Drawing/ Painting Lesson (Jan 25)

The lesson plan I decided to teach was a diptych containing a drawing and painting. I decided in the lesson plan to have the children bring pictures of their favourite animal and draw it for the first piece, and for the second piece have the children paint the chosen animal doing a different activity without the picture reference. By doing this, the students learn to draw from observation and from their imagination, From what I’ve read from the textbook and other supporting resources, children from the ages 8 to 10 are focused on accuracy. Their drawings tend to regress because their focus for accuracy for details makes the children not focus as much on the background for their images.. I think with this lesson plan is a compromise between the children’s desire for accuracy and drawing from their imagination to be creative. Students would be marked on technique, composition, effort, and how well they have used the material. I do not believe it is fair to mark the students on things such as animal or concepts chosen seeing that the work is their and not mine to make that judgement.

While teaching this lesson plan, I learned that this lesson plan should be carried over a few classes. The problem with making a single lesson plan project is that it strips the project with any sort of background lessons that should take place before executing the project. Also when it comes to teaching peers about a single lesson plan, you tend to take these background teaching plans for granted. These background lesson plans would include classes on drawing, drawing techniques, and small sketching assignments to allow the students to work with different drawing techniques. There would also be classes on watercolour, and minor projects with watercolour so students can learn the limitations of the medium. This diptych project would not be a project introduced as the initial assignment, but would be a project that would take place later, after students have worked with these mediums.

While sharing this lesson plan with my group, I difficulties I encountered were to get my peers to follow the lesson plan for its objectives. I feel like with peers, they have a tendency to believe that they are above and beyond these lesson plans so they tend to not put the same effort when trying out lesson as they would for a project that they would get marked on. Also when it came for peer evaluations, the sections where I did not score as high were presumptions made by peers. I think that if they asked questions and took the project a little more seriously, sharing this lesson plan would be more successful.