Survived my First Week!

Today was very laid back. I had students take a student info quiz on Canvas and then gave them the rest of the class to work on an Identity Page. I explained the semester's theme "identity" and how this page would be used as a source of inspiration for our projects throughout the semester. First, I projected three quotes that define identity in different ways.

I asked students to pick one of the quotes that they believed described how they view identity and then to write about it. After they completed writing about why they chose the quote I then asked them to include any photos, quotes, lyrics, etc. anything and everything that inspires or represents them. Since today was mainly a work day, it was the perfect opportunity to talk with the students more one on one. The first two days they have all been very quiet, but I think they started opening up today.

I looked into resources to help my one student who speaks/understands little to no english and one of the other art teachers introduced me to a feature on google translate where you can upload any document and it will automatically translate it to whatever language you select. So I translated my instructions for the Identity page into Vietnamese for H. and she seemed very grateful! I couldn't translate the quiz on Canvas since it wasn't a document, but H. was resourceful and copy and pasted the questions into google translate. The only issue is comprehension. One of the questions was "what are your interests outside of school" and she responded "I like the trees outside of school". So I'll have to figure out if there's a way to improve comprehension. I asked H. if there was anything else I could do to help her and she asked if she could write in her 1st language and then use google translate to submit her responses. I said that was perfectly fine.

It was a great first week of school! Excited for next week!