Art 310

What I Did

In thinking about digging deeper, I couldn’t help but reflect on how I am really in an era of self-challenge and trying new things. I knew I wanted to take this opportunity to further explore and work alongside my students, and with that in mind, I arrived at sculpture. We have worked with clay in the past, and I have done that with each grade level with varying degrees of difficulty, but I wanted to try something new: plaster bandage strips. To be honest, I knew my anxiety over the plaster bandages didn’t really make much sense because it really is more simple to manage than the clay making process; but as we know, fear can be quite irrational.

For the past 4 years, I have had plaster bandage strips in a container that I’d been too nervous to use with the students; however, I decided it was time to bring them out and let the kids get experiment. For 6th grade, I decided on donuts with newspaper and masking tape as the armature, and with 8th grade, we used cardboard and little Dixie cups to make the first initial of their names. Spoiler alert: they turned out great!

How I Did It : Link to the unit plan.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xwcnTmEuPu6W4irNJ7dh09VJJ3uUvyzNUh8GWx0mLW4/edit?usp=sharing

Please Note: This is NOT in our district format because it is more lengthy, but I wanted to launch the project as the final, so I came up with this loose plan, and will refine it later.

Reflection

Here are my takeaways not that the project is complete across both grade levels:

1. Day one should be broken into 2 days for the forseeable future.
   • I say this because our students are eager to be active but have significant learning deficits in vocabulary and comprehension. They struggled a lot with even just the concept of how to make a flat newspaper into a fluffy donut. In the future, guided practice and independent work will be moved to its own day.
2. Even though this was an individual project, they helped their peers!
   • Students were really proud to have learned a new concept, and it really showed in how willing they were to help their peers and collaborate to problem-solve. There were several times in the 6th-grade classes when students who would otherwise not go out of their way to associate with each other were willing to help one another. It was a really great thing to witness.
3. I’m Overthinking It
   • Time and time again, I prove to myself that I am my own worst enemy. I overthink most things, and they always end up being more than fine. This was no exception. I had a good handle on it from start to finish and was proud of both my time management throughout the project and my ability to quickly switch systems that weren’t working effectively. 8th grade took to this process so strongly that, when they were able to work on their free projects at the end of the year, many of them chose to use this medium. I have a pretty great tornado in the making that will be completed this week.
4. Overall
   • This was a really great project for both grade levels, and I am so happy that we did it! This will definitely be a project I refer back to and make the necessary changes to improve it for students. Next, I want to try to find a place to fit this into the 7th-grade curriculum.

I am also planning to take some photos. This is something I am really bad at. I get so excited to put them in the display case, then the kids want to take them home, and I forget to grab pictures. SDo, coming soon……