Week #7 [RE]act

This week was a very excited week for our class. We had a very busy day. It started off with a continuation from last weeks up-cycling lesson. The students got a chance to actually hang their plastic bottle sculptures in the trees.

 

Most of the students really enjoyed this activity. Although many of them got off task very quickly. This kids who were off task where running around the garden, climbing on the walls and not paying attention to the discussion. This could be because this processes was somewhat rushed and we did not have time to gather all the students individually to get them involved. It also could have been because we had never gone outside to do an activity before or it could be because they were bored with the project. I'm not sure what we could have done differently given the time we had. The students who were involved were very interested. They came up with creative ways to get peoples attention when they walked passed the sculptures. Rose came up with a very good idea to have individuals write there thoughts about the sculptures on index cards so we could read them later. If you want to see the sculptures will be hanging in the garden next to the Palmer museum all week (hopefully they will not get totally ruined.

After we completed this first task we then started this weeks lesson. The word this week was [RE]act. The students had the opportunity to rotate between five different stations:

Outside- 

1. paint pouring- students will be given already sorted paints in cups to select from and pour out completely onto the plastic covered stand. 

 

2. ink station- Students will be given water color paper, India ink, marbles and straws. Students will use these materials to experiment with chance by dropping a dot of ink on the paper and blowing it with a straw and rolling a marble around on the paper. 

Inside-

1. Photo/ Dripping- Students will be given food coloring and glow sticks to pour or drip into mason jars with water. The students will then take pictures of the interactions between the materials. Cameras will be set up on stands and across from mason jars so students just have to take the photo. 

2. Ready Mades- Students will be given bags filled with random objects. Students will chose one object from the bags that they can not see and be ask to construct a way to make it art. Then students will then tell a set up video camera how they have adapted the object to make into a work of readymade art.  

3. Learning Center- this center will allow students to explore the Dada movement through videos, power points, images, and resource books. Students will write down three things they learned on an index card that they will push pin to the wall side by side.  

 Larissa and I thought that these stations were very successful. I heard from a number of students that this was their favorite week yet! We also felt that it went smoothly because we only had about 20 students and a few of the difficult children were absent. We also felt that the students had a good amount of time to do each station and could spend longer in ones they liked more. Also by having two extra helpers it also aloud the stations to run smooth. Another thing that we did was we aloud the students to have full control over each station. We did not really give them demos but rather let them learn and figure out Dada on their own. Over all we felt this week was one of the best and most exciting weeks. We would definitely recommend teaching a lesson similar to this or if you are feeling overwhelmed with a whole class, split it in half and have one teacher take on group outside and keep the others inside and then switch. This process makes the lesson and activity a lot less chaotic.