Post 2- Autobiography

For the part few Fridays, I have gone to Vineyard Elementary school where I am interning with Miranda Schoenfeld. It's been an awesome experience so far getting to know the students, my teacher, and mentor. The lessons have gone well with only a few hitches so far. For our first lessons, we have the students create the covers of their autobiographies that they are writing in class. These will be shown to their parents on parent-teacher conference night.
For the first day of this project, I taught the students the value of simple lines. I started by pointing to myself, then to a cartoon drawing of myself and asked them what the difference was? They discovered the importance of picking and choosing just a few lines to crate cartoons, not every single one that exists. Like how drawing every single line on my face would make me look much older than I actually am. We were talking about emphasis and being selective. We also talked about expressions. And what different parts of the face are needed to create different emotions on our faces. I had them raise their hands and tell me an emotion. "Anger" was chosen. I have them all make an angry face, then had them look around at the other students sitting near, then I asked: "What is their face doing that makes them look angry?" We figured out it was the eyebrows turning down, the eyes squinting, the forehead creased, and the mouth turned down. I drew this combination on the board using just a few lines to complete the face. We did a few more rounds of this with the students giving me different emotions, us all making that face, and then drawing it on the board simply.
After this discussion and demonstration, the students were given the project: To draw their face on a piece of paper, taking almost the whole sheet to do so. They were also asked to pick an emotion to convey. Afterwards, they colored then and wrote their names. This took the whole class period.
In the second class, when I came back a week later, we continued this project. This time, we started the class with an activity called: The Ugliest Drawing in the World. They were given fifteen minutes to draw the ugliest face they possibly could. Some drew boogers, most added pimples, and warts and crazy hair. Several gave their poor drawings braces. It was hilarious! The students had a great time really releasing their creativity. And I think it solved a problem that my teacher, Mrs. Schoenfeld, my mentor: Cindy Clark, and I noticed the previous week: The students were very nervous about making good drawings. They weren't confident in their abilities and it was holding them back despite our saying everyone was doing great. Cindy suggested this Ugly Drawing activity to help them boost their confidence. It worked! Now, we can say when they are less than happy with their pieces that at least it's better than their ugliest drawing! That made the students laugh. After we finished this, we got to work finishing out covers. This was done by adding simple bodies below the heads, giving them a bobble-head feel that made them smile. They then colored everything in and the background.
It's been going great, and I can't wait till next week when we do a lesson based around Ancient Greece.