CLASSROOM PROJECTS
9th Grade Art and Earth Science: Papier-Mache Environmental Model-Building
Ianthe Jackson and Laura Bartovics
January 2008
9th grade Earth Science students studying landscape development explored the difference between young and old streams, specific characteristics of each, and why they have these characteristics. With the help of resident artist Ianthe Jackson, students made plaster models of the different types of streams. They made keys with flags to mark the features of the streams, and wrote a final reflection paper on the project.
Click to see pictures.
9th Grade Art and Global Studies: Collagraph Prints: The Buddhist Eight-Fold Path
Ianthe Jackson and Nicole Crepeau
January 2008
9th grade Global Studies students studied the Buddhist Eight-Fold Path to enlightenment, and chose one of the eight elements they found most meaningful. With the help of resident artist Ianthe Jackson, they created symbols that explained the meaning of their Eight-Fold Path choice and made collagraph prints of these symbols using card stock and ink. They wrote explanatory text to display alongside each symbol.
Click to see pictures.
9th grade English and Art: The Indelible Comic Project
Chelsea Ross Green, Jessica Baer, and Daniel O’Connor
December 2005
The indelible comic project was an inter-disciplinary unit that spanned both the English and Art classrooms. 9th grade students were reading the graphic novels Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman, and looking at a number of other graphic novels.
For this project, students first picked an important moment from their lives and wrote a 2-page narrative capturing the moment through the use of description, the five senses, inner thought and dialogue. They were then taught a series of lessons which aided them in the creation of their comic. These included: Using icons, creating a comic character of themselves, storyboarding the moment(s), zooming in visually, cropping, closure and gutters, layout and Design. This project tapped into the enthusiasm of both our passionate writers and illustrators. Students were given opportunities to peer edit their classmates’ work, which provided another opportunity for them to learn from one another.
Through a small grant from Independence Community Foundation, students and teachers published and printed final copies of these these books.
Click to see pictures.
