Preservice Teacher wanting to brainstorm some lesson ideas

lemc6125 · Joined: 17 Mar 2010 Posts: 2 Location: Geelong

Hi all,

This is my first post on the forum. I have just recently joined as I am in my final year of a Bachelor of Education and feel like I need a bit of support in the Arts area. I am studying to teach P-12 and have a Biology/Health major.

I have an assignment that is very broad, it requires me to create a unit plan for an arts inspired topic and incorporate at least one arts or community organisation outside of the school. This unit plan can be made for any year level, but I have decided I would like to focus on upper primary/lower secondary. I would love to have a bit of a brainstorm with everyone about my ideas for this assignment.

My plan is to make this assignment something that I can use in schools next year. Obviously I would like to get a good mark for it, but that is not my main focus.

I was wanting to create a unit that is based around the local community. I would love this unit to include all domains (English, Maths, Arts etc) and hopefully run for a full term. I would also like to make this unit as cost effective as possible.

Any ideas, suggestions and comments would be greatly appreciated. I feel very inadequate in the arts department and would love to hear some ideas from artists/art teachers.

Thanks!
Lauren

lemc6125 · Joined: 17 Mar 2010 Posts: 2 Location: Geelong

I forgot to mention in the initial post, my local community is in the Geelong, VIC region and this is where I will be planning for. Obviously you don't have to know Geelong to brainstorm though, any ideas would be fantastic!

Some Arts ideas I have had so far:

Geelong Bollards: Have students learn of the history of Geelong through the various Bollards and then paint their own Bollard of someone they think has made a significant contribution to the community. (It would be great to get the old bowling pins from the Geelong Bowling Lanes as a base for the Bollards!)

National Wool Museum: Learn the history of the Wool Museum and possibly visit a current exhibition.

I would love to do something Circus based, as Geelong receives many travelling circuses (namely Circus Oz) but I'm not sure what...

Traditional Aboriginal Art: Have students analyse the meaning of a piece of aboriginal art, discover traditional aboriginal instruments, possible school visit by Narana Creations.

Colour Wheel: Students create a colour wheel from flora found around Geelong.

Recycled puppet: Students create a puppet made from recycled material.

There's just a bit of what I've been brainstorming, but nothing has really jumped out at me yet or sounds completely do-able.

Any new suggestions or comments on these would be fantastic!

Steve Gray · Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 1569 Location: Geelong

Lauren the skies the limit... that's what makes this so hard to decide. so try out www.artstuff.net.au for a few ideas.

Geelong based huh... hmm. there is a group called art unlimited which runs out of the Geelong Gaol, working with disabled artists, (they currently have a great show at the geelong regional gallery.) perhaps an integrated study across, disability - ability- inclusiveness - cultural diversity... what if your class involved an online sharing of an excursion to the facility or the art gallery and short interviews between the kids via video you tube type short 30 second grabs about what they thought of the works.

What if your group interpreted their fav piece from the show (or from the whole gallery.) you could involve the educational officer there, they do this sort of thing from time to time.

You could explore the history of the area starting with the painting "View of Geelong" in the Reg Gallery, and ask the students to contrast life then to life now in a series of works, you could integrate with History class... you could link to the wool museum... then link to their own history... a short written piece about one of their family members and a photo, drawing etc of the person. it could lead to a whole life long pathway of personal history exploration.

Students could design their own bollard, perhaps using the previous idea of a family member. Consider what a half size design might look like on say newsprint (you can get endrolls from newspaper printers and roll out long lengths, cheap as...) consider four views of one bollard so each one create four pieces showing the four views.

You could connect to local artists starting with local illustrator Robert Ingpen and his Poppy Kettle writings and the festival that goes with that. then send them off online to find other regional artists... Imagine a bunch of student based artist interviews with contemporary artists... there are some geelong arts people interviewed on www.stevegray.com.au/blog This could integrate across sose and english. perhaps a map of where these artists live the students illustrate.

Perhaps a link to the Pako festa and various cultures which are involved in that each year, the students could find out a bit about some of these via google etc... perhaps their own history and explore through art the way each culture uses visual symbols etc to express themselves etc.

The hand puppet ideas seems interesting but I can't as yet think of a way to use it really well... perhaps as a way to act out an alternative history of Geelong with hand puppet characters.

There's a few... all the best. Smile

belle2 · Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 189 Location: Newcastle

Wow! You are good Steve.
Check out the hospital for mural/ activities with sick kids? Not as easy as it sounds as you have to get kids out of school.
I think the disability link is a fabulous one.
Robert Ingpen is one of my heroes.

Chrissy D · Joined: 12 Jan 2006 Posts: 1053 Location: Queensland

Lauren, you know what you want to do, and have already given us a great insight into your plan. These ideas are great!

I like the fact that you want to teach the kids about their area using and incorporating other learning areas (which I believe art is a fusion of a few other subjects at once).

Sorry I dont know Geelong so cant help their.

You said you also have to incorporate at least one arts or community org, as you list in your 2nd post. Does this mean your whole unit has to be featured around that place as your theme?

And of course because of the school's lack of funds, you have to be innovative with materials. Your tin pin idea is great! Try local op-shops and reverse cycle orgs for more industrious stuff. Approach your local TAFE fashion depart for fabric scraps, the labour side for wire etc.

Sounds like you got it covered. Your uni will have like art text books which are really helpful for planning, and their a millions of sample lesson plans on the net you can adapt on.

randomartist · Joined: 01 Mar 2011 Posts: 2

You say you would like for the activity to cover a range of topics (English, Maths, Arts etc) and also incorporate an external community.

Here is my idea.

They are to produce a poster. It will relate to a local community of interest (farming, Geelong Cats, etc).
The graphic must incite a powerful emotion (pride, awe, etc) and must include a sentence inspired by random words you generate from here
(http://creativitygames.net/generator/randomwords/4) This will force them to have to think differently.

To bring maths into it you could state that the golden ratio must be included somewhere in the poster in an interesting fashion (ie you can't just make the poster dimensions the golden ratio), it must be some other aspect of the poster.

Lissdexia · Joined: 04 Feb 2011 Posts: 6 Location: Blue Mountains

You have some great ideas. I particularly like the one involving recycling.

I thought to give a bit of focus of your major of biology and health to do projects revolving around community gardening and sustainablity.

You might find some inspiration at the following websites

http://geelongwestcommunitygarden.org/
http://www.geelongsustainability.org.au/

Good luck