Ms. Kunath's Collage Activity (Video)

Today’s classroom observation video focused on Ms. Jean Kunath, the Art and Photography teacher at Central High School (in Victoria, VA), and her creative collage assignment. Ms. Kunath developed this activity to challenge the 9-12^th grade students of her Photography class to “master” technology that included digital cameras, floppy discs, Microsoft Image Composer, and the Internet, as well as create a digital collage (which would be posted on the school’s website). Before allowing the students to start the assignment, Ms. Kunath first guided the class through the Central High School website and showed them examples of previously completed collages. Ms. Kunath then pointed out the pros and cons (of each collage), discussed the characteristics of a good collage, set expectations for the class, and even made each student complete a practice collage. Once the students had successfully completed the practice collage, Ms. Kunath explained her method of assessment and supplied them with the needed materials.

When watching this video I recognized several strengths in Ms. Kunath’s lesson that helped to make it a success. Ms. Kunath did an excellent job in clearly stating directions, presenting expectations, explaining her method of assessment, including various types of technology, checking class progress, and teaching the importance of respect. Instead of rushing into the assignment, Ms. Kunath took the time to show her students quality examples (which taught them important details like including spaces between pictures, limiting the use of words, never using student names, and only using quality pictures) and taught them, step-by-step, the important functions of Microsoft Image Composer (brightness control, re-positioning pictures, inserting borders and shapes). To me, the most important feature of Ms. Kunath’s lesson was the fact that she checked each of the students work before allowing them to move on to the next step. This not only prevented any confused student from sneaking under the radar, but gave Ms. Kunath the opportunity to follow the progress of her students.

Although Ms. Kunath taught a great lesson, there were a few details that could be considered weaknesses. I believe that Ms. Kunath should not have openly embarrassed one of her students in the middle of class (by stating that she had made a mistake), but should have simply informed the other students of the common mistake and left out the name. Also, Ms. Kunath should have added more to the final assignment, which did not sound like much of a challenge to the students.