Week 5 - Text Based Art Work

This week we worked with using pages from books or poems to create found poetry.  We circled words on the page that we connected with or that created a new poem.  Then we filled the space around the words with colour or drawings.  

 Reflection: I challenged myself to create something that wasn’t something I would describe as “beautiful”.  I was happy I challenged myself in that way, but still liked my more “pretty” piece in the end.  The second piece is my "un-beautiful" piece.  I think it's unique and I'm glad I tried something different.

Adaptation:  For Grade 1 students I would definitely save this for a little later in the school year (after they have a better foundation of reading).  I would consider giving them pages I have created with random words.  I wonder if giving them actual book pages may be confusing or difficult for them to pull out different narratives.    I would likely have both options on hand and allow the students to guide what would be the better option.  

One of my favourite parts of this project were the materials we used.  I really loved the chalk pastels we used.  I loved the vibrant, saturated colours that they created.  I would definitely make a huge effort to make these available in my classroom.  I think using real art things beyond just crayons and markers would be so amazing for students.  I believe the investment in those things would be a huge asset to the classroom and the students learning. 

Assessment: I think this would be a really great cross-curricular assignment.   This would be a great way to assess students reading ability and word comprehension.  It would be so great for students to develop schema and access prior knowledge.  This would be an activity I would consider doing more than once depending on how successful it is.  I would also be really interested in seeing how students abilities in this activity develop over time.  I suppose that would be a good assessment piece, to have students attempt this more than once or twice in a school year.  I would keep the students work and use each piece to assess growth.