Art Class: Clay Food II

In my most active class, I had my pupils play a game with the concept similar to weaving patterns. While some pupils held on to the ropes across each other, others had to go over and under the ropes alternately. By including the time element, they treat this as a game and this activity would facilitate my explanation of paper weaving. Some children had the experience of doing paper weaving in kindergarten and they were given the option of cutting wavy lines. I used the time to talk about 'contrast' in their colour choice. 

I discovered that beginning my lesson with a game followed by the lesson outcome usually aids my explanation. It could be due to the movement and fun that the children had experienced which helps them to focus better.

Art Class: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Part I)

This is my second time trying out the lesson unit for the Primary 5 children. I started the lesson by showing the children some gruesome  emotionally-impactful images caused by our plastic ocean and asking them to discuss what they see using the See-Think-Wonder framework.

Next, we watched the trailer Waste Land (2010) and we discussed about how artists use their skills and knowledge to raise awareness on a marginalized group of people and improve people's standard of living. It's quite impossible for me to hear from everyone in a class of near 40 kids so I had them make their thinking visible in their sketchbook about this issue.

I was really glad when I had a student who told me that his father told him about Rob Greenfield because I was going to show them this video:

Some time last year, pupils from the Art Club visited the Singapore Art Museum and heard a local artist, Tan Zi Xi spoke about her artwork Plastic Ocean responding to the same theme.

When I was conducting this lesson for the very first time, I was very new to the children having been posted to my current school. It was very challenging as the children had a very strong preconceived idea of what art is and they weren't ready to accept such lesson as art lesson. My current cohort of children have been with me for 2 years so I find that they are more receptive in terms of being engaged in art discussion instead of expecting a step-by-step approach to art making all the time. Like Elliot Eisner says, the curriculum is a mind-altering device. Most children accept what they were given, as such, it's important to balance my approach towards art and since we are in a position to make the necessary adjustments needed to suit local circumstances.