CLASS ONE: FAVORITE FOODS

Project Description:

For our first class, students created their own 3D pieces depicting their favorite foods using various materials: tissue paper, cardboard, construction paper, etc. We began by defining what 3D art means- creating an art piece that has width, height and depth. Then we had a brief discussion about our favorite foods which led to a discussion about materials and how materials can be folded, crumpled, cut, glued and shaped to form our desired food. Each teacher showed example pieces along with sketches to show the planning and ideation to demonstrate various foods and how they were created. Students sketched their food and explored with materials to make 3D pieces. This was a fun project to get to know students on the first day through their favorite foods.

Essential Understanding

The essential understanding for this project is for students to explore forming and shaping 3D objects with various materials. Problem solving from ideation to creation is also an essential understanding in this project. These skills will be the base to build on for following projects.

Intended Outcomes

Students will be able to sketch ideas for their project and explain them.
Students will be able to choose materials that best fir their ideas.
Students will be able to make food that tells us something about themselves.
Students will be able to talk about their material choice and how they were used.

Skills

The skills the students are working towards are:

Planning out project
Problem solving from ideation to creation
Forming and shaping 3D objects with various materials
Engage in discussion of ideas and of final project
Expression of self through creation

Documentation

Full Lesson Plan

Class #1: About

REFLECTION

Last Night our class was really fun. We got to see our students really engage in the project and get to know each other. One thing that I think went well was having plenty of materials for each student to create their food with. We also had a good teacher to student ratio for the first day. We had about the same number of students to teachers which allowed us to work closely with each student and be able to get to know them and their abilities. Understanding their abilities and personalities will help us to better plan our next lessons.

This experience was great for me because it allowed for me to learn from my peers as well as my students. Learning how to talk and teach people that all have such different needs was great experience and opportunity. The one thing that I struggled with was when working with our non- verbal student. I was able to talk to him a little it but it took a while to get him interested in the project. He really wanted to paint and rather than doing the project, he sat down and started painting a piece of paper rather than making is food. It was hard for me to communicate with him and I didn’t know how to get through to him. Another thing that was a bit of a challenge was the hot glue guns. All of the students were afraid to use them and wanted us to do all their gluing for them. We were unaware of their abilities with the glue gun, so we helped them a lot. Alison informed us later that they are capable of using the hot glue guns and that we need to let them be more independent. This is something that we can incorporate into our next lessons and continue to work on with our students.

Something that I would do differently is to walk through how to shape things with newspaper and how to create forms as a class rather than one on one. It was a lot of individualized attention which had its advantages for the first class but also something that we will need to focus on in the following lessons. We also did not have all our students there so when we have more students in the future, we will not be able to devote all of our attention to one student all class. Another thing that I would do differently is to walk around more and spend time with each student. We all sat with one student the whole class and while we can share our experiences with each other, it would have been good to become familiar with each student through interactions for not just our sake, but for our students to get comfortable with us as well.

Class #1: Text