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Lesson Plans


Re: Have to give a quick answer

From: Ted Beilby (tbeilby)
Date: Thu Jun 08 2000 - 09:31:23 PDT

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    Right now and for the past three years my school schedule includes

    9 weeks of art for 6th grade, rotating with P.E. and Computers,
    I see these students every other day for two nine week quarters

    7th grade has a wheel of classes, art for about 7 weeks.

    Just this year my principal talked to me about in the future changing the
    7th grade wheel, dropping out two classes, increasing the art class to 12
    weeks. Changing the wheel to an elective, the wheel would also include
    foreign languages and family living. the other electives that are already
    in place are band, choir, and orchestra.

    Right now I see about 800 students a year. This change would mean I would
    see less students for a longer time. I feel really rushed with only 7
    weeks, I have continually asked for a longer class. I feel like I just get
    the class dynamics working and then they are leaving.

    Another really awkward scheduling this year: I have students from self
    contained classes, extreme mental and physical challenges mixed in with the
    7 week rotating classes. The students that do not read do not rotate to
    the other classes, they stay with me all year. As the year progressed some
    of these students become more difficult to deal with because they were doing
    some of the same projects, I tried to give them variations but they really
    needed so much help and I had a whole new class to work with. I have talked
    with the principal about reducing the size of the classes that these
    students attend. I had a class with 5 special needs kids and total of
    thirty. I talked with the self contained teacher who agreed that this was
    not the best situation for her students. She said she would go to the
    administration with me to ask for one year long class that her students
    could more easily fit in with. It was really hard for these students to
    deal with the confusion of a whole new group coming in around them, and
    trying to fit in again. She told me at the beginning of the year that the #1
    goal for her students in my class was not the content of the class but the
    social factor. I am not resentful of that. It makes sense to me that art
    is the class where you can connect with people. Not all were unsuccessful
    in this arrangement. I had one who enjoyed telling new students what was
    coming, I encouraged him to help others. I assigned bright and
    compassionate students to work in teams with them. Most exciting was a
    group of four that built a papier mache sculpture together. One legally
    blind, one very low mental functioning, and two mainstream that were willing
    to step back and let the other two work, especially when the paste was
    flying - we all laughed a lot in that class. One student who was tired of
    doing art toward the end of the year asked for the clean up jobs and helped
    me clean, clean, clean!

    I would choose less students for longer.
    Is anyone else dealing with my situation with the mixed class of rotating
    students and not rotating students?
    Diane 

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