JHS photographers, Donald Karr III, Jayden Schultz and Y’Monie Miller worked in the JHS portrait studio during Digital Photography.

Jamestown Public Schools has one uniform focus for the district this year, Differentiated Instruction. Middle School art teachers have found that Differentiated Instruction is a practice that has naturally been part of their art classes, but are now learning and focusing on getting better at planning purposeful differentiation.

“As an art teacher, I have always found myself differentiating the art process and art product based on student need, interest and ability,” said Persell Middle School art teacher, Michela Tehan. “When a student needs help, we help them, when a student needs to be encouraged, we encourage them, when they need ideas, we try to inspire them, that’s just good teaching practice.  But recently with the focus on differentiated instruction, we have been able to do more than just differentiated instruction on the fly like we have always done. We are able to use data to help inform and direct our instruction.”

With the use of data collected from daily, and/or weekly assessments, teachers are able to form groups within our art classrooms to better give our students the instruction they need.  These groups can change daily based on student progress and understanding. With the use of groups based on data, teachers are able to differentiate the content or process or product, or a combination of them all.

Students are given similar art problems to solve. Each student solves the problem using a different media, or a different technique, or a different subject etc. The outcome (product) looks very different for each student but they have solved the same problem. For example, students study the color wheel and color theory.  After teaching the basics about primary, secondary colors and how the color wheel works, students create a project where color is the main criteria and theme.

The art teacher will set up choices for each group’s ability (based on data). Students could select to create a painting, colored pencil drawing, or collage showing their understanding of the color wheel. There are set criteria that each project must contain, but students will work through very different processes to get there. This is an example of differentiating the process and product while the content of what the students are learning stays the same.

Middle school art teachers agree that it takes a lot of time and practice to be successful at planning for data-based differentiation. They are committed to learning and improving this process to enhance their students’ experience and success in art class.