Ferguson Township and Spring Creek Elementary Schools: K-5
Rotating between two State College elementary schools, I had the opportunity to teach hundreds of students grades K-5. I used this experience as an opportunity to build lessons using materials that I was unfamiliar teaching with. This included a clay project, as well as a printmaking project using gelli printing plates. I learned a lot by stepping outside of my teaching comfort zone and trying new things, and learning alongside the students as we explored art making together.
Ceramic Flower Bowls
In this unit, students created ceramic bowls in the shape of a flower. Students practiced additive, subtractive, scoring and slipping, and glazing/painting, to create a unique flower with different decorative elements. Students followed a set of guidelines to ensure they were able to practice all of the techniques being introduced, and build on prior experience and knowledge of working with clay.
This lesson is designed in four parts, to include an introduction to clay and sketching a design, two days of working with clay, and a day to paint their projects after they were fired.
Gelli Print Landscapes
In this unit, students were introduced to printmaking, and learned how to print using a Gelli plate. They learned about foreground, middleground, and background, as well as how to break down an image into simple shapes to create the illusion of space. Students applied what they learned to create landscape monoprints using the Gelli plate. Throughout the lesson, students practiced important art techniques and learned about elements of art, including: printmaking techniques (rolling ink/paint onto a brayer, inking a printing plate, and transferring the image on the plate to a paper), layering colors and shapes, and how to create space in an artwork.
This lesson is designed in three parts, to include an introduction to printmaking and landscapes, a day of practice printing on the Gelli plates, and a day to print landscape monoprints.
Julia Edelmann