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 Narratives

 Last Wednesday, the students had their narratives already prepared to copy into their pamphlet. Cindy had reviewed them and suggested one more sentence to transform into a "show not tell" sentence for each student. We helped brainstorm and check spelling with students one-on-one. When everyone was finished I explained the pamphlet book construction. The kids remembered that the last book we made was an accordion fold book. For a pamphlet book pages are folded in half and stacked into a signature to be sewn-bound along the spine. We did a quick math computation: the children counted their sentences/the pages they'd need which had to be divided in half to count how many sheets of folded paper they'd need. For example for a 10 page book one needs 5 sheets of paper. We explained how to copy the sentences into their books using a heavy-lined sheet of paper laid under the page they were working on for guide lines to show through.

Each child figured out how many sheets they would need an we passed out the paper for their folded signatures. The rest of the session was spent with intense focus as the students very carefully copied out their stories into the books.

 At the end of the period we passed out an additional blank folded sheet to serve as a title page, as well as the cover pages. I had scanned in each student's community embroidery and printed them out onto cardstock for the covers, since their stories had been inspired by the embroideries they had made.

 Before our session on Friday, I pierced each book 3 times along the spine with an awl to prepare for binding. As a class, together we followed directions on how to sew a 3-point pamphlet binding. Up through the center hole, down through the top hole, up through the bottom hole, and down through the center hole, with the two ends tied together across the long float down the spine. Unfortunately, the students had trouble keeping their holes lined up. Learning curve! If I were to do this with this age group again I would either hole-punch the holes for larger, more easily lined-up holes, or I would have clips to hold the pages firmly in place for binding. However, with help, everyone managed to get their books bound!

 The rest of the session was spent making sure the cover and title pages were complete, and working on illustrating their stories.

 The students were encouraged to read the sentences on each page, picture it in their mind, and draw all the details they saw. They were asked to use the whole page and consider backgrounds for their objects and figures.

 Cindy reminded the students that if they were to read their book to a kindergartner, a younger child would want to see big, bright, easy-to-see pictures.

 I think we'll spend a little bit more time on illustrations next week before we wrap up the collaborative project. Only a few more days left!!

Community Narratives

On Monday Cindy started us off with a review of "Showing, not Telling" sentences. We selected a few of the children's applique blocks to pull out a simple sentence, and the children had to come up with descriptive adjectives and adverbs using their thesauruses to expand their sentences. For example:

Seth's urban burglar on the roof

"The burglar is on the roof" (typical simple 3rd grade sentence inspired by one of the embroideries)
burglar: sneaky, quiet, malicious, bad, bungling, etc.
roof: slanted, flat, tall, high, pitched, slippery, dangerous, etc.
is? (could be a more active sentence): climbed quietly, slinked carefully, waited patiently, tip-toed precariously, etc.
==> "The quiet, sneaky burglar slinked carefully across the slippery, slanted roof" (much more interesting sentence!)

After creating some more interesting sentences, we explained that entire stories could come out of the children's pictures. We talked about using the setting (rural, suburban, urban) from their pictures and choosing characters to live there (perhaps from the details they stitched). We came up with some examples of problems and solutions the characters might experience if they lived inside the children's pictures. Then we brainstormed what a beginning, middle, and end of the story might be. The children were provided with a graphic organizer to use for their brainstorming, and I passed their embroideries back to them. I encouraged the students to look at what they had created, imagine themselves entering the picture, and think about what it might be like to live there- what would it be like? What problems would there be?

Alex said she had a daycare center, a school, a park, and an animal adoption center. She made up a story where the children from the school went to visit the adoption center, but a dog escaped, ran around the park, and the children helped capture him again! 

Cindy and I worked around the room, talked to the children about their plans, helped elicit ideas, and kept everyone focused. When children were stuck I asked them to tell me a little about their picture- what buildings had they included, who lived there, what's happening, where could people go, what could they do in that community?
The brainstorming activity took up our morning session, but all the children completed their organizer for the writing of a narrative problem/solution story based off of their community applique embroidery. Since we need to make up some time, we decided I should stay for the afternoon as well to work towards our next goal of a finished written piece inspired by their own artwork.

Emily's grumpy farmer- his sheep kept escaping to the clover field

In our afternoon session Cindy modeled how to use the graphic organizer to flesh out a story using one of the children's appliques and organizers. As a class we offered both plot suggestions as well as vocabulary suggestions for making the story more fun and interesting for the reader. Doing this as a group hopefully helped the children see how the descriptive words they choose can help a writer make decisions. For example, if a character is a "grumpy farmer", well why was he grumpy in the first place? Once the activity was modeled, we passed out writing paper to start the first draft. Again Cindy and I worked the room, helping students stay on task, asking questions to spark their imagination, and editing the drafts as they were complete.

We've decided to have the children create another handmade book for the final version of the stories and illustrate them. I'm scanning thir pictures in to print and use for the covers.

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.