Thursday's lessons were taught to the 5/6's, Kindergartens, and 3/4's. The 5/6's had a work class to finish their anime self-portraits. I played some anime music for them while they worked. A number of the students were finished by the end of class and handed me their drawings. The rest said they would finish and hand it in at the beginning of class on Tuesday. My UC had commented that giving 1 mark for each criteria might be too definitive and the criteria were a little vague. Even before she said that I was thinking of whether I should make each out of 3 or something but I also didn't want the assignment to be worth 15 marks because that seemed like a lot for a little assignment. I was thinking of defining the criteria for the last assignment more comprehensively. This assignment I wanted to use as formative and summative, and give them feedback they can use to work on their last project. At the beginning of practicum I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to assess the students and if the marks would be valid for their actual grades so I didn't put too much emphasis on giving them "marks" but I could have easily given marks to every assignment or exercise we've done. I feel like I'm teaching a 6 week workshop on anime and comic art, cramming in as much as possible, which is not ideal so I'm struggling to teach the students what they need to know, what they want to know, and also give them valuable verbal and written feedback. It's also challenging that the classes are only 45 minutes long, and students are almost always a little late getting to class, and then we lose a few minutes towards the end to clean up and get ready to leave. Thinking about this, it makes me feel like I might like teaching elementary school when I have the same students all day and my times can be flexible, or in high school when the blocks might be longer.
The kindergartens needed to finish a previous assignment so I only ended up teaching them for the last 5-10 minutes of class. Instead of doing what I had originally planned, I taught them how to draw pandas instead because I knew it would be quick. They all did really well!
The 3/4's started their anime self-portraits. So far so good!
I'm planning to give the students back all the work they've handed in so far with my comments and feedback on it at the beginning of lesson 4 before starting their final projects. I didn't have time in the previous lessons because there were a lot of things I wanted to cover. Lesson 4 will span the last few lessons of practicum and students will brainstorm ideas for their mini comics on one of the themes I list (grade specific), then they will develop their character(s) and make up a storyboard, and then they will LIGHTLY sketch in their comic pages. Finally, in the last step, they will outline and draw with black pen to make their pages look complete.
Originally, I had planned for the last class to be a publishing event where students get into groups and share their work and receive feedback from peers, but I'm not sure if I'll have time. It may be better to give the students more time to do a better job instead of rushing them to finish. I also wanted to show them a Japanese anime film, but I definitely don't have time anymore. So many things I've cut from my unit! Bookmaking was one of the things I really wanted to include so they would know how to bind their comic pages if they wanted to after drawing them. I will be teaching a mini unit to the Language Arts 7 class about Haiku so I plan to show them how to make a simple folded book from a single piece of paper which they can then fill with their Haiku.
Well, I think it's time for me to lie down for a while again...I'm pretty sure I'll be better by tomorrow.