Final communities Day

On our final scheduled session, we managed to wrap up some loose ends. We spent the first 20 minutes completing the arts and social studies post-tests to be able to measure the students' understanding of the vocabulary. Afterwards, we had the students move into their "community" groups of rural, suburban, and urban.

I hung the Delaware River Valley map we'd been working on before and we reviewed the parts of the river and what states appeared on our map, and asked "What's Missing?" The students all called out- "Our towns!" we reviewed where our urban areas of Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Delaware were on the map. Cindy brought over the community concentric circle graphic to help us remember how our communities would be arranged. We talked a bit about why the urban areas developed near the river and asked the students to think about where they should place their own town on the map.

We passed their narrative books back to the children for them to read each other's books while I invited groups up to the fabric map to pin their town in place. The map came to life with their colorful applique towns attached. The students really enjoyed getting to read their classmates stories!

To complete the final piece I've been stitching the towns down, and it will have a border fabric to bind the edges. We'll have some more time before the end of the school year when I will return to install the piece and work with the children a bit more.

I'll be posting the post-test results soon, as well as an image of the final product.

Community stitching

On both Monday and Wednesday this week, we spent most of the sessions stitching. On Monday we did a short brainstorm of what kinds of details the could put into their images. I copied compositions from the student's appliques onto the board and the students made suggestions on what would tell people more specifically that it was a rural/suburban/urban view. We reviewed some of the stitches, since the students haven't stitched in a few weeks: running, whipped running, satin, and couching stitches. 

Amanda outlines a sun before filling it in with satin stitch

 We compared the applique compositions to main idea and the embroidery stitches to details in a story. Cindy and I helped kids get started and solve any stitching snafus, but by now most of the children are confident in threading needles and tying knots.

Tyler works on windows and a bowl to feed the dog he'd included in the applique

 Suns, windows and doors, streams and ponds were popular additions. One girl even figured out how to make a squirrel! As always in embroidery, I stress that if you can draw it with a pencil, you can stitch with a needle and thread!! Most of the students approached it in this more freeform, direct way, stitching designs directly on the fabric without drawing it first, showing me how well they understood this drawing on paper/stitching on fabric comparison.

Erin's purple, whip-stitched windows really stand out on the yellow house

 Many students discovered that the whipped running stitch and the satin stitch made bolder images to show up on the patterned and brightly colored fabrics.

 I'm very excited by Daniella's, below. Her bush has tiny red berries in a sparse seed stitch she came up with on her own as well as satin stitch sun, stream, and a sidewalk in front of her house.

On Monday we administered the Science post-test, since we've completed our work on river systems and have moved on to the social studies portion. I'll post details on that later, but they did very well! On Wednesday we also prepared the children's timeline books to be hung in the hall- I had finished sewing their early rivers-of-the-world maps into bags and brought them in in which to place the accordion books.

There's  a short break for the Winter holidays, but we'll be back to finish up our last 6 days in January. When we come back we'll be doing some problem/solution writing based off the choices they made in their little community stitching, and then compile the stitcheries to be added to the collaborative project.

Communities and cooperative learning

On Friday we began the next stage of our collaborative wallhanging- community applique/embroideries! When I arrived Cindy was in the midst of a review of the 3 types of communities: rural, suburban, and urban, and was discussing some problems and solutions related to life in each place. Using the color-coded selections of base fabrics I'd brought in for our artmaking, Cindy let each child pick out a fabric with their eyes closed to sort the class into cooperative learning groups. We had a "rural" group of 7 students, 2 "suburban" groups of about 5 students each, and an "urban" group of 7. Once divided up, the students were given a large sheet of paper to come up with 2 problems and solutions each, and a sentence describing life in that locale from each student. Cindy, the reading specialist, and I worked with each group to help keep them on track and mediate the suggestions.

one of the suburban teams



the urban team was talking about crime



another suburban team brainstorms problems and solutions

the rural team works with Ms O'Donnell

each team's report page posted on the board

With the reports on the board we focused on what it was like to live in each place, and what we might see. The rural areas had wide open spaces, lots of trees and fields, and very few houses. The suburban spaces had more houses and businesses, but there was still space between the buildings, yards, and parks. The urban spaces were crowded and noisy, with tall skyscrapers and row homes all in a row, old and new, fancy and run-down, with lots of businesses and places to work. With each description we closed our eyes and imagined what it would like. I had a sample fabric collage for each community type to use as examples of how the compositions might look. I described the concept of applique and collage, and we compared fabric and stitching to paper and glue. I showed the kids the pre-cut squares of fabric, and we figured out some different geometric and organic shapes we could make from the squares. We also brainstormed what the fabric patterns could represent in our communities- an animal fabric could be a vet's office or shelter, a musical notes fabric could represent a music store of concert hall, a red fabric could be a barn or a brick rowhome, money fabric could represent a bank or a store..... With so many ideas bouncing around, the kids were ready to get started. They remained in their groups, and each group was instructed to create an applique composition representing their community type and its features. Cindy and I went around showing the kids how to pin the pieces down so they wouldn't get lost.

Angelica's urban composition with lots of overlapping buildings

 Cindy reminded the kids that this step was the "Main idea" part of the project- simple building shapes with big blocks of color, and warned them not to get too detailed or fiddly.

Emily's rural composition with LOTS of open space



Erin's suburban composition has a school and 2 nicely spaced houses



The suburban team focused on cutting out and placing shapes

The children really understood how different the sense of space was in each type of community, as evidenced by the compositions they created. I was afraid lots of pieces would get lost, so I brought the stack of collages home to zip through the machine and anchor down the tiny pieces. Next time the students will have a chance to embroider details on their towns. 

Lots of open space and few houses in the rural images

some more variety and business in the suburban groups-
 almost everybody included a "school"

The urban compositions are very busy and crowded
lots of overlapping pieces and fabrics representing shops

I felt this was an extremely productive and well-organized day. The students worked well in these more random groupings, and I felt that they really "got it". I've noticed that people of all age groups really respond to fabric collage- it's so connected to our familiarity with things like quilts, that composition comes naturally, moreso than when working with paper.

River ribbons

On Wednesday, we started off the lesson looking at some artwork by New Hope Impressionists and other artists who have created views of the river. A range of images was included, showing sights from the Delaware River Gap down to Gloucester, NJ. We talked about how our last word brainstorm for the river cinquain poem was just from our heads and our ideas of rivers, but this time we'd use the pictures for inspiration. With the kids paired up, each pair got a color copy of an image to view, and the class was instructed to use the title and artist as the starting point for a word splash, then consider the setting (including season, weather, physical features of the landscape), actions (what people were or could do in that painting), and sensory words (how it would feel to be in the picture). Students spent about 30 minutes together brainstorming ideas. The brainstorm was intended to prepare students with inspiration for a free verse poem to be written after they completed their river ribbon.

Daniel Garber, Tohickon

Using the river poems students wrote based off of last week's wordsplash, students wrote them out onto ribbons to be sewn into the river for the collaborative piece. We remembered a reading we had done a few weeks before comparing a river to "ribbons of water". I asked them about what was important about a cinquain form and suggested we change colors on the ribbons to suggest the different lines of the poem. I explained how to use the fabric markers on the ribbons, and then the students copied their poems onto the ribbons. It required a light touch, which some students had no trouble with. Other students used too much pressure and were frustrated with how much the markers "bled" on the ribbons. I find this to be an interesting exercise for penmanship- it needed students to slow down and be more careful about spacing and sensitive to the surface. Some students figured it out, and others still had trouble. To diffuse the frustration with the medium we compared the ribbons again to water, saying we were setting our words into the water. This revealed another metaphor for the process, which not particularly overtly made as a connection, was one of the ideas we were interested in having the students learn.
Once students completed copying out their cinquain poem, they brought their ribbon over to the collaborative piece to select its placement. Students were very familiar with the river features vocabulary in stating where they wanted their ribbon to be along the river.
With everybody pinned, Cindy explained how to continue with their free verse poem inspired by the images at the beginning of class. She compared word choice in a poem to the colors, textures, and brushstrokes an artist uses in a painting. I reinforced this idea by showing the elements of color and texture in our collaborative piece. The rest of class was spent helping students with the writing process.

Plants of the Delaware and River words brainstorm

On Friday, I hung up the collaborative Delaware River map for the kids to copy into their sketchbooks while a few of the students finished up their leaf embroideries. Cindy helped the embroiderers while I got set up for our lesson. We brought in the laptop and projector in order to take a look at a satellite view of our watershed. The kids noticed that the satellite view was like a bird's-eye view. We located the Delaware and compared it to the fiber version to make sure we could find all our river parts (source, meander, tributary, mouth/delta).

looking at the satellite view-
the kids were excited to see the zoom in and out to see the world
and then their school close-up

 We pointed out the low land in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey where there are many farms and a lot of "green" on the satellite view. We brainstormed with the kids some of the plants and crops that grow in our area, based on the farms they've seen or visited, or fruits and vegetables they eat at home. They came up with strawberries, corn, tomatoes, blueberries, pumpkins, watermelons, and carrots. We even noted that Chester County, PA is famous for mushrooms! We saw lots of green in NJ, and I pointed out the gigantic forest of pine trees called the Pine Barrens. We looked at the mountains and talked about why there aren't many farms up in the mountains, because of colder temperatures and rough, rocky terrain, but there are lots of forests.

Emily cuts out her embroidered leaf

 Next we transitioned to cutting our leaves out to place on the collaborative Delaware River map. I asked the students to decide where they wanted to put their leaf, mark it on their drawing, and have a reason why they wanted it there. I showed the students my sample cut-out leaf, and Cindy noted it was an organic shape not a geometric shape.

Liz decides where her leaf should go on her map
 and Justin shares his leaf ready to pin up

 Cindy supervised the cutting-out while I stayed near the river model ready to pin the kids' leaves as they were finished.As students completed cutting out their leaf, they came up to me with their leaf and sketchbook to tell me where they wanted their leaf to go and why. Some chose spots in New Jersey because that's where they go in the summer. Some wanted their leaf up in the mountains with the forests. A few wanted to be in the suburbs because there are lots of trees where they live.

the giant river model before the leaves got pinned

When all the leaves went up, we moved on to brainstorming for our next project- a river poem to add to our map. Cindy helped keep us on track for what kind of words and language they'll need for writing their cinquain next week by prompting possibilities as I wrote the students' words up onto the board into a giant word splash. The children created their own version in their sketchbooks, taking notes, which finally, we had them go back and color/circle words they think they'll want to use.

Leaf stitching

On Friday the students had a chance to embroider their leaf rubbings to make one of them stand out through bright color and to add detail. I introduced a new stitch to them- satin stitch to make thick lines. Cindy and I helped the students with threading needles, tying knots, and problem-solving.

 For the most part it was a quiet and productive way to end the week.

 I believe the metaphor of stitching in this project is that embroidering is a way of adding detail to an image just like we add detail to a main idea. The stitches and colors are like the variety of vocabulary one uses to make a written piece more interesting. I think we need to make that connection more explicit.

 Craftsmanship is surprisingly high among these students in their stitching. I see mostly careful, even stitches. Only 2 students needed help couching down giant floats on the surface, whereas last year at least a 3rd of each class had trouble with the concept of even size and even space stitching. It makes me wonder how their measuring and ruler skills or their estimating skills are in Math.

 This surprises me to an extent, as their handwriting is not as careful, and I've seen them rush through other activities. Hopefully this process helps develop fine motor skills and attention span that could be transferred to other domains.

Another curious aspect of the students' work process is that so many of them feel compelled to stand up while they stitch. I don't mind if they stand, except then sometimes they start to wander and clump into social groups. I think perhaps when they sit they don't feel like they have full extension of their arm for pulling the thread through the fabric.

Plant life in the Delaware watershed

Today was amazing! We had a storm and a windy morning that transformed the world into a carpet of leaves, a perfect morning for our lesson on plant life in the Delaware watershed. Before coming to Comly this morning I took a stroll and selected a variety of leaves to bring in with me to share. We started class talking about the storm and the wind and asked the kids if they had noticed anything different this morning. We looked at the globe to see where we were and why we have season changes. I told them about my leaf collecting and said obviously if I picked them up this morning they must all be plants that grow near the Delaware River! With the kids in pairs we handed out a leaf to each pair and asked them if they could identify it by comparing it to drawings of labeled leaves on the overhead projector. Most of them were quite successful, and it gave us a chance to talk about some of our art elements like line and shape as well as have some compare and contrast practice.


the collaborative background cut and pinned

I had brought in the background for our collaborative piece, which is starting off as a large river model of the Delaware in felt fabric. The kids identified the source and mouth and tributary as well as the names of the states the river passes through. The model at the moment just shows land and water, and the kids correctly guessed that we needed some plants next!

I brought in green fabric and fabric pastels to do leaf rubbings for some color and texture. Cindy had lots of texture plates for the kids to use for this project. This makes our 3rd printing technique (silkscreen, stamping, and now rubbings). I showed an example and asked the class how they thought I'd gotten the leaf images on there- it was interesting to hear some of the responses (paint the leaf and press it on! Trace it! Silkscreen it!). When they were ready each table come back to select their leaves and colors. Each student printed 2 leaves using 2 colors. As they finished I quickly ironed the oils out to heatset. Ironing between paper meant there was also a resulting transfer print of the image to the paper.
While I worked with each table to do leaf rubbings Cindy had the students work on a poetry and then a reading piece on the same theme of Fall leaves. Their poetry style was to write an "apology poem" much like William Carlos Williams' poem "This is Just to Say":

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

She gave them some different ways to say "I apologize", and shared 3 elements of an apology poem, including the apology, an explanation of what happened, and a reason why. The children imagined an apology to a fallen leaf, and I'm so happy that they all had a dry fallen leaf in front of them while they did this- the result of a morning impulse inspired by a windy autumn day. I suggested to Cindy that she might want to use the iron transfer papers with their poems somehow for their final copy.