Graph-it Art

I hung out the Darrell's class again this morning. It was a student's birthday so they were having a pot luck during class. Before they ate, they had to do two challenges. Darrell has his students work on their focus and concentration by making them stand with their hands at their sides and their eyes closed as he walks up and down the isle pointing them or making comments. The goal is to make it one minute without anyone opening their eyes or making noise. The 1st try they only made it 15 seconds and the second time they made it to 50 seconds. He emphasized the importance of being able to concentrate and block out distraction while taking exams. We then went outside to learn the importance of positive thinking. He had the students stand in a circle and attempt to touch their palms on the ground while keeping their legs straight. The first time around, very few people were able to complete the task, but after Darrell explained that they should close their eyes and imagine their palms touching the ground and when they thought they couldn't go any further to take a breath and go a little bit more, they preformed much better. Darrell explain the importance of imagining yourself achieving your goal instead of filling your head with negative thoughts. We went back inside to have our feast and review about circuits. Then I went to Dan's class which was being run by Erin today because Dan was running his son to the doctor. Erin didn't get any specific directions from Dan so she allowed the students to work on their graph-it art project, which come to find out is the coolest project in the world. For the past week, I have been hearing about this project but it wasn't until today that I learned the details. In art, the students learned about creating artwork with a point of prospective or with the looks of a horizon so for this project they drew this type of artwork using only straight lines. They enlarged their image onto a big piece of graph paper and then attached it to a black poster board. Then they used a needle and yarn to create their image on the front of the poster board. I took pictures of two of the coolest ones. In addition to the piece of artwork, they had to figure out the slope of 50 of their lines and 25 of them had to be different and then they will write equations of each line in their artwork. This project is not only an excellent use of both subjects but the final product is outstanding and could be sold. Advisory was in place of X block today so people could have one more day to work on their presentations. Dan's advisory had finished theirs on Monday so we walked over to Trader Joe's, which is all natural grocery store right across the street. After lunch, I went to Judo Math. Dan taught them the final way to find the equation of a line, point/slope form. Dan explained that they only needed to know one and didn't have to memorize all three. He explained there are always more than one way to do things and to NEVER let a teacher let them different. People think differently and what sticks in one person's mind, may not stick in another's. After math, I went to elementary school to help out for the afternoon. I was only there for an hour and a half, but I was ready to leave. I am so glad I am secondary because I don't think I could be an elementary teacher. I give credit to anyone who can. There is just a little bit too much patience involved. Having to remind students 10 times to sit on their bottoms and give a signal silently, is not appealing to me. While I was there, we went to library to hear a story and then the students checked out books. Thank goodness for people who can teach small children!