My Identity- Final Arts Bridge Lesson

In this final lesson with my class of 3rd graders, I wanted to bring together everything we had talked about up till now. Over the last 6 lessons, the students and I have been able to talk about cultures and traditions around the world. In this lesson, I wanted students to use ideas that they had learned about other's culture in order to think about their own.

The first step was to recap previous lessons. We reviewed what culture was and why it was important. Then we went through a powerpoint that had the pictures I had used in previous lessons. With these, we not only reviewed the cultures, but we identified different aspects of a culture.

Using this list, we then shifted to talking about our own cultures. We talked about how we see these elements in our own lives.

The art assignment was based on this idea. They were to create a mixed media collage that showed different part of their culture. This is a collage that I created ahead of time out of clipart. I tried to cover a variety of ideas. The pajamas reference my family's yearly tradition of getting new pajamas on Christmas Eve.

For the collage, we let them use just about all of the materials that we had used up till now, including string, markers, chalk pastels, and colored pencils. I also brought old magazines, and the teacher let the students use watercolors.

Weaving

This week, the students learned about weaving. During the presentation part of the lesson I had two main goals. First, we talked about weaving traditions from around the world. Weaving such a basic technology, that almost all cultures do it, but weaving is also so flexible and adaptable, that every culture can have their own style. I showed the students pictures of weaving from different cultures, and we compared and contrasted them, and discussed factors that create those differences, such as available resources and intended purpose.

The second goal was to talk about the Navajo tribe. They were just beginning a unit about Native American cultures, so this was a good way to connect this to what they were learning. We talked about were they live, and about how they use weaving as a way to preserve their culture. We also learned how to say “Hello” in the Navajo language.

Then we started the activity. I had already made the looms and cut the yarn ahead of time, but I had the students string their own looms. They did a great job paying attention, but students would often get lost or miss a step. I think that it would have helped to have prepared clearer directions. When we started the weaving stage, it tricky to keep students all on the same page. By the end of class, some were on their second piece of string, while others were only on the second row.

Overall, the lesson went really well. None of the students gave up, even after making mistakes. Once they got the hang of it, they really got into it. Some of them didn’t want to leave for recess, which is always the best compliment.

#artsbridge #elementaryschool #socialstudies #textiles

Arts Bridge Intro

I am working for Arts Bridge. Arts Bridge is a BYU program that helps elementary school teachers integrate the arts into their classrooms. Arts Bridges hire Art, Dance, Music, and Drama education majors and each of us are assigned to a elementary teacher. Then we work with them to bring the arts into their classroom. I was assigned to a third grade class at Thunder Ridge Elementary. The regular teacher is Ms. Brotherson.

I observed their class at the beginning of the semester, but I have finally begun to teach!

#artsbridge