I keep telling myself that it is a learning process, both for me and the pupils. That is undeniably true. Who would have expected at the start of the year that the education world would have been stood on its head and we would all be sat at home, staring into the webcam, launching our lessons into the homes of our pupils?
When I first entered the educational world, many years ago, I was given the advice, “Get your lesson material right for the class and the situation, and the rest will take care of itself”. It was good advice and is as relevant now as ever. The problem is that we find ourselves in a very new and different situation and discovering what works, what works really well, and what simply doesn’t, is all part of that learning process we find ourselves grappling with.
I have been experimenting quite a bit with different approaches in the last couple of teaching weeks as I try to understand:
- what works well actually during an online session with a class, what engages them and gets them producing something at the time of the lesson
- What engages them with becoming involved with creative and practical activities outside the lesson time and with the restrictions of most pupils only having limited materials available to them at home
In order to tackle these two main approaches/aims I have experimented with the following
- Straight forward drawing assignments
- Digital assignments using the pupils’ iPads or computers
- Playful remakes/transcription assignments based on art historical images
- Using the Google Art Project to visit and walk through some of the museum collections of the world
- Using the Google Street Art Project to do a research project into what street art around the world looks like and can be
I’ve had some really good lessons and results from various classes, and some painfully quiet ones where it felt like I was shooting my lesson material into outer space, with the bare minimum of response from the pupils!
But I do feel that I am starting to get a hold of what is needed to finish lessons with a feeling of some sort of success and engagement. I suppose I am starting to understand better this new context and what the possibilities are that it offers and what the long list of limitations are as well. The more this insight grows, the better the chance of getting that all-important lesson material right.
Having a variety of things ready and at hand to show the pupils seems to help a lot. A film, a demonstration, a PowerPoint or some well-chosen examples all help. They seem preferable to having to look at your teacher staring out of the computer screen! Extra preparation is undoubtedly needed, but hopefully all useful for future lessons, once we are finally back at school once again, whenever that may be!
So, what exactly have my pupils been doing?……….
This morning I had a class digitally wandering round some of the great museum collections of the world. When they had visited a number of these they had to, amongst other things, explain which museum they would like to visit for real and motivate why that was.
I was a little nervous about how well this would work, but it ran incredibly smoothly and the pupils responded well in the written assignments.
I have done a drawing/digital design assignment loosely based around the work of the Belgian artist Filip Dujardin.
Inspired by the artist’s eccentric architectural creations I set the pupils a task of designing their own fantastic and fictitious buildings based on a number of local buildings in combination with architecture from around the world, working either digitally or by making a drawing.
There have been enough examples on Facebook and Instagram of people remaking artworks in their homes using any materials that are at hand. It is something I have done before over the years in class, but this really is the situation to relaunch the idea in order to squeeze a little art history into the lessons.
Following on from this assignment is the remaking of an artwork using the colours and materials found in the clothes cupboards at home. Most of my pupils do not have any paints at home so this playful (at quite large scale) assignment has been set in motion this week.
If you are interested in any of these ideas, contact me, I’m happy to share materials.
Peter Sansom 