Art Class: Applied Learning Programme (ALP)

Hi teachers! The ministry recently announced that all primary schools would have an ALP by 2023. I'm happy to be involved in my school's ALP this year and the students have just completed the project. Throwback to last year, the art club students created their game project with similar concept using Littlebits so at least I have an inkling of where this is heading. The initial part of the current project incorporated design thinking guided worksheet for students to generate ideas. For a start, the students used collaborative card game for group discussion. Then, they meddled with raw electronic components to understand more about circuits. 

The students brought their coded Microbits to art class to give them a makeover. Recycled materials and hot glue were used to fix the cardboard pieces.

The students had to write their scripts first to prepare for the presentation. My colleagues, D and F, recorded their presentations so that the teachers can review their projects. These videos will help the following year's students to have a better idea of what they will be doing.

A school-wide approach of such a project uses a lot communication with different channels. Collaboration would hardly happen if left it to chance. I hope by documenting my work, I can see how certain processes can be refined or have been overlooked when I revisit the materials in the future. 

Art Class: Surrealist Paintings

I do wish the P6 students have more time to touch up their Surrealist paintings. Since their PSLE exams have ended, they are now busy attending post-exam activities and doing their final community project. Some artists' works which we looked at were Salvador Dali's, Rene Magritte's and Meret Oppenheim's.

I like sharing the children's book, Dinner at Magritte's by Michael Garland. Got mine, second hand, at Amazon. The illustration contains many references to paintings from Surrealist artists which poses intriguing questions for classroom discussions.

The most challenging part in this unit is idea generation for the students. Some students spent too much time on conceptualising their ideas and compromise on their painting time. I think if I were to continue to collect photos of past year students' works and their write ups, I would be able to share more ideas with current students to hasten the work process. 

Art Club: Making a Coil Plate

My dilemma on whether I should start this project with my students 🤷. As we only have three sessions for this term. The interval between the second and the last session will be five weeks apart. Although their unfinished projects are usually kept in ziplock bags, they are not entirely airtight. I will still need to open the bags every few days and mist the artwork to keep them moist. But I thought it will be nice if I squeeze in a new technique. After some deliberation, I decided to go ahead and see what happens. The risk is that some of the clay might be too dry to work and they need to redo from scratch. Another possibility is that I'm overzealous in misting the artwork and they will be too wet to work with. 😕 

I usually start by showing them the entire process with a time lapse video so I can focus on explaining while pausing the video. I think it's hard to use the visualiser with my dust-coated hands. The projection is also clearer with the video than the live document camera. Stay tune to my update in my next post!

Reads: What the Art Teacher Reads

This book was one of our readings back in NIE. It's useful to early career art teachers as it covers a broad spectrum of information relating to art education. The twenty chapters cover topics from children's artistic development to the technicality of school art programmes and organisation. Pages are adorned with beautiful images of children's artworks from various cultural context. Occasionally, I would still browse through the content to check certain facts. 

A wonderful thing about a teachers' communal library is that teachers in Singapore can borrow this book from READ@academy. We can put up our request online and the books would be delivered to our school at a designated day. Even though there are books available in the public library but most of the textbooks are under the reference section so reading is limited in the library.