Hagadot (Extra Credit)

Throughout the years, my extended family has collected many Haggadot, which is the plural version of Hagadah, the prayer book used for the Passover holiday.  Many of them are filled with commentary on the original text, and translations, however within the recent years we have found many more artistic versions.  One of the versions I used this past holiday had many drawings of the four sons (an aspect of the text) throughout the years.  The drawings reflected the artist's perception and interpretation of the text related to the four sons.  It was very interesting to see the depiction of the sons not only throughout the years, but through the eyes of many different artists.

Another interesting Hagadah was done by the artist Abecassis, an artist from Netanya, a city in Israel.  While the artist does paintings, he also makes a beautiful Hagadah that I bought when I visited his studio in Israel.  This one is beautifully done, and very colorful.

A third Hagadah, this is my personal favorite is the one designed by the Mouth or Foot Painting Artists of Israel.  This one was done by people who only have use of either their hands or feet, and they use them to paint.  This in an extraordinary Hagadah, and have beautiful drawings inside.  A website which talks about them is  http://www.ulpanet.com/inner.asp?id=103  Here are some pictures from the book:

"Visual Literacy Supports" from Paula Kluth

Graphic organizers are a great way to help visual learners in the classroom.  As the article mentions, Inspiration software is a great way to help students with these organizers, and I myself have used it as well.  This is a program that I will definitely have available to my students in the classroom, and it can even help me to present information to the students, and have them fill in blanks.  I wish programs such as these were available to me when I was in elementary school because it would have helped me a lot since I am a very visual learner.  In the article I also like the way that the author suggests that the students could create their own picture books.  Not only is it a useful adaptation for visual (and other) learners, but it engages the students more, and gives them ownership of the ideas and material they are studying.  This is something I would use in my classroom.  And thirdly, I like the way that the author talked about the 'fascination-focused-materials', and how they can be used in the classroom.  One of the suggested fascinations was trains, which can be used as a topic of study over many subject areas.  The student can draw trains, they can study them throughout history, they can try to understand how they work engineeringly and so on.  I think teachers should work with their students fascinations instead of stifling them which is typically done.

Rubrics

Rubrics are a great tool to use in the classroom. I have used them in many different ways so far in my teaching placements. They can be given to the students before the assignment is due so that they have an idea of what the teacher is looking for. I used a rubric for a debate in the classroom where the students had to argue against or for a particular side. They knew what I was looking for in the assignment, which really helped them. In an art classroom, rubrics can be helpful because they can allow the students to get points for many different aspects of the art assignment. It can also help teachers to give students points for many aspects of the assignment that is not just how it actually turned out.  I have also used a website called rubistar.com that was very helpful in preparing the rubrics.  It helps teachers fill in the criteria for rubrics without having to type in all the information.