A PIECE OF YOURSELF

Blog

Project Description:

A piece of you. We are going to make a collaborative project where students will get a giant puzzle piece and decorate it to represent themselves. This lesson will teach teamwork and collaboration which we haven't introduced yet and will be a good ending note for this class. It will also teach self understanding because this puzzle piece will be a piece of themselves (or in other words who they are and what they like). It also helps to unify the class as a community just as one puzzle piece at a time unifies the whole puzzle.

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Essential Understanding:

• Artists and designers can collaborate to make works of art and design.

• Artist and designers can explore their personal Identity and that can be represented through aesthetic decisions in art making.

• Artist and designers may have different approaches/ideas but when we compare we can find things that are similar when working collaboratively.  

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Objectives:

• Students will show their ability to work together as a group by creating  a collaborative 3D project.

• Students will combine their ideas about their own identity with the identities of others by creating individual puzzle pieces that fit into a whole puzzle.

• Students will be able to understand community/collaboration.

• Students will demonstrate their ability to participate in a genuine artistic experience using found objects, paint and other media to express their ideas about identity.

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Skills:

1. Work on collaboration skills

2. Create work that has a personal meaning

3. Function as well as design, students will be able to creative problem solve.

Lesson Plan for Class 5

Attached above is the lesson plan for a piece of you. Students  made puzzle pieces of self identification and at the end put all pieces together to show community and collaboration.

Journal Entry

What worked well for this art experience? Why?

I think the most successful part of this lesson was probably the fact that the students got to make something that represented them. We put driving questions on the board which helped students think about who they were as an individual. I also think it was really cool at the end when we put the puzzle pieces together and students got to see their community form one puzzle piece (individual) at a time.

What didn’t work well for this art experience? Why? 

I think the fact we asked two questions what is an individual? and what is a community? It was hard for the students to figure out with no content. I think the students really got distracted by the questions and got a little of tangent while trying to figure out the answers.  By the time we moved on from the questions and started introducing the hands on piece students had kind of moved on from the discussion and weren't paying attention anymore.

What would you do differently?  Why?

I would have probably had a more visual example of what a community and an individual was before just asking them questions with no context clues. When students start answering what they think the answers are I might say something like "so you all are individuals like puzzle pieces and when we put all the pieces together it makes an image just like all of you together makes a community". I also might try and keep the lesson to about 10 mins only so the students don't loose focus.