Oh sunny day!

I think there is an impact on the student's attitudes with the fluorescent lights off. I like to keep the blinds open and let the outside light flood the room.
Today was a new lesson for 4th and 3rd Grade. We discussed what an endangered animal is and who some of those animals are. Then we looked at the series that Andy Warhol did on endangered animals. The students were asked to make a simple line drawing of a animal that I had posted on the black board in the back of the room. I gave them an illustration of 13 different animals. I am going to take these drawings and make copies so that the have 4 of the same drawing. We are going to color these using warm and cool colors and apply them to black paper. They were really discouraged about just drawing something by looking at it. There were a lot of, "Ms.Irvin, I can't do this!". I told them it takes a lot of practice to be really great at something, and that I was there to assist in every way possible, but they HAD TO TRY! We broke down the animals into the simple shapes that they were made of, and built the form up. Every student ended up with a very unique animal, and I was quite impressed!