Here is the PowerPoint presentation I made entitled PLACES IN PERSPECTIVE:
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS MY POWERPOINT PRESENTATION FILE
I think that art class should recharge my students. I
especially think this way because my older students have art lessons after
lunch, just before the school day is winding down. By and large they are in a
bit of a food coma, and nearing that daily academic burn out by the time I see
them, so it is up to me to give them an invigorating lesson. Truly, I have
nothing against textbooks, they will forever serve a good purpose, but as a
creative person and educator I think it’s very important I show students my
creative flair. Yes, I am quite new to PowerPoint presenting, but I have tasked
myself with creating quite a few of them lately. They are informative and quite
impactful. Each slide can jump in a new direction and avoid being stale and
predictable, and it allows for laying out the scaffolding for so much of a
lesson. My looking and talking exercises, formal assessing, student art
prompts, and essential question asking can all be done in various slides. And
if I do my job well, the presentation will come across more as a fun bit of
entertainment rather thank a segment of the learning process.
Best of all, the PowerPoint presentation can travel.
If I have students who are struggling learners who need an extra leg up to
comprehend and retain the big ideas and techniques I am trying to teach, they
will be given the ability to access my PowerPoint work from home, or elsewhere and
they can view the material as much as they want at the pace they require.
Students who might have to miss a lesson can brush up by viewing my PowerPoint
on their own time as well. And a presentation can be archived for use by other
teachers, anytime and anywhere.
I decided to focus my presentation on these three
things:
1.
An emerging
artist who happens to be local. Considering that she is a woman of color might
also be appealing considering the students I work with and anything I can do to
help connect my learners to the course material is a very good thing. Tying
everything to some incredibly fresh, impactful art is a great thing.
2.
I want my
students to explore the relationships they have with people they are close to.
Beyond that, I want them to think of the spaces and places they share.
Embracing the personal, and community side of student life is of great
importance to me. Making them think about the deeper things in life is also
important.
3.
Lastly, I needed
to consider the National Art Standards that are quite important in allowing me
to assess my students learning. Because of this, I decided this lesson would be
a great opportunity to teach the concept of perspective drawing. It is
important that kids learn proper rendering of 3D spaces and the various
techniques they can use to achieve realism in their work. By no means is this
an easy concept to understand.
This PowerPoint presentation deepened my understanding
that if presented wrong, the ability to comprehend the theories and skills of
perspective drawing might not go smoothly. It is a complex subject that I can
see lots of students struggling with and if left to just read up on perspective
from a textbook, I think most students would not grasp the material. Just
reading about some of the more complicated avenues of art making is at times too
detached from the creative process. If my goal is to recharge my students on a
weekly basis, I have to make sure they are fully engaged. And one thing that a
PowerPoint can offer to engage students that a more common textbook can is an embedded
video, and I think mixed media can lead to a strong presentation. A
well-constructed PowerPoint can say so much in a multitude of ways that help
keep kids enthused while retaining material. Also, by letting technology be
introduced, you will gain the attention of the visual learners and tech heads
in your room that might tend to tune out when material is presented in more
traditional ways.
Now I feel like I can teach a difficult subject like
perspective in a refreshing way that will likely get through to a lot of my
students. These secondary kids can end their school day on a high note and I am
proud of that.
