Before the school year ended, students helped me recycle well over 300lbs of clay that had been building up for the past few years. Here is a short video I made of the process and how students helped. This video is entered in the latest Next Vista for Learning video competition. It was a fun way to clean up a material that is ready to be used again in the fall! I am very happy and relieved that when I go to my classroom I have moistened clay in bags, rather than broken bits of projects gone wrong!
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7th and 8th grade sculptures are ready to come out of the kiln room... just waiting on a couple more students to finish up before they are all unveiled! Thanks again to the Kids in Need Foundation and LOFT for the grants to make this happen!
Thanks to Kids in Need Foundation, LOFT, and Donors Choose, students are finishing up their clay projects today with a variety of glazes.
7th grade students finished their clay pieces today and they are now patiently waiting to be fired. It was fun to see all of the creative ideas students came up with as they molded their forms. After finishing their clay works, students created comics about their characters. I am excited to see how students translated their 3D forms into 2D characters and told stories of all sorts as a result!
Clay has become one of my most favorite materials to teach over the years. When I was in middle school, however, it was probably the thing I disliked most in the art room. The result was roughly a decade of virtually clay-free behavior until I had to take a course in college my second to last semester. Since then, I have been increasingly in love with clay and really make sure to share my story of frustration to students so they do not make the same mistake I did and stay away from it for so long.
Students are continuing to work with clay today as their forms are starting to take on a personality. 8th graders are enjoying the possibilities of using hand-building techniques to create Anthropomorphic representations of themselves. 7th graders are working on their clay creatures and I got in on the action with demo sculptures based on what they wanted me to make. Above is 5th hour's example of Mr. Mouse (eye patch was a must) and 2nd hour opted for a Burger Man (pictures coming). Clay dust fills the room as students start their projects this week! 8th graders are making Anthropomorphic Pottery that reflects their personalities and 7th grade students are making clay balloon creatures. You would think that so much clay would get chaotic, but it is actually very organized and students know exactly what to do. From handouts that look more like comic strips to deliver instruction and systems to keep their clay organized (numbers/colors/cardboard cutouts), students look forward to this time of year as much as I do! At the start of the day, the large bowl for our Empty Bowls event was ready for teacher signatures and then would be fired and given to the highest bidder during the event on the 22nd of March. Unfortunately, do to a series of mishaps, the bowl broke and we will have to make another.
When this happened, I was surprised with how calm I was about it. Clay can be a fickle medium when it is in the drying stages and I knew that it was fragile and breakage was a possibility. Maybe knowing this helped me cope with the shards of clay that could have been a pretty snazzy looking piece of ceramics. Even though I am kind of bummed that this bowl didn't work out, I feel pretty good that I didn't freak out or cry or get really worried about it. If this would have happened in years prior, I am not sure I would have been quite as cool about it. When things do not go as planned, it is not about what could or should have been, it is about what you are going to do next. We still have time to make another bowl and I am sure it will be even better than this one! 7th and 8th grade students enjoyed another day of creating as they were introduced to what the semester in Art class entails.
7th grade students put the finishing touches on their bowls from yesterday. Because the clay is now leather hard, students were able to smooth it out with clay tools and also engrave designs on it without having to worry about it collapsing. 8th grade students worked on making their portfolios and color coding them based on their class. Each class has a different color to help keep things organized. We reviewed organic and geometric shapes by having students create an organic shape on the right side to color with their class color and a geometric shape on the right to put their name and table number. 8th graders also worked on their Exquisite Corpse drawings by selecting an area to develop with more lines and color. |
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August 2018
Janine CampbellTeaching Visual Arts since 2004 and making images since picking up a crayon. Categories
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