Mr. Mills Blog

This is the new home for the Mr. Mills Blog and all of the Murray Blogs! We will probably have some “construction” going on over the next month, but it will be worth the wait!

Well, it doesn’t seem possible, but the end of the school year is right around the corner. I guess it might sound strange for a teacher to already anticipate the end of the year with five weeks left, but there is a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. I had a professor tell me once that this was the fastest part of the year. At the time, I couldn’t imagine why…now, I know.

First, Ms. Lager spent her last day at Murray on Tuesday. She gives her thesis presentation this weekend, and will be moving back to Alaska at the end of the month. She will be back briefly on Tuesday, but she is has for the most part ended her student teaching. She is going to send out all of the postcards the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders made very soon. We wish her good luck looking for a job for the fall!

In fine arts, the 3rd graders continued working on small paintings they started with Ms. Lager earlier in the week. They are still in the middle of the Art in Focus program with the Smart Museum. Both classes will be visiting the museum next week.

The 4th graders have a few different projects they will be finishing up over the next couple weeks. First, Ms. Gorman’s room have to organize their printmaking projects they completed with Ms. Lager. Both classes are reading the stories people wrote for them on the Murray Language Academy Blog. To review, people wrote stories based on the pictures they took earlier this year. The students are responding to the pictures by answering a few questions on the computer. The reason we are doing this is so the students can reflect on their own writing by reading how other people interpreted their pictures. We have a small celebration for both classes in recognition of their work on this project before finishing up the surrealism collages they started before spring break.

The 5th graders finished up their printmaking this week, and are starting a sculpture project this week. They are going to use clay to create mythical creatures. This week, the students sketched out what they wanted to create. Next week, an artist from the Hyde Park Art Center, Ms. Tepper, will be working with the students to make their sculptures.

The 6th graders are almost done with their relief prints. This week, some students were finishing up their cuts, but many students were printing their designs. We will spend one more class period on this next week before moving on to a project involving graffiti art.

Also, the 5th graders will be finishing up their public service announcements this week, and I plan on putting some up on the Murray web site next week. I think we have uncovered some hidden talents with our Murray students. They have been fun to work with and the students are really enjoying this project. The 4th graders have also gathering images and music for their poem videos. They will be working on these more next week.

Finally, I had an article I wanted to pass along about the kind of learning that should be going on in schools. It talks about letting up control in the classroom and trying to empower students. It references the amount of paper and worksheets used by some teachers as a way to show that filling all of those out does not necessarily show “learning”. It talks about empowering children, and when you do that, you have to relinquish some control. Not an easy thing for a teacher to do…

Over the past few weeks, the 4th graders have been working on a project through an organization called CAPE. With myself and teaching artist Jessi Walsh, they took pictures around the school and then wrote a story about the pictures. Now, we are asking people in the community to write a story about the pictures the students took, so they can see how other people view the pictures they took. There are more directions on the web site, but I would like to see many members of the wider community respond to this. Please go here to the Murray Language Academy blog to check it out. Thanks.

December came in like a lion today and I’m not sure if everyone is happy or unhappy to see the first snowfall of the season. Unfortunately, it makes it hard to get around, but when it sticks to the trees, it certainly makes a wonderful sight.

The third grade students finished their community murals this week. They are hanging near the computer lab in the new wing of the building. We will be working with using watercolors for the rest of the year.

The fourth grade students are working on designs that inspire them. They have all cut out designs and patterns from magazines that they like and have changed that design in some way to make their own design. They have to choose between colored pencils, oil pastels, or markers to create their final piece.

The fifth graders are working with a great 3-D modeling program called Google SketchUp. You can download it from my download page on this blog. They got a chance to experiment with the program (which I think is the best way to learn a new program) before creating their own home, building, or sculpture with the software. I suggest checking this program out because it is free and it might tap into the talents of your child.

The sixth graders began working on one of my favorite projects of the year recently. They are creating monochromatic portraits. We have gone through many steps in this project. They started by taking a picture of themselves and increasing the contrast. Then, they outlined the shapes on their face with a transparency and marked the areas as white, light, medium, and dark. Then, with an overhead, they traced their face again on to a larger sheet paper. Now, they have chosen a base color (red, blue, green, yellow, or purple) and are using that as the medium color. They are creating a shade and a tint of their color to fill in the light and dark areas. I’m very happy to see how these are turning out already.

Also, I strongly suggest that parents check out our different blogs and comment on what your child or another student has written. The blog is “universal” so we can try to create a community with them and learn together instead of just learning in our individual classrooms.

Until next week…

I just thought I would pass along an article that was passed along to me about another group of students involved in blogging. Our fifth and sixth grade students are writing about very similar issues and topics. Enjoy!