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Our first piece of art

So I took on my most feared moment teaching. Well one of the many most feared moments. Starting, and more importantly, completing an art project with all 52 kids. 

The result is bigger than I thought it would be, almost recognisable as a kiwi, and it looks pretty stunning high up on our walls. I'll take it as a win but it was not without a fair amount of chaos and stress.

This jigsaw piece was bound to be a logistical nightmare - so I did my best to pre-empt the drama by carefully cutting out, laminating and numbering squares, then cutting out and number more squares, than matching said squares together, then trying to keep track of which student had which square. Inevitably we still lost some (there are a few that were completed last minute by yours truly when I realised the pieces were lost in the class room abyss).
The finished kiwi. 120 little pastel images pieced together to create a pretty striking art work.

Reflections from this project (because I do nothing but reflect to an exhausting degree on what should have been done better):

  • Scaffold students in to the project. I tried to get this started all within one day, whereas it would have been a lot smoother had we spent a couple of days practising enlargement and practising with the pastels. Lesson learnt - take it slow!
  • Get kids to do the logistical stuff. I spent way too much time sticking squares onto paper and doing tasks that could have been done straight away as students finished. Delegate!
Okay but what went well?
  • First of all the project is finished and on the wall. I know how easy it is to start things and then leave them forgotten in the corner of the room until the end of term when one helpful student realises you never came back to finish it. 
  • The kids were engaged! They enjoyed the secretive aspect of it where the image was slowly revealed as we put our pieces together and the big reveal once they clicked at what it was. At this early stage I'm secretly just stoked any time the kids don't hate my activities.



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