*image courtesy RTR Yearbook; RTR 3D Art Class
I've been thinking a lot lately about how the arts impact our lives. Today I'm going to ramble about art the class, as opposed to the performing arts like music, theatre, and dance. So art. I'm an English teacher, so what does it have to do with me? Well.. you wouldn't think that it would come up very often in class; English is "supposed to be" about reading, writing, listening, and speaking. But isn't the study of language arts really about the overall theme of how literature/writing reflect life? I think so. So often in reading allusions, references to other sources/ideas, appear. For instance, if you watched Guardians of the Galaxy or Avengers at all (my students and I LOVE these films), did you hear the Jackson Pollock reference? Or the many literature references? Those inside jokes/allusions are what make the films funny--they add a new dimension of understanding to the story. Students sometimes ask me why, when we read a text in class, I take time to explain the historical context of the story, or the art work mentioned in the story, or a particular musical piece which is referenced. Well, let me walk you through an example or two. In Thornton Wilder's Our Town: A Play in Three Acts, each act of the play symbolizes a period in the main character's life and relates back to a soliloquy from the start of the play: the growing up, the living, and the dying. Throughout the play, Wilder refers to specific hymns being played in the background, for instance Blessed Be The Ties That Bind. If you know the hymn, each verse relates to how members of the congregation show love to one another. Ta da! Bigger connection. BTW, I will usually perform this piece for my students when we read the play, they enjoy that. When we read A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, I walk the class not only through a scientific experiment about drying raising and the results, but also through the poem A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes. An understanding of one leads to a more full understanding of the other. It's the same with art. I vividly remember sitting in my 9th grade art class with Mr. Lauden, watching a video on Italian art. I wasn't really paying attention, just filling in the notes I needed for the class. Then, a painting appears on the screen which made me stop everything else I was doing and focus more clearly. I remember turning to my teacher and telling him that the painting looked exactly like a description of a barn I had just read in an Ernest Hemingway novel the week before. I remembered the description because it was so incredibly vivid. Mr. Lauden just smiled and nodded and pointed back to the screen, where the narrator was explaining a connection to the book I had just read! So, what is the connection back to art class in high school? I think students desperately need art. For many, painting, sculpting, drawing, or otherwise making a product is a fulfilling way to express themselves which they may not get access to in other classes. There is a freedom of expression available through art which simply doesn't exist in quite the same way in other fields of study. But I also feel that art provides a tangible connection to understanding the world. The abstract ideas we often present through literature, sciences, and maths can be expressed in a different way in the art classroom. Want to study the Pythagorean Theorem? You could do a bunch of work sheets in maths, or you could design something in art. Want to understand anger better? Read a chapter from the psychology book or study painting. Teachers, I encourage you to make connections to the arts when possible in designing your curriculum. Not a teacher? Consider ways you can assist your high school art teacher. Almost all of the supplies for his or her class are consumables, meaning that they use up all of their supplies each year. I've worked in districts where the art teacher has NO budget for supplies and districts where the art department may have a few thousand dollars for supplies, but in both situations, the teachers are always willing to accept reasonable donations. For instance, purchase a new carpet? That tube from the middle will make a great 3D art project. Your kid has too many tiny crayon bits in their bin? Many art teachers melt these down and teach student to create their own, or else use the wax for other innovative projects. Left over paint or plaster after remodeling? RTR's art teacher will take those donations and use them in student wall murals or on repainting the city benches in new designs. Tissue paper? Newspaper? Packing supplies? They make great 3D art projects. Got some new tools but don't know what to do with the extra pliers, hammers, screwdrivers, or drill bits? Consider donating them for use in the art room. Your household loves yogurt and is looking for a way to recycle the containers? They make great buckets for paintbrushes. Buying new towels? Donate the old ones to the art room for quick cleanup of their many, many "messy" projects. See more ideas here: https://www.theartofed.com/2015/08/05/a-complete-list-of-supplies-for-your-new-art-room/ Contact your local art teacher to see what they need in their room; I think you'll be surprised. The Role of Television
So I don't have "regular" TV at my home; I see little point in paying a lot of money for hundreds of channels when I only watch a few. Neither do I get the regular free TV channels, even with a special antenna, due to Tyler, MN's unique location on Buffalo Ridge in the Southwest of the state. But I do have a Roku device, which allows me to access several channels free and watch programming at my convenience, often with few, if any commercial interference. The PBS Roku channel has many programs I enjoy. Being a documentary junkie, this summer's favorites have included Nova, Civilizations, Outback, and others. In this blog post, I will be discussing a recent Nova episode. NOVA: The Origami Revolution My mom loves origami. When my siblings and I were younger, she would attempt to get us interested in it by trying to teach us what were suppose to be simple shapes and folding techniques. She would purchase paper and how-to books, and when evening chores were finished, and I'm assuming now that she needed to relax from the stress of being a home-health provider to children with serious medical needs, my mom would sit in the kitchen folding paper while the rest of us played a game or watched our favorite TV programming. So when I noticed NOVA had a new program on origami, I was curious. What new techniques were they discovering or investigating? The episode and its resources can be viewed here at NOVA's official website. The show, broadly speaking, discusses ways in which origami is now being used in the STEAM areas: science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. It explores the medical industry, NASA's applications, and others. Curriculum Ideas Earlier this week, Russell-Tyler-Ruthton teachers attended workshops lead by SWWC service coop trainers and meant to inspire more interactive technology usage. One trainer mentioned that in a math class, he had recommended the teacher send students around the building with i-pads to take photos of angles, then come back to class in order to identify and discuss the types of angles and the uses of them. Perfect tie-in for origami! So this is my idea. A math/geometry teacher could have his or her class watch the episode in full or in segments as students learned about the various shapes and their angles. There would probably need to be a vocabulary list made up as well which includes not only the math terms, but some of the more complex terms used in the episode, such as array, theorem, hypothetical, proof, etc. Integrating the idea from our trainer, students would use their devices, such as cell phones, i-pads, or others, to identify the shapes and ideas around them, then shift it into the world of origami. If students were given basic origami shapes to practice creating, which also documenting the angles they were using along the way, there is a curriculum tie-in option which would lead to journal entries, which could take the form of a standard written journal, a science-log type journal, a blog, or something else which documents their progress of student understanding of and frustrations/successes of applying their knowledge and understanding of geometry to origami. To take it a step further, the geometry teacher could partner with the art teacher (that connection should be obvious), the English teacher, or the Chemistry teacher depending on the level of student. As an English teacher, I'll discuss my idea for that particular inter-disciplinary study. Have you ever read Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Abbott? A free copy is available from Project Gutenberg. I read it freshmen year at Gustavus Adolphus College in one of my math classes. Anyway, the novel describes a world in which the perspective is only in two-dimension, but the characters exist in different shapes. So, if one of the characters is a triangle, all you see coming toward you is a straight line, and so on and so forth. You can't distinguish one shape/individual from another until you are close to them because they kinda look like lines of different shapes. They don't stand up. Get it? So, you could have an English teacher go through this text with students as one idea if you wanted to emphasize literature. Other ELA tie-ins may include a writing/communications unit where students work on their project journals. Or you could find another, age/ability appropriate text to read. A research tie-in may include a discussion on the differences between different kinds a texts. For instance, throughout the episode, NOVA interviews mathematicians, medical researchers, and engineering departments which are working toward publishing findings in different areas--think Tamiflu, the drug you take when your students make you sick, or the stent your parents or grandparents might have for their heart. It wouldn't be incredibly difficult to find a newspaper, magazine, or website article on any of the topics presented in the episode. Also find an actually research finding, or scholarly source, and discuss the differences with the students. This is a lesson required by Common Core State Standards, so why not tie it into something interesting, then get students to try both forms of reading to identify the differences? UC Davis has a pretty good chart you could use to discuss it. So does Southwest Minnesota University. That class discussion could lead into an opportunity for students to attempt the different formats and language usage as they present their learning from geometry class in different ways. |
Why?Sometimes I run into inspiring television shows, documentaries, books, billboards, recipes, etc which make me think wouldn't that make a neat lesson adaptation? ArchivesCategories
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