This week Michelle and I had a wonderful time with our classing thinking and discussing things we question, puzzle us, or just don't understand. We started the lesson by having one of the students read the work sheet we make. Then after a clarifications and group definition, we had the students fill out the work sheet. After the student listed 8 things they were puzzled by, and went into more detail about on particular idea on the opposite side we were ready to do our demo.
Michelle explained demonstrated our project to the students, showing them our tessellations and how they will fill together. As well as some various techniquest on how to use oil pastels. The topics the students chose to explore through their work included, math and geometry, why people where shoes, how do cell phones work, why is there peer pressure in school, why does homophobia exist, and why do I have OCD. So you can see that the topics ranged from fun and inquisitive to deep and personal. After everyone was done making 1 or 2 piece of the puzzle we arranged them in the middle of the floor and sat on the table and discussed what we made.
This week was also unique because we had some of the studetns for an extra hour at the end of class. Because our project have been to complex and time consuming we let the studetns know last week that if they needed some extra time to complete their work we would give them an extra hour at the end of class if they had their partents permission.
I really had a lot of fun with this lesson! I think this was our most successful in terms of time management and really getting the students engaged in discussion. Most of our class consisted on discussion, so that we were sure that the student's new what was expected from them. They seemed to enjoy the topic and some of their ideas lead to more conversations. Some strayed off topic, but it was good for our class to converse with one another and bond in the classroom. The overall puzzle looked amazing all together! I was unsure of limiting the students to only using oil pastels for their drawing but I'm glad we did because it helped the overall collaborated piece come together. The extra time at the end of class, but definitely useful for the student's and for the most part, they used their time accordingly. We plan to use some of time during out last lesson for "make-up" work as well, that way every student has enough time to finish all their lovely projects!
ReplyDeleteThis lesson sounds really interesting and I think that the idea of questioning is really important in art and life. Alot of times we take things at face value and just accept them as is. I think it is really cool that there were alot of different types of questions and that you shared a dialogue about them. Are you going to mount the puzzle as one cohesive piece? or r u just going to display with the ability to take it apart?
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