KATIE KUTZ
Artist/ Student/ Art Educator
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CLASS TWO: ANIMALS
Project Description
For our second lesson, students created their own animals out of recycled materials. They created this animal by combining 2 to 3 different animal parts together to make one. This is relevant because we will be scaffolding on building skills we learned in the lesson while making our 3D favorite foods such as sketching possible ideas for the project as well as form building through different materials such as cardboard, yogurt containers, foam, pipe cleaners, pom poms, yarn, fabric, etc. This will allow for practice and repetition with skills and materials used and taught within our lessons.
Essential Understanding
The essential understanding for this project is for the students to form and shape 3D materials into morphed animal objects. Problem solving from the ideation to creation of their hybrid animals was an important part of understanding this projects. Skills learned during the first class served as a base for this project.
Intended Outcomes
Students will continue to sketch their ideas for their projects and explain them
Students will freely chose their materials that they feel best fit their ideas
Students will make a hybrid animal which stems from their favorite animals, most interesting animals to them, or their imagination of a unique animal
The students will be able to tell how they combined multiple animals and why they chose these animals
Skills
The skills the students are working towards are:
Planning out project through sketching ideas and looking at possible materials
Problem solving from ideation to creation
Forming and shaping materials to create their animal
Engage in discussion of ideas and of final project
Expression of self through creation of 3 Dimensional animal
REFLECTION
This lesson worked well because it allowed a lot of freedom and choice. It was a rather open-ended prompt, create an animal using components from carious animals. There are so many animals to choose form that students were able to express their interests well. We also provided more materials that the first lesson. This time we included recycled materials such as milk jugs, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, and empty plastic containers. This allowed students to get more creative in how they constructed their animals. It was great to see how creative they all got, as each student constructed their animals differently. Also, it was wonderful to see students who were nervous about using the hot glue guns at first become comfortable using them by the end of class.
I do think that perhaps there were to many options of animals for them. We had included a list of animal parts and it was a bit much. Also, some students saw our examples or a piece that another student was doing an attempted to copy them exactly. I had to remind one student that this was their piece and they can and should make it regarding their own interests rather than copying. Students just needed a reminder and they began customizing their pieces according to their interests and taste. While I am glad that they had a lot of choices, It was perhaps a bit overwhelming.
In the future I would perhaps brainstorm animal ideas with the students rather than supplying a ready-made list. This way we could generate ideas in an engaging manner. It had also been suggested by Alison to have some pieces precut for easier use for the students. While a great idea, there was no way to anticipate what would be needed. Only a few pieces that had been precut were used, so while I am glad that we had some, I did not feel it was entirely necessary for this lesson. Also, through getting to know the students, I have found many of them much more capable than they let on, so letting them take charge and encouraging more than fully assisting would be beneficial as well.