Welcome to another happy Friday Blog Entry!
This week in the News:
- November PD Day Plans
- Lesson Planning
- Middle School Music Planning
- Middle School Art Planning
- Tech and Supplies
- Dates to Know
November 2:
School hours: 8:00-3:00
At schools until 11:30 which includes 1 hour of planning time and a 45 minute lunch.
Schools will have 1 hour 45 minutes for school-based PD.
11:30-12:00 - travel time
12:00-3:00 - district led PD
Our district PD time will be held at 2 schools- Aby's music group will be at Talbot, Rochelle's Art group will be at Doran, and the Literacy group will be at Silvia. We will be grouped in our cohorts to continue our work towards our goals- either Literacy or Mapping.
Lesson Planning:
Thank you for continuing to upload your lesson plans each week in the google classroom! If you need assistance or would like to use the simple planning template I shared earlier in the year, I will attach it to the email today. It's great to see some really thoughtful planning coming through in these weekly. I will continue to share some so you can see what's happening across the district in your ARTS FAM..
This is Julia Klingner's plan for the week- she works with Durfee Band, but also does Music Tech AND some Orchestra/Band at middle schools! Click this LINK! Love how this is organized.
This is Rochelle Pettenati's weekly plan for her Pre-K-8 Art classes. She loads a link to each classes' platform that has the I Can statements and the lesson. Super cool- check it out HERE.
Middle School Music Planning:
We will be pioneering a new way of "doing music" in middle school as our fearless middle school music teachers are working on mapping out the learning tasks for grades 6-8. This will revamp what we do in music for our kids, and the hope is that it is more tailored to what we have been introducing in the past, in terms of tech and also more engaging, especially for boys in the middle years. If all goes well, the courses will change from "General Music" to each having a title for the grade.. here is a quick summary of what I am thinking:
- I will be advocating at the district level to change the course titles in X2 from General Music in grades 6-8 to a few new terms- 6th- Music Exploration, 7th- Modern World Music, and 8th Music Studio.. these titles are still in draft form, and you will hear more from Abby, your lead on this.
- Abby will be working to collab on the design of mapping for these grades and may pilot some of the tasks at Talbot this year.
- For the 2022/23 school year, we will roll out the new map/courses.
- These courses will go to the school committee and central administration for approval.
- It is SO great to see the bar being held at a challenging level for our middle schoolers- I wanted to share that I do see an increase in the level of task being planned for our 6-8 artists, and that's a good thing! If we look at the K-5 Art Map, we see that many of the elements and principals of art are learned by the time they get to 6th grade, so it's good to refresh the knowledge, but continue to push it.. for example, students do work with demonstrating VALUE in elementary school.. it's OK to do a quick check in to probe for understanding, but introducing it as a new concept is not needed- rather, embed it into what you are asking them to do. So, try setting up a simple still life at the center of each table (Painted white milk cartons work well) and have students demonstrate value as they do thumbnail sketches, and then choose one for a final render. This could become a whole study where students draw the object, take a photo of it, and then play with the photo in Google Drawing- they can do a monochromatic print of it simply by changing the picture settings.
- PD Day for K-8- November 2
- End of Term 1- November 5
- Veteran's Day- November 11
- Thanksgiving Break 1/2 Day- November 24
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