont.  I have a great interst in the arts and would like to teach children how to create their own art, and maybe even use in ways that can become productive to themselves and others.  I believe there is not right or wrong way to learn, and that it is an individual process for everyone.  My goals in the classroom would be to teach in a variety of ways to give every students a new way to learn so that they may become more comfortable and acheive high learning potintial.  I have found that I enjoy working with elementry students, and have used a few different methods of getting them to become engaged in the lessons.  Such as having disscusions about art printouts that I thought might be interesting for the children to look at and try to explain.  Using guided questioning and prompting I found that as long as the children were kept on task the dissucsions seemed to be very stimulating. 
A second technique I used involved the students actually moving around and exploring movement before i had them paint.  This particular lesson focused on brushstrokes and how different brushstrokes can convey different moods.  The students enjoyed this lesson for two reasons, they first got to get up out of their chairs and move around, and then they got to use paint. 
I believe that you must keep the lessons interesting to the children so that they actually learn and not just go through motions.  You can have them sit and read and work on worksheets but there is no active learning.  With converstation and even movement i believe children can retain more and actually get something out of a lesson.

Using technology to engage learning

I dont think that getting iPads will reduce the cost much at first considering how new of a technology they are.  In the long run though when they become more perfected they could become a valuable resourse in the classroom.  Saving paper, ink, and money; going green in schools is becoming more and more prevelent and with the option of electronic sources would cut down on the heavy paper use.  I think that teaching without a textbook will be more time consuming for teachers; but I think that it is better for the students and as teachers we should want to better our students in any way we can.  By taking more time to come up with lessons that have clear cut and stimulating information will make for a better way to learn.  Books are a good way to have guidelines and a way to organize a lesson but i think that most of the learning should be done through the interactions between teacher and students. 


I think that this particular video relates to the idea I mentioned earlier about the importance of interaction can be done through ways such as the video shows.  The children are much engaged in the learning process and this technique is more up to date than just using text books, pencil, and paper.