Lesson Plan 5 - Outline and Process

In this lesson, students were exploring anxiety through their work. I was inspired from this lesson by the horsehair works that I have seen, and the intricate lines on these works reminded me of Jackson Pollock's paintings. After watching a video of him working, students then took water-down acrylic paints and began making gestural movements onto a piece of paper. After that, I explained that we would be creating ceramic pieces that we could hang. and telling them to plan out their composition. The piece could be knit tightly together, loosely, some pieces hanging off, etc., because that is how we can feel when we are anxious. A size requirement was provided this project, so that students could push themselves to create better art. During the critique, they did the constructive-positive comments on each other's works, and then the artist was allotted time to talk about their work themselves.

For the starter activity, I believe it was a huge success. The students really got into the gestural movements and the use of color, and one student even made two. As for the project, I also think it went incredibly well. The size requirement pushed them to create bigger work, even if they did not necessarily meet the requirement. The one-on-one critiques also became a lot more handy for myself and my students multiple times during the class. At the beginning, one of my students wanted to create a heart for her piece. I was worried that this idea was not necessarily creative, and discussed with her on how she should add her own twist to the idea and abstract it. She ended up creating a very interesting piece, and it did not look anything like a heart. Another student was really struggling starting up this project, and after prompting her to make a few sketches, she really got into the project and created a very nice, abstract work. I think that during critique they appreciated the time allotted for them to explain their works, as well, because they could then tell their classmates why they did certain things with their work. I feel like this style was one of our best critiques, and I think it was because it involved both Reflect: Question and Explain and Reflect: Evaluate (Hetland, 81). I did not want to initiate with this critique strategy, since I was working on building the community, so I decided that it was best to build up until we reached this stage.

Hetland, Lois. "Reflect." Studio Thinking. New York: Teachers College Press, 2013. 81. Print.