I began class with our Building Warm-up assessment exercise. I asked the students questions such as “Have you ever had a dream?” and “Was it a good dream?” and “Was it a bad dream?” The students gave relevant answers that consisted of “my bad dream was a bad man chasing me,” or “my good dream was me and my dad playing.” I was very surprised at their answers and the interaction and full participation I was seeing. We discussed as many dreams as we could before needing to move on to our lesson about dream catchers. I then pulled up the power point that I would use to teach the students about the history and the connection of the Dream Catcher to our projects and assignments.
The students were very inquisitive during power point. I showed them images of different styles of dream catchers and we discussed each one looking at their size, shapes, colors and differences. They enjoyed looking at them and comparing them. Some recognized them by connecting them to their own lives and instances in which they had encountered one. We took time to discuss each ones experience. After finishing the lesson about dream catchers and the history of their makings, it was time to begin learning how to draw our own.
I gave each student about a 12x16 piece of white paper. I also posted a clean piece of white paper on the board in which I would use to give direct instruction to the students. As we began, I guided them on how to draw each part of the dream catcher, from the circles to the lines and the feathers. Each student was given the opportunity to work at their own pace. We used pencils to do the initial drawing.
Since we only have 30 minutes together, twice a week, we had to pick up where we left off on creating our piece of art work for the next three weeks. In each setting I would l guide them on drawing the next part, drawing their good or bad dream in the dream catcher, painting the dream catchers with water colors and drawing over the pencil lines with markers. The students loved creating the dream catchers and were fairly excited every time they entered my classroom to complete the dream catchers.
Overall, I feel like this lesson was successful and my students were able to replicate the instructions that I was giving them and interpret with their own imagination. I feel that we met the standard that Visual Arts teacher candidates demonstrate cross-cultural knowledge and understanding of ancient through contemporary art history and visual culture. My students had a thorough understanding of the dream catcher and the history of its nature and were able to implicate that knowledge through their work! This is one assignment that I will continue to complete throughout my teaching career.