Student Evaluation
Overall, after the students have listened to the story, created their shadow puppets, and presented their plays, the last step in this lesson plan is to evaluate their learning. Therefore, in order to evaluate the students’ attainments of the objectives, observe the mini-plays the students presented. In turn, this particular evaluation is summative, simply because in creating a play the students essentially summarized all of the knowledge they gained throughout the lesson, and outputted their understanding of the objectives initially presented at the beginning of the activity. For example, through creating a play students have demonstrated that they understand the concept of Chinese shadow puppetry folklore as a means of theatrical expression and artistic engagement. In fact, through these plays, students also have the opportunity to show their color and pattern awareness through the various shapes they cut out of their puppets. Finally, in creating and presenting a play, students show that they can collaborate with others, and understand sequences of events, particularly cause and effect relationships, through the interactions that their puppets have. Overall, even though summative assessments are important for the teacher to gage a sense of how well the information was attained by the students, also utilize a formative assessment to understand how the students felt about the lesson as a whole, and most importantly, how they feel they performed in each activity. Therefore, for this assessment, have students put their heads down, and either show a thumbs-up, thumbs-sideways, or thumbs-down, depending upon how they personally felt about the three components of this lesson, including: "understanding the purpose of Chinese shadow puppetry folklore", "creating a personal shadow puppet with shapes and patterns", and "performing a shadow puppet play with a friend". In fact, to initiate the self-reflection thinking process and gage the students’ understanding, ask the students what they learned from this lesson, and what they still wonder about the activity, both of which will show if the students understood the concepts, could output a certain behavior, and could apply the lesson to different contexts.
Teacher Evaluation
Self-Reflection Before the Lesson
Before engaging in this artistic, fun, and whimsical lesson, I hoped that my students would be actively engaged in the process of learning, and would be encouraged to let their creative minds run wild. However, despite these hopes, within every lesson there are elements that are particularly challenging and require careful consideration when deciding how to facilitate a smooth and effective lesson. For example, in regards to the shadow puppet lesson, one of the elements I anticipated would be particularly challenging was helping students to focus on the task at hand rather than be distracted by the construction paper, scissors, and popsicle sticks, and wanting to create something different than a shadow puppet. In turn, in order to facilitate this challenging element, I wanted to make sure that my introduction, including my hook and the story, were both exciting and brought students into the world of shadow puppets, so that they would be engaged and excited to learn about this particular topic, rather than a side topic. In addition to this element, I also anticipated that there would be many shy performers when it came time to showcase the plays, because students may be content creating their shadow puppets for their own enjoyment, which is absolutely fine. In turn, I made sure that I would still encourage students to create an interaction, but they did not have to get up in front of the class and present, where they could take this time for themselves, and explore the endless places their minds took them in the world of shadow puppetry.
Before engaging in this artistic, fun, and whimsical lesson, I hoped that my students would be actively engaged in the process of learning, and would be encouraged to let their creative minds run wild. However, despite these hopes, within every lesson there are elements that are particularly challenging and require careful consideration when deciding how to facilitate a smooth and effective lesson. For example, in regards to the shadow puppet lesson, one of the elements I anticipated would be particularly challenging was helping students to focus on the task at hand rather than be distracted by the construction paper, scissors, and popsicle sticks, and wanting to create something different than a shadow puppet. In turn, in order to facilitate this challenging element, I wanted to make sure that my introduction, including my hook and the story, were both exciting and brought students into the world of shadow puppets, so that they would be engaged and excited to learn about this particular topic, rather than a side topic. In addition to this element, I also anticipated that there would be many shy performers when it came time to showcase the plays, because students may be content creating their shadow puppets for their own enjoyment, which is absolutely fine. In turn, I made sure that I would still encourage students to create an interaction, but they did not have to get up in front of the class and present, where they could take this time for themselves, and explore the endless places their minds took them in the world of shadow puppetry.
Self-Reflection After the Lesson
Overall, this lesson was absolutely incredible, and the students greatly enjoyed every minute of creating shadow puppets and were eager to share their plays with their peers. In fact, even though there were points during this lesson that I might want to change in the future, many elements of this lesson went fairly well, including my own performance as a “teacher in training”, and how the students did during the different activities. In regards to the elements that went fairly well, the entire class was extremely enthusiastic about the story I read to them, where I asked them to look for all different types of colors as I read the book and imagine what it was like to be inside of the book itself. In turn, this aspect of the lesson was enjoyable for the students, where the only component about this activity that I would change for the future was how I handled students who would stand up during the read-aloud or discuss a completely different topic with their peers. For example, during the lesson I simply addressed each student who wasn’t paying attention to the picture book and reminded them of where their eyes should be. However, even though this worked for the first couple of students, I realized that after constantly addressing every student’s needs that I wasn’t going to be able to read the entire story. Therefore, I realized that for future lessons, when these actions occur I will simply pause the activity and ask students what they think they should be doing during a read-aloud and then have the students create the type of community environment they would prefer to listen to a story in. Overall, this portion of the activity went fairly well, however, I realized that if I decided to introduce shadow puppets in the future, I should show clips of actual Chinese shadow puppetry.
Overall, this lesson was absolutely incredible, and the students greatly enjoyed every minute of creating shadow puppets and were eager to share their plays with their peers. In fact, even though there were points during this lesson that I might want to change in the future, many elements of this lesson went fairly well, including my own performance as a “teacher in training”, and how the students did during the different activities. In regards to the elements that went fairly well, the entire class was extremely enthusiastic about the story I read to them, where I asked them to look for all different types of colors as I read the book and imagine what it was like to be inside of the book itself. In turn, this aspect of the lesson was enjoyable for the students, where the only component about this activity that I would change for the future was how I handled students who would stand up during the read-aloud or discuss a completely different topic with their peers. For example, during the lesson I simply addressed each student who wasn’t paying attention to the picture book and reminded them of where their eyes should be. However, even though this worked for the first couple of students, I realized that after constantly addressing every student’s needs that I wasn’t going to be able to read the entire story. Therefore, I realized that for future lessons, when these actions occur I will simply pause the activity and ask students what they think they should be doing during a read-aloud and then have the students create the type of community environment they would prefer to listen to a story in. Overall, this portion of the activity went fairly well, however, I realized that if I decided to introduce shadow puppets in the future, I should show clips of actual Chinese shadow puppetry.
In addition to this first activity, the students were thrilled when I asked one volunteer to come and tap the book and magically a shadow puppet appeared. In fact, this was a great introduction to the second activity I asked the class to engage in, which was making their own shadow puppets. However, even though the class was eager to find some paper and scissors, after they started creating their shadow puppets I realized that my introduction for how to create a shadow puppet was not as thorough or as clearly stated as I would have hoped. For example, in order to introduce how to create a shadow puppet I showed the students what my model shadow puppet looked like when a light was shined on it, as well as a fun trick they could try with their paper to cut out different shapes. Despite this introduction, I then realized after I encouraged the class to find their supplies and begin creating that I did not convey the idea of what it means to have a “shadow”, simply because many students were creating elaborately colored puppets with no cut outs and believed that these would make excellent shadow puppets. Therefore, if I were to do this lesson in the future I would first give a lesson about shadows, and then only provide white sheets of paper for the craft so that students do not worry about the color of their shadow puppet, because as they would have learned in the shadow lesson, all shadows are the same color. Overall, even though I would have changed these aspects of the lesson, I did get the opportunity to revise how I presented shadow puppets to the class when the students left for music class in the middle of the lesson and I discussed with my mentor teacher what I could have done differently with my lesson. In fact, she suggested that I give the students examples of shadow puppets with some having no cut outs and others being fully detailed. In turn, I would then show these examples to the class by holding them on a large yard stick in front of a projector for them all to see and then ask them which shadow puppet is the most interesting to look at, where the answer of “more details are more interesting” should emerge. Therefore, when the students returned I gave this follow-up lesson and the results were absolutely incredible, where once the students returned to their seats they were eager to add more details and more puppets to their collections and excited about what we were going to do next with our shadow puppets.
Finally, when it came time for the conclusion of this lesson, I initially had a difficult time getting the students’ attention, where clapping and gently asking for them to sit at their desks both did not work, and I found myself talking over these students while giving my instructions. In turn, I discussed this dilemma with my mentor teacher and she suggested using the phrases, “if you can hear my voice touch your head” and “if you can hear my voice touch your toes”, both of which worked more smoothly with this group of students as they responded to my voice and actively listened for the next instructions. Therefore, I asked the class what they think they should do with their shadow puppets, and I called on the one student who throughout the lesson continued to be the only one to raise their hand. In turn, after my lesson I discussed with my mentor teacher what I should do in this scenario, and she suggested that I simply ask to hear new voices in the group, which would be a gentle reminder for all students that everyone’s ideas are respected and valued. In regards to ideas, I then explained to the class how they were going to be partnering up and presenting a small interaction between their puppets for the rest of the class to view in a fun ending showcase. In fact, the entire showcase ran fairly smoothly, however, the aspects that I would change in the future include having the students work with stiffer paper and rulers so that their puppets can remain standing at an arms length away, as well as have an actual screen and a light source placed behind the students so that the only image the audience sees is the shadow of the puppets interacting. In addition to this, for an extension of this activity I would give students a “puppeteer storyboard” where they would draw or write out four scenes with their partners and then present this story to the rest of the class. In fact, for an additional extension I would bring in a map of the world and ask students where they think China is, and then have a discussion about how far away the art activity they engaged in really is. Lastly, even though at the end of the day the students were asked about what they learned, if I were to conduct this lesson again I would actually have the students either talk with their elbow partner about what they learned and still wonder from the lesson, or have them give me a thumbs-up, thumb-sideways, or thumbs-down in regards to how much they enjoyed or understood the activities. In the end, this lesson was extremely fun to create, and more importantly, extremely fun to give, simply because seeing the smiles and looks of enjoyment on the students’ faces, once again reminded me why I love the process of learning, discovery, and becoming a teacher.
Commentary
The shadow puppet lesson was incredible, where all of the students were engaged in the activities and were excited to learn more about this interesting topic. In fact, part of the reason why this lesson ran smoothly was because before and during the lesson I demonstrated mutual respect, rapport, and responsiveness to students with various needs and expressive backgrounds. For example, because I knew a few of the students were still developing their fine motor-skills, I walked around the room and gave these students extra scaffolding, where I modeled cutting techniques I utilized on my shadow puppet, and even helped them cut smaller pieces on their puppets that were difficult for them to maneuver. In fact, with students who needed help finding an idea, I listed different animals, humans, and objects they could create, as well as encouraged students who may have been uncomfortable sharing their play with others, to be amazing audience members. However, for those who did want to present a play, I modeled some interactions the students could have with their puppets for individuals who may be visual learners or need a model as a reference. Finally, in regards to students who wanted to finish quickly or were frustrated when they couldn’t complete a task, I asked my mentor teacher to assist them individually, which helped them realize that they all have creativity inside of them.
In regards to this creativity, in order to engage my students in expressing themselves artistically, I first read them a beautiful and culturally relevant story to entice their imaginations, and then explained how their shadow puppets could be anything they wanted, including shapes, patterns, colors, and designs. In fact, I explained to the students how they could close their eyes, draw a fun shape, cut this shape out, and only then decide what they wanted their creation to be. Overall, this encouragement to create anything the students’ hearts desired helped them appreciate and enjoy the process of creating something exciting, rather than merely being focused on the product that they created. In fact, as I walked around the room, countless students came up to me and asked if I could cut or trace a shape for them. In turn, I replied that I would be taking the fun out of the activity if I drew their puppets for them. In general, the students initially did not enjoy this response, but after being left to their own creative mindsets they enjoyed the building process more, and were even more intrigued when they returned from music to make additional shadow puppets and show their inner artists as they listened to a soundtrack I played of a traditional Chinese instrument, which helped to immerse them in their creative “zones”.
These creative “zones” were extremely powerful for students when they were creating their shadow puppets. However, when I first introduced how to create a shadow puppet many students were unsure about the purpose of the cut outs in my model shadow puppet and why they should add more details to their own shadow puppets. Therefore, in order to address and build upon this overarching student response to promote more creative expression, I decided to give a second lesson on how to create a shadow puppet after the students returned from music class. In turn, within this second lesson I showed four examples of different pieces of paper with varying degrees of cut outs and details and asked the students which puppet they thought looked the most interesting and the most like a real Chinese shadow puppet. The students then enthusiastically claimed that the papers with more cut out details were the most interesting, and eagerly returned to their seats to engage in additional creative expression with their puppets. In turn, the students either created more puppets, or added details to their current puppets, both of which allowed the students to take what they had just learned and apply it to their own creative abilities and wild imaginations, as well as find ways to creatively express their ideas.
Finally, in regards to how I personally felt the lesson proceeded overall, and what specific changes I would make to my instruction to better support student creative expression, I have a few alterations I would make if I were to give this lesson in the future, along with reasons behind these changes. For example, the first change I would make would be to initially start the lesson after reading the book by showing an actual clip of a real Chinese shadow puppet play, which would improve student creative expression, simply because through viewing real videos students would not only be more engaged and interested in the lesson, but also be able to produce their own puppets because they have seen concrete examples of the objectives. In addition to this, after showing the students the video clip, I would then write, bring, or draw more examples of shadow puppets the students could create. In turn, this change would improve student creative expression, simply because I noticed many students during the lesson not being able to proceed with their creativity because they were unsure about what to create. Therefore, in offering these ideas, I would be helping to inspire and scaffold the students with this first step, and initiate the learning process so that the students could finish this journey by creating their own shadow puppets. In regards to creating their shadow puppets, I would also change the type of paper the students used to make their shadow puppets, where I would have them build with plain paper instead of colorful paper to promote the idea of thinking differently about shadows and the purpose of these puppets. In fact, this would improve student creative expression because it would help students begin to think about the new kind of art form of shadow puppetry, instead of painting or drawing, both of which make use of color instead of shadows. Finally, the last component I would change is having cut out stamps already prepared for students who may have wonderful ideas and desires to show their creative expression, but are still working on their fine-motor skills. In turn, this change would improve student creative expression, simply because it would be giving the students the assistance they need to be able to express their creativity without limits, which is what I believe should lie at the heart of artistic expression.