Back in a classroom

So today was session three of three with both Year 3 and 4 at the local primary school as part of our sketching project. A wet morning so I was so glad that we did our outdoor sketching last week. The classroom title has significance because I fled almost from classrooms as a location early November 2016 when I had my final breakdown as a teacher. Working on this project for a third cycle now in the primary school as a visiting local artist has given me the opportunity to work in a classroom once more on a very limited basis but also a very positive way.

So todays work included;

a) boiler suit project – a new suit for 2022/22 cohort. I hand drew frames onto the two legs, one leg per class and today was the children’s and attached adults time to add their drawings using the ProMarker pens. This activity was based at one group table in the classroom supervised by the class teacher and any TAs. In year 4 the headteacher also got to add a drawing as well.

Meanwhile…

b) tree drawings – this is where my classroom skills came in where I took the rest of the clas but if behaviour needed reacting to, this was down to the class teacher and not me.

We did a series of tasks.

1) children chose one of 10 greeting card designs from the shop that all included trees in some format. They then wrote why they chose the particular card. Likes included liking sunsets, snow, looking upwards.

2) *trees in the distance – based on two simplistic diagrams on the board of deciduous and coniferous trees, the children made up their own hill and added trees. The most interesting one where the upside down v’s for coniferous trees, which I had shared in our first session from me sketching in BC, Canada in 2019, were turned and normal v’s drawn. So an explanation using a Christmas tree and inverted ones drawn to discuss the concept to a tree as v’s. My explanation and correction seemed to be accepted as positive which was good.

* by this point in both classes children came out to me sat at the front of the class as they finished a task for feedback, some written comments and possibly sketch project feedback.

3) a winter tree – many of the cards show bare branches winter trees, the task was to draw one and use card examples to help but to show at least 3 thicknesses e.g. trunk, branch, twig – this was the task the children found the hardest as they often draw one thickness or once the tree reaches the twig stage the patterns are lost – this linked to talking about the importance of looking.

4) a summer tree – redraw your tree or something similar as often we discussed how difficult it is to replicate one tree again. This time leaves to be added. Children had the option to ‘zoom’ in one area of the tree or draw the whole thing. Prompts linking back to our sketching at the seafront where leaf tasks were set. So what shape are your leaves? W same size or different? All flat? Flowers / blossom / fruit? Gaps without leaves.

Lots of different responses seen

5) Art likes and dislikes table with bullet points ( not answering in sentences) – “Andy, how many bullet points?” “ me ‘I don’t know how many ideas you have in your brain’. I emphasised that if they found an aspect difficult and if this affected whether they liked art to say this. With year 4 I made the point about if being directed with art tasks didn’t work for them to try the art they enjoy eg at home so they didn’t go off art as a subject. This linked with both classes to the continued emphasis of accepting that we make mistakes in work and that please enjoy art as a fun activity.

6) very few got to this – then I gave individual task which have slipped my mind now. This is where the challenge of fast workers set me the challenge of extending tasks or selecting something for that individual.

I will share boiler suit pictures once I have had the time to photograph it from tomorrow. I am going to return again as about 13 children across the two classes including 5 absentees today can do their boilersuit work and I also want to add comments in the majority of sketchbooks too – as I said to the children I was asking to do some marking, a strange idea.

Oh yes, I have made my bid to be reinvited again in the future and on the way out today as it was lunchtime I popped into see the teacher who invited me in the first time.

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