Franklin Middle School, Melodee Strong, 6-8th grade, 5 hrs
I started my second practicum placement at Franklin Middle School in North Minneapolis with teaching artist Melodee Strong on Wednesday. Her classes range from sixth, seventh and eighth grade art, to advanced art (8th graders) and design and modeling.
Something that I noticed and appreciated about Melodee’s classroom was that she wrote a layout of the day, or list of steps, for each class on a word doc that was available to view on the screen. This helped students to stay on track or look at the information if they missed a step. In addition, was helpful for me to make sure I was aware of where students should be in their progress. If I recall correctly, 6th grade was working on their “This is America” project in groups of 3-4. The project is a book of drawings and writings made by the students, and on this day they were working on painting and transferring their design to a fabric book cover. 7th graders were working on watercolor exercises, which they obviously enjoyed. 8th graders were working on one point perspective drawings, and in both of these classes I worked one-on-one with students who needed to catch up. The first class, the student was starting a perspective learning sheet and I was helping her when needed. In the more advanced class, the student was working on drawing their name based off of two point perspective. Both students were engaged in their projects and seemed to enjoy drawing.
The students seemed to respect the materials and have access to iPads and other materials if needed. For the students working on perspective drawings, they were able to search for images on the iPads.
I am looking forward to spending more time at Franklin and being able to see the students final projects (which were to be completed this Friday).