Quick Center for All Ages

After observing our art teacher this past week I noticed that she works with small groups while other students are at centers. In the past I have taught my class generally as a whole group lesson, given the time constraints of my class period. I thought it would be interesting to try centers and try to do a rotation where students can have half whole group and half of the class period in centers. This would allow for a much smaller group during the whole group lesson. I like this because:

-It is easier to assess students
-Students are much more likely to stay on task
-Students are required to stay still for half as much time

One of the centers that I found easily transferable from Art to Spanish class was the idea of a puzzle race. Students would partner up, each picking a different puzzle. Then they would race to try and beat each other to complete the puzzle. I also am considering giving students a digital camera to take pictures of the completed puzzles once they are done.

In their art class, the puzzles varied in terms of artists and movements of art. I decided to just include two artists so that students would really get a chance to identify differences between the artists and get a strong sense of their work. I chose Diego River and Frida Kahlo because they were both Spanish speaking artists.

Example of one of the Diego Rivera puzzle

To make the puzzles I did a Google Image search of each of the artists separately. Then I, narrowed down my search by only allowing pictures that are large.

Then I printed them on card stock and cut puzzle pieces. I then laminated them twice and placed them in a ziplock bag with a copy of the picture.

The way I cut the pieces made the puzzle fairly challenging. The bigger you make the pieces the easier and more appropriate it will be for younger children