As soon as the popsicle sticks were attached the kids were becoming their puppets. ​A few kids, were working together creating quick puppet skits. I still had one very reluctant artist. He was about as excited about creating his puppet as he had been about using a puppet. The kids got to pick one puppet to leave at school for the puppet show, and then take the other puppet home. One girl came back the next week with more than 10 little clay creatures she had made at home. It was neat to see how her creatures evolved from simple to very detailed and sophisticated.

,Artful Teaching has become part of every day in the classroom. Whether it’s the vocabulary I’m using, a thinking routine, the actors toolbox, or tableaus, some part of each of our day involves techniques and skills I have acquired this year through this amazing opportunity. I have decided to share some pictures of some things I have done in my classroom using tableaus. I personally believe that handing students a paper and pencil doesn’t actually show all that they can do, especially when it comes to assessments. So, this year I chose to use tableaus as formal and informal assessment tools.
 
In these first three photos you see students laying on the floor in different shapes. We went through the actors toolbox then dove into some tableau work with plane shapes. During this time, students were learning all about different kinds of shapes in math. I used this time to include some tableau work to assess how the students were understanding sides, vertices, and angles.

​You will notice that all three tableaus are on the ground. One of the characteristics of a tableau is that there are levels. Students seemed to really struggle through figuring out how a plane shape could have different leveles. They were so stuck on the fact that it’s two dimensional and the fact that they see these shapes as something flat. Next year, when I go through these lessons again, I really want to discuss in depth that just because a plane shape is flat doesn’t mean it has to be flat on top of a surface. It was really interesting to see the students struggle through this.
 
When we debriefed after our tableau work, students were surprised and seemingly caught off guard when I brought this to their attention. This made me reflect a bit on my teaching during these lessons. It showed me that I didn’t explain that just because it’s a plane shape, it doesn’t mean that it has to be “flat on the ground.”

With all of that being said, the kids were still successful during this process and they weren’t using a pencil and a piece of paper. They were reflecting on the different attributes of plane shapes and discussing how they could create those shapes as a team. Each team was able to create a plane shape without support from anyone other than their own team.
 
It was fun to watch them go through Think, Share, Plan, and Create. They could make it through Think and Share, but once we got that far, they were so excited to plan and then create that most of them would just start it. I had a hard time with that at first. I couldn’t decide if it really was appropriate to stop them when they were so excited to learn and create together. But I quickly got over that because it caused more issues than success. Throughout the year I have gotten more and more comfortable with the tableau process, which has me extremely excited for D.C. and next years implementation!

In the next set of photos, you see students at different levels. You also see students being assessed once again. It was so great to have a tool to use this year aside from a paper and pencil. This second set of photos was taken during my formal observation earlier this year when my principal came in to observe. I had been talking about Artful Teaching and how much I had been enjoying spending some of my time outside of school at these amazing workshops when my principal said, why don’t you show me what you have been doing…
 
There are so many times where I feel that we as teachers feel like we have to show what we are doing with the curriculum and our implementation of it, that we forget there is an art form to teaching. Artful Teaching has helped me express my teaching art form in ways that I don’t think I would have come up with on my own.
 
During this lesson, my students were being assessed on what they had learned through the week about solid shapes. They had to consider the faces, verticse, sides, and angles. This was a very challenging lesson and assessment tool. We had done quite a bit of work with our foam solid shapes, and I knew my students had learned and understood quite a bit about the attributes about solid shapes, but they honestly blew me away during this assessment.
 
Each group went through Think, Share, Plan, and Create. Through out this process, I was walking around listening to the different thoughts and plans they had. Their consideration for all of the attributes of these shapes were amazing. This really gave then the opportunity to think about the shapes that each solid shape have within them.
 
As I walked around the room I heard groups discussing how the cube has square sides and how a pyramid has a square base. These are things that we had discussed but when they actually had to apply those attributes to a real life creation of these shapes, they had to think more deeply about what each shape really looks like. 

​Some groups were more successful than others. I found that students had a hard time deciding if the attributes that one friend had shared were actually true in regards to the solid shape they had chosen to create. It was also hard for students to decide what each person was going to do. They were all so excited about what they had learned that they wanted to play every part.
 
We did these tableaus a few different times so each group had an opportunity to create different shapes. As we continued the work, the tableaus got more and more detailed.
 
I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an amazing experience. I have grown so much as an educator and I can’t wait to continue this experience next year with my peers and my students.

​After students had a chance to look at and discuss how the wind gauges worked, I gave them the challenge of creating their own wind gauge by making a plan, building their wind gauge, testing their wind gauge using a fan, and revamping their wind gauge as necessary.  It was an amazing process to watch and be a part of.  Students were engaged in all parts of the project, taking time to create their designs as well as testing, revamping, and testing their gauges again.

Before going into one of my Artful Teaching lessons, I want to take a moment to admit how impressed I am with this new way of teaching.  As I started integrating Artful Teaching into my practice, I realized how important, yet basic and easy it is to do.  Honestly, I must admit that I am a little shocked that I have not always taught this way.  I had completely overlooked the importance of explicitly teaching kids how to think.  I expected this to be a skill that kids would just know what to do when I said, “think about it.”  Now, I have learned that by giving my students the tools they need to “think,” they have become much more critical thinkers and incredibly curious about their world.  My classroom culture is now built around student thinking.  Students have learned to critically think about new topics when I introduce them by using the skills of:

• building on prior or background knowledge 
• making connections
• visualizing 
• asking questions
• making inferences 

Within a matter of weeks, my students were able to create their own truth and facts based on their own thinking.  Do I wish that I had always taught this way? Absolutely.  I am so pleased with Artful Thinking, that it has completely changed how I teach in such a way that all the Thinking Routines have become habitual.  I remember beginning and really planning out which routine to use for which piece of art, which I still do; however, now students automatically use thinking routines all day long whether I have planned them or not.  I am so proud of the kids!
 
Okay, enough chit chat, let’s get into one of the lessons.  Sea Week was one specific area that I wanted to focus on, and I especially wanted to integrate art, science, and writing.  I have found that for first grade students, it can be challenging to take another’s perspective.  This is something that we work on for developing social skills. I first chose to conduct an informal assessment to gain some information on what the students already know about low tide beaches and creatures in Southeast.  I also wanted to figure out what it was that they were interested in learning about. 

In order to do this, I gathered students on the carpet and explained that we would be starting a new science unit on sea creatures.  I used the Artful Thinking Routine Step Inside as a way for the children to demonstrate what they already know about the beach.  I had them close their eyes and imagine walking off the bus, arriving at the beach, and exploring the low tide.  I had them imagine what the beach would sound like, look like, feel like, and smell like.  After allowing students to use their imaginations, I had them go to their seats and draw and write about each of the senses that they think they would experience at the beach.  I prepared student books using two pieces of paper that have lines on the bottom and blank space on the top for drawing.  The papers were folded in half so that there were four spaces for four senses.  I labeled each page for each sense (look, smell, feel, and sound) with an icon to help the students stay focused on the task.  I have found that scaffolding thinking into a focused area can often encourage more writing than given a broad topic.  I asked the students to write their thinking, meaning any thing that they think is true, as well as any questions or wonderings they might have.  Students were given time to write and draw to express what they already think they know to be true and then ask questions that I could use as a way to plan.  

Science – absolutely, Writing – of course, Reading – yep...I’ve challenged myself to integrate many different Artful Thinking routines with the instructional content in my first grade class this year.  Well, all except math… I’ve avoided it long enough, I suppose.  I turned my teacher’s guide to our newest chapter.  Math In Focus, Chapter 15 – Calendar and Telling Time.
How do we measure time?...  Seconds, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades...  
How do we keep track of those units of measure?..  Timers, watches, phones, clocks, calendars…
What do the kids really need to know and how will they learn it best?...  They need to develop a sense of time – how many seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month, months in a season, months/seasons in a year -  and be able to compare those units of time. But what parts have to be experienced? The passage of time, the development of what an hour feels like compared to five hours, how it feels to wait a year for your next birthday, what mom actually means when she says there are only 10 minutes before bedtime... these are not things we can tell them; these are things they have to experience and connect with...these ideas about time must be constructed within the learner.  
Sure, we need to help kids have access to the social knowledge pieces - like there are 60 seconds in a minute or that the third day of a week has a name and it's called Tuesday. These bits of information cannot be constructed within the learner alone through experiences. They have to be told from one person to another…because, in Japan, the third day of the week is called Kayobi...you wouldn't know that until somebody told you, no matter how many Tuesdays go by in Tokyo.  These are the direct instruction pieces; the pieces I have to reveal to them.
But what connections can we make about telling time with an Artful Thinking routine?  How can we use Artful Thinking and art experiences to assess what children already know or have learned about reading clocks?  How can we make the learning engaging and meaningful?
Prior to introducing the new chapter, I told the kids we were going to do a "See, Think, Wonder" Thinking Routine for several pictures.  First, I pulled out a photo of a sundial and didn't say anything while they looked carefully and thought about it.  ​