Celebration Photos

Prior to coming to Capital City, I had never heard of expeditionary learning and I definitely had never heard of a Celebration of Learning.  Celebration of Learning is an important part of the expeditionary school model.  From what I understand, as a COL newbie, is that they usually happen to celebrate student process and products.  The process and demonstration of learning is as important as final products and students are expected to be able to present some part of their work to families, friends, and other vested parties.  Our COL was truly celebratory as students raced around the day of to put the final touches on their products and prepare their classrooms for presentations.  It was really exciting to see students EXCITED about subjects like math, science and humanities.  In my classroom, I had both gallery displays set up demonstrating our process and products but also stations set up where students could physically show their families how to make artworks.  Watching student presentations really gave me a good gauge on how well students had learned artmaking techniques.  It was a wonderful night.  Below are some pictures from the night.

A self portrait in 7 steps

Portraiture is easily becoming my favorite skill to teach because I love seeing student growth evidenced in each draft.  Expeditionary learning schools emphasize the learning process and encourage students to do drafts, engage in critiques and reflect on their work.  As an artist, I appreciate this process.  Here is one student's split face portrait with all the steps included.

 

We start by drawing a portrait on our own.  Pretty good skill level, don't you think?

Next, I teach the proper proportions through a step by step demonstration using a premade face template.

We try a second draft but this time we look in the mirror to draw the features more closely to our own.

 

A third draft gets us closer to a self portrait.

Before we start our final, we do a simple silent critique where we list grows (things to be improved upon/things to change) and glows (things that are done well/things to keep).  As always our language is KIND, SPECIFIC, and HELPFUL.

Final draft we draft half a face and the other half has symbols representing our interests.

 

Lastly, upon completion, we write a reflection where we think back on our work and reflect on our learning process.

Expeditionary Learning

I added a new educational term to my lexicon this year- expeditionary learning. 

As the name suggests, expeditionary learning schools engage students to be active participants in learning expeditions.  EL schools combine many strategies I am familiar with as a museum educator- inquiry, experiential learning, object based research, authentic learning opportunities- and combines them with character development.  At an EL school, character building and academic scholarship are seen as equal components in student achievement.  Much of what I've learned about EL reflects my personal educational philosophy and it is affirming to see EL perform comparatively well.

More updates to come during training this week, but in the meantime, check out the EL website and see if you can't find a video of President Obama visiting Capital City PCS.