NAEP

Our day began today with the administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. This is called the NAEP (pronounced nape) for short. It was pretty boring for the students, but since they sent a couple of people here to administer it, I had a nice time grading papers.

The rest of the day was nice for the students. After recess, they worked in their literature circles. This went just like clockwork today, and it was a pleasure to see how the students are really enjoying the books they picked to read. After lunch, we did another run-through of Gold Dust or Bust. I am happy that the students seem to have more confidence in singing the songs, and some of them know most of the songs by heart already! Also, there are some really nice voices in room 19!

Then things got really fun for the students. Thursdays afternoons are for Art, and we are currently studying the idea of form in art. Last week we did clay sculptures which helped the students to focus on the idea of organic shapes. Today, we looked at geometric shapes, and particularly at the techniques of relief and additive sculpture. As usual, we look at some pictures of some real art objects here as we discussed the techniques the artists used. Then we began on our own project. In this case, our project was to make the exterior of a building using relief and additive sculpture techniques. First, the students had to pound the clay into flat pieces. They enjoyed doing this, I’ll admit, more than I enjoyed hearing it. Just look at the gleeful expressions below!

Once they had made a flat surface, they began to add details which would make it look like a structure. You can see the door and window below, and, the whimsical addition of a little man.

 

In a day or two – well, probably Monday – we will paint these. Right now you can see they still look a little rough, but with some paint they will be really quite sharp. Stay tuned!

Homework:  See yesterday’s post for the homework. Remember that the rough draft of the I-Search paper is due on Monday!