Looking back at this lesson after teaching it I feel like I would make a few changes but keep most of the lesson plan the same way as we taught it. During the lesson, we made a few changes to our original plan when we were teaching. One change was splitting the class into three groups instead of four, which seemed to work better with the number of students that were in class and also the number of designs the students wanted to incorporate in their mural design. Another change we made was having students split up into two groups before starting the actual painting of the mural designs. One group was to mix paints for the mural and the other group was to transfer the designs into the wall using chalk. This seemed to work out a lot better than our original plan of having all the students mix paints together and all transfer the designs to the wall, by splitting up into two groups students were more involved and fewer students were standing around. While teaching on day 2, I walked around and helped students with paint mixing, transferring sketches to the wall, and also running to get them more materials they needed while working on the mural. In the future, teaching a big lesson plan like this one in only two days was tough, and it would be helpful with more time and make it a 4-day lesson plan with 1-3 teachers running it. With more time and teachers helping with each process, instead of all teachers running around helping with everything, would make this lesson a little less chaotic, and more time would allow for deeper discussions and reflections as well as more detailed designs for the mural. I think that the technology that we included in our lesson fit perfectly for what we were doing as a class, especially the Instagram critique.
One change I would make, Is I would possibly have each student sign out an iPad so they can digitally draw their ideas on software like procreate instead of doing it on paper to include more technical aspects to this lesson. Overall, even with some changes made to the lesson plan, I think that this lesson went really well. Students were able to all participate in the designing, painting, and reflection components of the lesson and also had fun while doing it. Because we taught this lesson to our fellow art education peers, they were able to get this lesson done in the time we had, and they already understood how to do things like mix colors and transfer images to a wall, which would probably not be the case for real high school students. If I ever teach this same lesson plan in the future, I will make sure to help high school students more so with voting terms, mixing paints, and also transferring images to a wall to make sure they understand everything we are doing.
Day 1: On the first day of teaching I think that my co-teachers and I did a good job making sure that we all had an even amount of work to teach to our peers. We got everything completed that needed to absolutely be done on day one. We did not get everything we were hoping to get done on that day finished but we had time to do it on day two. Students were engaged in the class discussion, were focused on their ideation drawings and put a lot of thought into their drawings. The voting went smoothly and the students collaborated well on how they wanted the mural to look. Overall, day one in my opinion was a success
Day 2: Beginning of day two we reflected on what we talked about on day one and took a closer look at our overall layout of the mural. We decided to make a few adjustments but then we got to work on mixing paints and sketching the drawings out on the wall. Students worked well together with how crowded it was around the mural. I think, personally, that I could have walked around more but there really was not a whole lot of room to stand anywhere so I would talk to students from the back. The reflection went well and we had students discuss what they learned. The critique was engaging and allowed students to explore a new way of critiquing art.
Overall I think this lesson went a lot smoother than I was expecting. During the planning process I think it was helpful that we were all on the same page about the social justice topic that we wanted to do for the mural. By choosing the topic without much debate, this allowed us to start on the details of the lesson right away. We had a lot of time to brainstorm how we would teach our lesson, what elements of technology we would include, and just general details of the lesson. When it came time to actually teach, I think the teaser went really well and got the class thinking about the importance of voting.
During our first day of teaching we had a super engaging conversation with the class that proved to be impactful during our lesson reflection at the very end. The class mainly talked about what they learned from their peers about voting, rather than the facts we presented. During day one, the class did a lot of ideating on their own, and collaboratively as a class. We eventually came up with the general plan for the mural that incorporated a lot of the ideas from people in the class. By the end of day one we had come up with the design of the mural and the colors they wanted to use. To start on day two, half of the class painted the background color and began drawing the design with chalk. Meanwhile, the other half of the class was mixing the colors for the different elements of the mural. I think the color mixing portion went well because everyone in the class pretty much knows about color theory. Hypothetically if we were teaching high schoolers this same lesson, we would add a mini lesson/warm-up having to do with color theory. I think the only reason we were able to complete this entire lesson in 2 days was because of the background knowledge that everyone in the class already had.
One thing I would change about the actual teaching of this lesson is that I would have liked to have been more involved in the painting process. I was under the impression that we as teachers weren’t supposed to be painting but mainly overseeing everything. We did have to make some adjustments during our teaching that we didn’t expect, but I think we as teachers worked well together in making sure everything still went smoothly. I also think we did a good job at making sure everyone was involved and doing something at all times.
Our use of technology was different than any other groups which I think was cool to see because through the use of social media people were able to share the finished mural to their social media so it reached many more people than just our class. A lot of people in our class are from all over the country, so sharing the instagram page allows us to make a greater impact with our mural. It was tough to think of ways to integrate technology in the creating and painting of the mural, so we had to be creative and think of ways to include technology in other aspects of the lesson.