Theory and Practice

On October 30th 2012 my Theory and Practice class started theme-based lessons. Leah, Chris and Cameron were first to teach their lesson. Their theme was the Apocalypse, which I found to be a very exciting topic. I remember their images and I think the artwork with the mutant dog created an enthusiastic conversation and was a great intro to the theme of Apocalypse. The teacher’s samples were mutant creatures made out of clay and we were told our drawings would later be translated into clay. We were broken up into groups of three or four, and asked to collaborate with our classmates to create our own mutant. We were given four cards and we got to choose one from the pile, this was exciting  way to present the element of chance into the lesson it made the lesson like a game. The categories were arms, legs, body and head. I received the card for arms. From there we were asked to draw four drawings of our body part. I like this because it gave us options. Once we were done with our drawings we were asked to show our drawings to the group. We talked about which drawings worked the best and what kind of mutants we wanted to create from there. There were many drawings that looked robotic and others that looked more organic. Julia chose to create a plant creature with a human head. I decided to make a robot. I thought it was great that the teachers went around and asked if students thought they would have any difficulties when they were making their mutant in clay. Cameron was very helpful and he asked me if my robot would be able to stand? Then I noticed the legs were very thin and fragile, so I told him no it wouldn’t. He suggested I add a base to give my sculpture support, and that the base could reflect the environment the robot lives in. Cameron was very good at trouble shooting problems that students might have. The one thing I was a bit disappointed with was that we didn’t get to work with clay. There was extra time at the end and I think we could have started using clay and spend less time on the drawing part. During the critique of the teachers it was mentioned that the students could have worked with clay but I guess this is a drawback of going first. Groups that teach later have the advantage of learning from this.Overall I loved the lesson!