Jim Dine Inspired Hearts
This lesson was based on the work of the artist Jim Dine. We showed the students a variety of examples of his work that included hearts. Kim (this week's mentor teacher) explained to the students that Jim Dine was a Pop Artist, which meant he used images from popular culture, such as hearts.
Kim started off the demo by showing the students two different projects that would be inspired by Jim Dine’s work. One was a chalk pastel project in which the students would cut out hearts, color the top of them with pastels, then rub the chalk off with a tissue on a white piece of paper, leaving a white heart where the stencil was with color around it. Students were encouraged to layer the hearts, reviewing the term “overlap”. They were also asked why it was important to have a color repeated in a piece of work, defining for them the term “unity”. After Kim demonstrated this project step-by-step, she then demonstrated the second one, which was a large paper heart with lines coming out from a smaller heart inside it. A dot was placed in the middle of the large paper heart that was cut out, and then using different colored markers and a ruler, lines were created coming out from the dot and ending at the edges of the heart. Once that was complete, students were told they could have a teacher help cut out a heart from the inside.
After the demos were done, students were given the choice of doing either project first, and then going to the next, or doing the same project twice. They grabbed their own materials and went back to their seats to begin working on their projects. Using a phone and a laptop, the Botswana students were also able to see the demonstrations. While the students worked, the phone was brought around the room so the students in Botswana would be able to see what the students here were doing.
After the majority of the students had completed these projects, Kim brought them back to the demo table to show a few more project ideas. The most popular was drawing hearts and patterns on foil, and then gently crumpling it to make the colors shine more. Other projects Kim suggested included oil pastel hearts, a variety of colored hearts on the same piece of paper, and a large heart, sectioned off, to include multiple patterns to decorate it.
Kim did a great job with classroom management, and I learned a lot from her. She stressed to me the importance of being loud enough so the students can’t talk over you and also waiting until they are quiet to begin speaking. It is important for the students to know that the teacher will not begin teaching until they are quiet and respectful.
I thought the lesson was fantastic; it provided students with choices, but all the projects were unified at the same time, like their inspiration from Jim Dine’s work, and the use of the vocab term “unity”. I think the students really enjoyed the freedom of being able to choose the project that they wanted to do. It seemed like the interaction with the Botswana students went fairly well. They seemed to understand the lesson, and their projects turned out great. It would be nice if the students here would be able to have more interaction with the students in Botswana, but it has been difficult with the issues we’ve been having with technology.
Overall, I think the students had a great time with these projects, and even though there were a few bumps along the way, I learned a lot from both the mentor teacher and the experience of actually teaching the lesson.
