Great Inservice Opportunity in the TN area

You've heard me preach about "The Clay Lady Way" of teaching clay. Now here is your chance to learn from (in my opinion) one of the best. My good friend and fabulous teacher Danielle McDaniel is offering a 

How to Teach Clay the Clay Lady way workshop in Nashville, TN

here are the details:

After 15 years of countless How To Teach Clay...The Clay Lady Way teacher inservices, I can say this with certainty - the information I teach is still current, relevant and useful to art teachers on every level.  I can also share with you that to increase my enjoyment of teaching this same information, I plan to add on different information and shake up the curriculum this year!  So before you say - been there, done that!- look below for the current offerings for 2011!

 

How To Teach Clay...The Clay Lady Way teacher inservice Saturday, October 1st, 8:00-4:30 to be held at The Clay Lady's Studio, Artist Co-op and Galleries ~The Educational Facility at Mid-South Ceramics in Nashville, TN.

Fee is the same as past years - $150  (or $100 for returning teachers).

• Learn The Clay Lady Way:  make and decorate successful clay projects in one-sitting with a single firing to complete.
• Tour our manufacturing warehouse and learn about raw materials and how they are mixed to make products. Learn the difference between low-fire, mid-fire and high fire supplies.
• Enjoy a hands-on clay Clay Lady Workshop to experience The Clay Lady Way as you use our products to make projects.
• Tour and enjoy visiting with several of my 20 artists in residence and see how making projects can turn into a profession at The Clay Lady's Artist Co-op and Galleries.
• See a project demo and learn how to design your own projects.
• Learn my 8 week curriculum, my clay camp curriculum, my K-12 project curriculum that works with your county's curriculum , my teen/adult handbuilding and sculpture lesson, class management techniques and hands-on kids wheel lesson.
• Learn about kilns:  how to load and to program for no-explosion firings!
• Enjoy us providing your apron, your lunch, your certification for inservice hours and your enlightening day!

Feel free to forward this email to all your art teacher contacts - I heavily rely on your goodwill and good reviews!

 

Contact me in any way that works best for you and I will get your name on the list for this year's inservice.  I am limiting the amount of registrations to increase personal interaction and provide plenty of time for questions and diversions from the schedule!  It's going to be a good time!

 

 

Be An Artist in Everything You Do!

 

Danielle McDaniel~The Clay Lady

The Clay Lady's Studio, Artist Co-op and Galleries

~The Educational Facility at Mid-South Ceramic Supply

1416 Lebanon Pike, Bldg C

Nashville, TN  37210

 

phone 615-242-0346

fax 615-244-3191

email danielle@theclaylady.com

www.facebook.com/danielle.theclaylady.

www.theclaylady.com

www.midsouthceramics.com

Clay Lady Documentary

Behavior Board

I was asked to explain more about my behavior board, and I am more than happy to. Art class would not be able to carry on smoothly without it. It's very important to me that my students have fun, but to understand that Art still has rules that must be followed for the fun to happen.

First the expectations of my students are to 

Be Responsible

Be Respectful

Be Kind

Be Safe

Here is a picture of my board at the end of today.

Each teacher has a pocket and each student has a 3"x6" index card in the pocket with their name on it.

When an expectation is not met (rule broken), a student in 1st - 5th grade must pull their card and clip them to the consequence. I have also had them put the cards into a consequence pocket, but I wanted to change it a bit.

1st consequence GREEN WARNING

2nd YELLOW 5 minute time out (when a student goes to time out the time is marked in my roll book)

3rd RED 10 minute time out

4th BLACK teacher's choice (detention, office, or written communication log home)

I have a good behavior art party (fun art activity centers) at the end of the semester. If students have not had time outs then they will be able to participate the whole time. If they have had time out (say 10 minutes total during the semester) they will have to sit out 10 minutes at the party. In other words, whenever they are in time out, they will have it again at the party. It hits them twice so that they hopefully will never misbehave bad enough to go to time out

Kinders are given reward pockets for the whole class behavior: Green for Great Day, Yellow for okay day, and Red for bad day. Individual Kinders are given a verbal warning and after that are sent to time out for 5 minutes any time they break a rule after the warning. Kinders don't have good behavior parties because the class set up is different. See Art Centers

As with any behavior plan, it is a very effective system as long as you stick to it.

I also have a whole class system seen here.

Here we go again!

Sorry I've been away...... I've been occupied by this little cutie.

Meet Rosco our adorable little Dane mix.

 I love getting my classroom ready for the new year! Some things stayed the same and others have changed. My school kept the same theme as last year which was "Wild About..." so I at least changed my color scheme around. Last year was many cool colors and now I'm onto warmer hues. 

Sorry for the blurryness... I need a new camera.

Here we have the Behavior Board. Each teacher has a pocket and every student has a card with their name on it. If they break a rule they move a card. Warning, 5 minute timeout, 10 minute timeout, and or detention and note home. Students also lose time at their good behavior art party if they go to timeout. It gets them twice so hopefully they will never have to pull their card for that consequence. 

This is the Art History board. I also have an envelop with crit cards for when we go into deep discussions. 

 The table buckets are ready to go. Each table gets 4 pencils, erasers, scissors, and glue. When I pencil breaks they bring it to the broken jar and pull out a sharp one. I also have students hold up the erasers at the end of class so I can see everything and see that nothing has gone missing.

 Found this huge palette a and decided to do something different. The Art Marks chart will go to the right of this.

 The reading area. I plan to have stories and demos with Kinders here and students may read books after they have finished a project on the carpet. 

 Free Draw shelf area... I really need more books... I also plan to add more activities when more funds come along.

 Landscape, Portrait, and Still life along with Toothless the room mascot.

More to come! Stay tuned.

Avery Give Back to Schools

   I wanted to take this time to let you all know about an awesome opportunity for your school. My school was very fortunate to have won last year and we received $10,000 in supplies for our school. 

 Avery Give Back to Schools program is an online voting contest that will reward the top 5 vote-getting schools with $10,000 in Avery school supplies, $1,000 in Bonus Box Tops for Education and an additional $1,000 in gift cards for teachers to purchase additional school supplies. The next 25 vote-getting schools would win $500 in Bonus Box Tops for Education. The contest ends September 16.  

Click here for the Avery Give Back to Schools and register or vote for your school. 

To Dump or Not To Dump... That is the question

Hello fellow art teachers and followers,
   I have a question... When painting do you let your students "dump" their water when it gets too dirty? Or do you have them keep the same water all through class?

I hate having dirty water when I paint so I wanted my kids to be able to have clean water for as long as possible. My first year teaching we used these cups that would only hold about 1 1/2 cups of water. Students were having to go to the sink constantly. Especially when we used liquid tempera or acrylic. 

Now, I use huge buckets of water for painting. They are used dog treat buckets which hold about a quart of water (we fill them halfway). The buckets never tip over because of their size, they are still easy for kids to pick up, and they may have to be refilled once during a lesson. I used to ask kids to raise their hand for me to check if the water was too dirty and tell them to "dump" or not. That became too much. So now I tell the kids to dump their own water when it turns to mud and they can no longer see their brush when pressed against the inside of the bucket. 

This water needs changing! 

So, my fellow teachers, what do you use as water containers and when do you "dump"?