I love Chuck Close. And I'd like all of you to love him too.

"I filled the bathtub to the brim with hot water.   A board across the bathtub held my book.   I would shine a spotlight on it.   The rest of the bathroom was dark.   Sitting in the hot water, I would read each page of the book five times out loud so I could hear it.   It I stayed up half the night in the tub till my skin was wrinkles as a raisin, I could learn it.   The next morning I could spit back just enough information to get by on the test."

If you haven't read Chuck Close Up Close yet, make a plan.   He's an amazing artist with a singular style, a style which blossomed out of his learning disabilities.   Isn't the voice of an artist grounded in how he or she processes the world around them?   Do you ever wish that you could step inside the mysterious minds of your students to get a glimpse of how they see the world?   The super-talented Chuck Close will let you inside his!

I was always pulled towards his aesthetic, even more so when I learned about his process.   Most of his work comes right down to a grid.   Remember sitting eyeball to screen with the television as a child and marvelling that those little dots of primary colors created an image that seemed to contain an infinite spectrum when you backed up a few feet?   It's a little like that, but far more soulful.

Mr. Close works from a photograph.   Live models would not be useful as he has difficulties processing faces seen in 3-D; he has a photographic memory for flat objects.   He then constructs a grid on the canvas and decides which color(s) go where, box by box.   "By breaking the image down into small units, I make every decision into a bite-size decision...And eventually I have a painting."

It wasn't until I read Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan's book that I knew that although he was not diagnosed as a child, he would have been considered dyslexic and LD.   As the authors state, not much was known about these topics in the 1940s.

I like to show some of Mr. Close's art using my document camera before I read passages from the book to my students.   It allows me to zoom in and zoom out, something that really highlights the artist's technique and genius.   Recently, the amazing Virginia Museum of Fine Arts showcased some of his work.   The teacher me really felt like she was floating inside the vibrant mind of a twice-exceptional genius.  

Norfolk's Chrysler Museum also has one of his original portraits on display.  Don't ever miss out on seeing great art eyeball to canvas.   And, yes, Chuck is going with me to my new classroom...the book is anyway.  

This is a detail of one of Close's portraits of Phillip Glass.

This is a portion of his mouth.   (Chrysler Museum)

Here's a shot of one of Close's portraits from a distance.

(Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

If you are also fascinated by the art and mind of Chuck Close, don't miss out on

"The Life and Work of Chuck Close," by Elizabeth Germain Pongratz.

http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/80/

Post-It Publishing

Yesterday's post was all about the 2-sentence journals that I tried with my students this year.   Once we got rolling with a few mini-lessons on word choice and imagery, I thought that I should create an opportunity for students to share their work.   Writers will usually sharpen their writing when their audience grows from one teacher to 25 classmates.   I introduced the idea of....The Battle.

Battles usually took place on Mondays.   Students could choose any of their journals from the previous week to use for the competition.   They could make final edits and revisions in preparation for showing their work to their classmates.

I gave students yellow Post-It notes for their final copies.   They put them in a stack on a chair in the front of the room.   My original plan was to "publish" the notes by sticking them to the huge white board at the front of the room, so they could browse through their classmates' gallery of entries.   Post-It notes do not stick to my white board for more than five seconds.      

Plan B: I fired up my document camera, and placed the entries in heats of four.   I tried to group them topically.   If four students wrote about their cats, I put them in a set together.   By popular vote, students chose one of the four to make it to the final round.  

Winners were awarded something ridiculous.   I would find an old kids' meal toy or grope around in my desk for something obscure.   The stranger, the better...as far as the kids are concerned.   A checker that had been long separated from its brothers was one of the most coveted awards.

As time went on, the Battles were intensified.   Some entries did not make the initial cut.   If that week's journals were supposed to include sensory imagery, and it wasn't there, it's fair to all contenders that you do not allow that journal to compete.   I would not advise you to ever make any cuts because of spelling.   If you've been teaching for a few years, you know that some of your best writers sometimes have the worst spelling for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with laziness.

Please also remember that the idea is not to have a writer embarrass his or herself, so using the same color Post-It notes for the class helps with anonymity.   Also,if you know that a child is sensitive about spelling or handwriting issues, it's fair for you to help him/ her by doing the spelling/ writing...not the composing though.   It is a competition.
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Lights, Camera...Flip-O-Rama!

If I had to choose my all-time favorite teaching technology, it would be the AVerVision document camera that I used daily.   It was school property, so I'm sure that it will be replaced once the insurance dust settles.  Let me put it this way for my mathlete friends: 

Making my life easier + enriching instruction for my students = True Love

In order to operate this tool successfully, you will need some type of projection device and screen.   You will need all of the right cables.   And, if you're like me, you will need someone who's smarter and more patient than you are about disconnecting and reconnecting that dusty tangle of cords behind your teacher computer and figuring out where the new cords go.

What does a document camera do?  

The basic document camera can reproduce and image in real time.   When connected to a presenter, the image can be projected onto a screen, or a white board.  

For example, if I open a book under the camera, the image on the screen will show my hands opening the book as it happens.  

If I am modeling a writing exercise with paper and pencil, students can see my hand move across the notebook as words appear.  

Say six of your classes like to play the Jumble, and you only have one copy of the newspaper, project the Jumble onto a white board.   Allow students to use dry erase markers to solve the puzzle as a class.  

If you don't want to spend your time, money and energy making transparencies, simply place what would have been your master under the document camera.   Voila!   Instant transparency.

Play Boggle as a class for fun.  

Additionally, you may project whatever is on the attached computer's monitor.  

Say you want to show your class that great YouTube video, Julian Smith's "I'm Reading a Book."   You can do that easily!    

Do your students ever have to practice timed readings?   You can show them a free online stopwatch while they work, so they can record their own time. ( http://www.online-stopwatch.com/)

Project art and photographs for visual writing prompts.

Perhaps you already have a DVD/ VCR combo attached to your presenter.   The document camera can also be set up without having to plug/unplug any of the devices to use them.   You switch back and forth with the touch of a button.

Please note:

When you are using this technology, close out anything personal on your computer, especially e-mail.   Sometimes if a child bumps the cart and jiggles the connection, or if you start it up thinking that it is on the camera setting, but it's really on the computer setting...   Well, you get my drift.  

Also, if you are doing a read-aloud from a children's book with shiny pages, there will be glare.   It's perfect for reading Captain Underpants because the camera will also magnify the comics.   There's nothing cooler than seeing Dav Pilkey's Flip-O-Rama on the big screen.   Tra La Laaaaa!  

If you write reminders on the top of your hand because you tend to lose/launder any reminder notes you scrawl, and you firmly believe that if something separates your hand from the rest of your body, you probably won't get around to that list anytime soon-- you are one of my kind, and those reminders will also be magnified for all to see.

And, yes, if left unattended, children will put their faces under the camera so you can see up their noses.   But..I didn't need to tell you that.

There are fancier versions than the one I had, and like all technology, the prices change as models age.   You may find out that your school already has one just waiting for someone brave to use it.

Here's a link to the company's website, so you can see the cameras for yourself:
http://www.averusa.com/presentation/document_camera_F50.asp