Fostering student engagement and remote learning in Art class during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How can I engage MS students in Art lessons taking into account the online learning environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic?
General topic of interest
Engagement in Middle school learners. I am an Arts teacher that works with Early Years and MS, I am particularly interested in eliciting more engagement from MS students in Art lessons since I have been noticing a lack of engagement on their part, considering the pandemic context and the online lessons.
Participants
Grade 6A students at Escola Concept São Paulo Campus, because they are the ones that I taught online and for the last couple of months I am teaching them on the campus.
Data collecting approach
We want to understand how the pandemic with online lessons affected their perception and excitement about Art classes.
So to do that we want to look into the artwork they did online and the artwork they did "offline" to see if there are any significant differences between them, considering engagement, effort and dedication and to do that I am going to use some rubrics developed for Arts assessment.
Drawings examination (sketches and illustrations) on the online and physical environment for comparison.
Questionnaire on their excitement about Art lessons during the online period and now at the Atelier where we are having our lessons.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Pictures of the students practice for description purpose.
Data collecting example
Student artwork (sketches and illustrations), looking into their artwork based on their own suggested proposal at the Atelier.
Questionnaire about the students perception of Art lessons in the beginning of the year (considering the very beginning of the online lessons) and their perception now that we are having classes back on the campus.
Rubrics for the drawings assessment: I create analogies between the different constituent elements of visual arts (point, line, shape, direction, color, tone, scale, dimension, space, movement, etc.) in the appreciation and creation of different artistic productions.
I can reflect on my artistic production and recognize new investigative possibilities.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Artifacts used as data and resources to be analyzed.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Questionnaire elaborated as a measurement research tool to gather data for the inquiry question.
Emerging results
It's my understanding that the children from Grade 6A felt more enthusiastic about Art lessons since we came back to the campus. We can attribute this response due to the fact that we could work using more materials and using the space of the Atelier to share ideas, thoughts and work in collaboration with each other.
They also felt that the things we were doing at the Atelier were more fun than the ones that we were doing in the beginning of the year during the online period. Overall there is an excitement about being back to campus and a bigger dedication on their productions as well. I could notice by examining their artwork produced in the Atelier in comparison to what they produced at their homes a higher degree of dedication and effort.
Reflections
I think that working in collaboration is a great tool to enhance students engagement into Art lessons, I notice that a lot of their engagement came from the fact that they were working and talking about their works with friends and colleagues.
So this shows me how important it is to have a dedicated space to work with Arts and how much happier and engaged students are because of that.
Next steps
I think I will definitely try to do more group proposals, specially for the groups that are on the online environment. Maybe by providing more chances for them to share and talk with each other, like in breakout rooms for instance; might increase their engagement about online Art lessons.
