Donaghey P.S. | Teacher Journal

Today we began our session by looking at photographs the children had taken last week.  Ann and I felt that this was important for the children so they could all see each others’ work and be able to constructively comment on the photographs and learn how to make improvements to their pictures.

Today was also important in terms of the children’s ICT skills – they all successfully uploaded their photographs last week into group folders so today I wanted the children to be able to create folders within folders in order for different weeks to be able to be uploaded and located easily.

The classroom today was busy!!! We had photography in groups with the children experimenting further – such excitiement all morning.

Today we made contact with Ann for the beginning of a new project.  One again we stepped out into the unknown both for the children and myself.  10 of the children have worked with Ann before and 10 of the children are completely new to the project.  This includes how the equipment works, what they would be involved in, the structure of the day – basically everything!!!  How exciting!!

We bagan our day with introductions and some discussion around the whiteboard – this will become an important feature of our contact sessions with Ann.  It is here we communicate with Ann and show her our work.  We can also use the whiteboard to type our thoughts and ideas and to share them with Ann.

As usual the children learned how to operate the equipment quickly and with Ann’s help it wasn’t long to they were using the camera, typing on the board and talking to Ann as if they had known her for ……….

Today was all about investigations and reporting back our findings to Ann.  We had our usual discussion time in the morning session, which is really important for the previous week but also for the day ahead.

The children remained in their groups for this activity as they had worked well in these groups in the previous weeks.  When we went outside we had to look for different things around the school, like boundaries, interesting features, hills, mountains, names etc.  Unfortunately the weather wasn’t kind to us and our activity was a wet one!!  We had soggy paper as well as feet and hair but still had great fun and all involved in active learning.

 

Everytime the children get the chance to go outside to complete activities they thoroughly enjoy them.  Today armed with cameras and their journals the children headed to find interesting things around our school grounds.

 

 

 

 

It really is a priviledge to work in a school like Donaghey where we have fabulous resources both inside and outside .  The children had the freedom today to investigate but they also had to stay inside a certain zone so they would remain focussed on the task.

 

 

Today the children were also trying to record accurately.  Some of the children are more comfortable at using the cameras than others so today we had a variety of photographs – some were very blurred and out of focus – maybe this is something we will be able to work on over the next few weeks of the project.

 

Around school we have lots of interesting things both on the inside and the outside of our boundaries.  We were able to record fields, plants, signs, hills even a tractor and van!!  The children recorded seeing a red van and when we reported back to Ann the children said they could hear ‘a red van’ it was funny listening to them convince Ann that the van had a particular sound.

What exactly would we be thinking about in our project over the next few weeks??

Locality?  Around Us?  Places we belong to?  Areas of interest?  Family history?  Home?

Well all of the above.  Last week we had drawn plans individually but the children also had to organise themselves into groups to make a group map.  The children naturally organised themselves into their locality – those who were nearest to each other and those who passed friends’ houses on the way to school.

Once again discussion with Ann was a central feature of our lesson.  Even though most of the children had never been involved in the project before they were not one bit scared of how to use the program and share their work with Ann.  This incuded taking photographs, colour matching and sharing map ideas and progress with Ann.

Once the maps had been drawn the children were asked to mix colour which they could use to create a wash over them.  We discussed the  discused the idea of a wash and how they could go about creating a wash on their maps.  In groups we went outside to take photographs of the grass so we could use the colour and match it for the maps.  Then the childen mixed their paint – some found this a challenge as they didn’t mix enough and then when they tried to mix more the colours weren’t quite the same.

Once the children began painting and working some of the maps began to take on their own shape and somehow colour was even added even though only a green wash and black roads were to be added!!  I’m sure this would’t be hard to mend – but look at those really proud faces – the girls were so proud of what they had achieved and to them the colour simply added to the map.

Today was exciting for the children as the parents had been invited in to see the beginning of the project and to talk to Ann about the whole process and the thinking behind the virtual aspect of the project.  This was also a fabulous opportunity for the parents to talk with the children about our locality and in particular the maps, which the children had drawn.  This worked really well,  as we had at least one parent for each group who shared some thoughts and information about the area on the map.  The parents really valued the project and all thought it was great to be able to see how the project worked and the kind of things the children were doing in class.

WOW!! We have just begun another new project with Ann.  Today we got to chat to Ann and introduce ourselves.  Some of my class just had to say, “Nice to see you again!!” and for others it was a matter of introducing themselves and getting their photograph taken.  We had an opportunity to take photographs using the whiteboard camera and also using our class cameras.

The children had a chance to draw pictures of themselves and also to write about things, which were important to them.

As in previous projects, the children became familiar with the technology involved very quickly and very soon a queue had formed around the whiteboard with the children just dying to get a chance to talk to Ann as well as share their drawings.

We also had the opportunity to discuss our new theme today – DWELL.  This was really exciting as the children seemed really inspired by the topic and the possible activities, which they would be doing over the next few weeks.  The children had some time today to think about their location today and their journey to school.  Some children decided to label their maps and some were excited about marking on their homes, granny’s etc.

Watch this space for more!!

During the projects I am constantly being challenged about my expectations of the children, my teaching methods, my classroom practice, the experiences being offered to the children, their learning experiences, the improvements in their skill set………. and so the list goes on.

I think it is amazing that someone can come into my classroom via the computer and challenge me in such a manner.  I now expect this from Ann – I expect her to make me challenge myself and the children.  I expect her to push me into new things, I expect her to challenge my skill set and that of the children.  I also have come to expect mayhem and an untidy classroom for 8-10 weeks.

When I look back on the projects it is then I realise what we have achieved.

I know that Ann has expectations of me too and I hope that in whatever she asks of me and the children she is as pleased with the end results as we are.  Looking at the work produced by the children helps me appreciate the process more and helps me to realise what we have achieved together, over a relatively short period of time – just imagine what could be achieved if funding was available for all schools to participate in work like this all the time.

Central to the project is communication – communication between all parties, artist – children – teacher. I really feel our end results reflect this process.

When a project is completed it makes you feel sad but at the same time totally fulfilled because of what the children have been a part of.

A special thanks to Kidsown for this amazing and fantastic opportunity.  Thanks to Ann for her inspiring ideas, her excitement and enthusiasm, her patience, her friendship, her expertise and for being able to share these fantastic experiences with her.

Special thoughts for this project – OOH!!! and AHH!!!! oh and WOW!!!!

For our last session Ann came to school armed with boxes and boxes of supplies!!  The class were unable to control themselves from the minute Ann told them they were going to be developing their own photograms in the darkroom.  This was a very active and ‘hands on’ session as only a small group could work with Ann in the darkroom – so I came up with an activity for the rest!

We began by mixing the chemicals needed to develop our photograms.

While Ann was working with a small group in the darkroom, (renamed store!!) I thought we could revisit the theme of colour mixing and spinning discs – could we get 23 all spinning at once???

23 electrical circuits with spinning discs – all at once??

23 children all hidden – only spinning discs to be seen??

A little ambitious – I think we managed 8 but what fun we had trying.

In the dark room meanwhile peace and calm reigned only ooohs and aaahs rang.

What a wonderful day – new skills, new knowledge, fun, excitement and fantastic end results.

Earlier in the project we investigated how light travelled through transparent, translucent and opaque materials.  For this part of the project we looked at how light behaved with coloured materials.  We looked at our lights through different coloured gels and how these gels would behave if we layered different colours on top of each other.

We talked with Ann about the spectrum of light and in order to make this easier to understand we made rainbow jars.  This is probably my favourite part of the projects – the encorporation of other curricular areas with art.

During this session we measured around our jars and cut the gels into rectangular sections, big enough to cover the jar and to allow an overlap of gel colours.  We had to glue the gels to the jars really carefully and then we put a tea light inside for our light souce.

Reflecting on this lesson makes me realise how much the children have understood about light, colour, reflection, materials and their properties and how their art skills have improved.

Moving onto colour seemed the natural progression of the project.  The introduction of James Clerk Maxwell was an excellent lead into the idea of spinning discs being used to merge colours.  As a class we investigated his work and discovered that he had experimented with colour and moving discs, which allowed colours to merge together to make new colours.

As a lead into the idea of colour we used coloured foils to look through to see what would happen to the objects we were looking at.  We also layed the coloured foils on top of each other to see what new colours we could make.

This was an amazing part of our project and the photographs of the spinning discs shows that.  It was a natural integration of other curricular areas ie. electricity.

I think Ann was really impressed with the children’s work too.  They used their imagination to create new collections of colours on their discs.  They spent a lot of time experimenting with colours and were also able to make their own variations of the spinning discs by using lots of different colours and merging them with the aid of their motors and electrical circuits.

Once again detailed recording was important so we could recap on what we had been learning and use it to evaluate our learning,

 

 

Learning new skills for the children is an essential part of the project but this year, I had new skills to learn too. In my box of supplies from Ann was a very interesting little black box and inside this was the ‘special paper’ we were to use for our photograms.  Late one Tuesday afternoon my classroom assistant and myself had the opportunity to use this paper and turn the store into a dark room – this was very important – in order for the children to be able to produce a photogram we had to test first and know the conditions to which the paper would react in the manner we wanted in order to produce the desiredoutcomes.  (Samples of the children’s photograms can be found on their journal)

Throughout the project Ann and myself spend a lot of time communicating by emails, phone calls and virtually.  This also applies to working with the children – communication is a big part of our daily activity and for this task it was extremely important too as the processes involved were detailed and needed  to be understood by the children.

Being able to programe share with Eluminate was excellent as Ann was able to show the children the recorded clips of the photogram process.  This really helped the children to understand and I feel contributed to the really successful outcomes.

Recording what we do in the classroom is important too and for this session the children had a class activity to take part in.  This involved some group internet work and then recording onto translucent paper their thoughts and feelings.

I thoroughly enjoyed this week of the project, the experimentation process, the excitement in the ‘make shift’ dark room, the oohs and aahs and the WOW of the end result!!