Sunday, September 22, 2013

A Few More Tumbling Cubes

Here are a few more examples of 4th graders work last week. One of my favorite things to do is to post art in the hallway because I get to listen to comments of passers-by. This board is on a main corridor leading to and from the office and the cafeteria, so a lot of kids are using the route as I work. Many discuss with each other the changing art, some stop to chat and discuss the art with me asking how the kids made it, and just about everyone walks on smiling and talking about art.


And here is just a quick note on rulers. It always amazes me how many students can get to 4th grade and still have such a difficult time using a ruler!! For the above art, I asked the classes to use a ruler as a straight edge to draw a border for their work (no measuring involved here -- just holding the ruler flush with the edge of the board and drawing a line -- which I modeled) -- like this:
                                                         Nice job!!
The first day I saw more than one student, however, doing this:
Needless to say, on Day 2 I dramatically modeled how NOT to cross over your arms as you try to draw lines!!!!!

2 comments:

  1. It always amazed me that I still needed to teach ruler skills in 4th grade? I had to show them to 'use your hand like a bridge on the ruler' or they'd just hold it in one place and the ruler wiggled around. Also had to show them how to draw a pencil line against the ruler. How strange is that? I never thought I'd have to teach that. And then there's the numbers...it's amazing how many kids cannot read a ruler.

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    1. It is amazing!! This summer I met with a small group of art teachers for coffee and that was one of the topics that came up to discuss. One of the hardest things for some of the kids to understand was that you have to press down really hard with the hand holding the ruler and really light with the hand holding the pencil. I guess it just shows us how little experience these kids have had with rulers.

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