Confidence Through Articulation
Read a summary of the Mound 7th grade LED Cloud Project here.
During our residencies this semester in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s Prek-8 STEM schools, PAA’s artist-educators together with our partner classroom teachers have been focusing on students being able to articulate what they have learned through project-based learning. This may seem like an easy task, if the kids are engaged in the project they should be able to talk about what they learned. However, that is often not the reality. It reminds me of the process of learning a second language. Although you may have progressed to the level of being able to read it, write it, and pronounce some vocabulary words it does not necessarily mean you can speak the language fluently. As educators in the classroom, we have the advantage of witnessing first-hand our students’ demonstrated growth in their academic and artistic performance. Yet, that growth is not always apparent when third parties speak to the students about their experience — many students have a hard time verbalizing their experience. Being able to articulate a cohesive explanation of the process in which they engaged is an important 21st century skill that students need to develop for their future in college and beyond
In the Mound 7th Grade LED Cloud residency Ben Horvat, my co-artist-educator (a.k.a. “MacGyver of Circuitry”), and I implemented various strategies to enhance our students’ understanding of the art vocabulary and technical practices they were learning with us in order to enable them to be able to confidently speak about their learning and understanding. Even though it is tempting with a large project to jump right into making to maximize time, we would start each class out with a review. This was valuable reinforcement of the material, but it also let us know what level of understanding the students had reached and what concepts or terms they were still struggling with articulating. Following the review, when students were building their sculptures, we would circulate the room asking students what they were doing and why. We would actively try to engage them in a conversation about their process and how it connected to the content. Having two artist-educators in the classroom made this much easier to accomplish. One of our collaborating classroom teachers, Mr. Pearce, then reinforced this by having the students write out the steps of what they did that session with an explanation, giving the students an opportunity for reflection. I felt this was an effective method and our students did a great job of presenting their project both at their school showcase and at the school district-wide STEM Fair.
