CLASS THREE: HOT AIR BALLOONS

REFLECTION

Yesterday’s class went surprisingly well. It was the first class that we used paper mache in and I was a bit nervous about it. It is messy and some of the students are afraid of balloons popping and it takes a long time and is a bit more process based than the past lessons we have done. However, all but one student has worked in paper mache before so they for the most part understood how to do it, they just needed a quick refresher. One thing that I thought went well, was how engaged every single student was. In our past lessons we would have some students fly through the project or get really distracted, one of our students who is usually a challenge to get to sit down and focus for 5 minutes on her project, sat in her seat the entire class fully engaged in what she was making. It was incredible to see that change. I was really worried about balloons popping all over the place, but I think because I only blew them up about halfway and the students were being careful with them, it was not an issue. We only had one balloon pop and it wasn’t even a student who popped it, it was Alison, and our student who gets very spooked by that handled it well. Overall, I think that this lesson went well, the students were engaged and seemed a bit more interested in it than past lessons.

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     Something that did not go so well, was our explanation of the process. Although every student knew what to do, I think that we gave them too much information at once. We explained what they were going to be creating, that they were going to do there sketches, then rip up newspaper, and then get their balloon, and then they could start, but their second layer needed to be newsprint rather than newspaper and then they had to do three layers, and then we needed string so they could hang, and then they can make their baskets. We did not have our steps planned out super well. I feel as though we should have had them sketch and rip up newspaper and once they were all done with that, then we have them choose their balloon and do the first layer, then we explain the second layer, then we do the string, then they can finish up their third layer. However, then we would have the problem where they all finish each step at different times and sometimes, they get excited and just start grabbing things and doing it before we can fully explain. This is something that I am not sure how to work with. Another challenge that I feel we had was explaining how to make different shapes. Our intention was for them to ball up newspaper and tape that to their balloon and then paper mache over it, we didn’t want them to simple cover a balloon in paper mache, however this did not happen at all. I think when we talked about how we formed and shaped in the past lessons we assumed that they would understand what we meant and then do it in this lesson. What ended up happening was a lot of fish were getting made were they just covered the balloon and intended on painting the fish on later and trying to shape with the paper mache. Also, making sure that they added a string after the second layer was a bit messy, we ended up running around at one point trying to make sure that we got strings on all of them before they did their last layer. So, over all I feel as though we were not clear enough on “instructions” and we gave too much information at once. Although perhaps if we had been clearer and more organized with our “instructions” giving them all the information at once would have been okay. The last thing that has been bothering me is that every week we make examples to show and every week we never talk about them or bring them up, it almost feels pointless to even be making them. I am the only one every week that tries to incorporate them in our discussions about the project, however when there are a lot of us trying to give instruction, my voice gets lost as I have a hard time interjecting when other people are talking. We have tried in the past to write out who is going to say what and when and somehow that never works, and one person ends up dominating the instruction and the rest of us get drowned out. I do think that one thing that will help with our examples is to select one table that we will gather at for our discussions and set our examples there before class even begins so that we don’t forget about them. Also perhaps deciding in advance who is going to start the class discussion and changing that each week so that we all get the chance to kind of direct the class a bit more.